|
Books > Sport & Leisure > Sports & outdoor recreation > Ball games > American football
In 2007, as the fiftieth anniversary of the fight to integrate
Little Rock Central High School approached, veteran sportswriter
and native son of Little Rock Jay Jennings returned to his hometown
to take the pulse of the city and the school. He found a compelling
story in Central High's football team, where Black and white
students toiled under longtime coach Bernie Cox, whose philosophy
of discipline and responsibility and punishing brand of physical
football had led the team to win seven state championships. Carry
the Rock tells the story of the dramatic ups and downs of a high
school football season and reveals a city struggling with its
legacy of racial discrimination and the complex issues of
contemporary segregation. In the season Jennings masterfully
chronicles, Cox finds his ideas sorely tested in his attempts to
unify the team, and the result is an account brimming with humor,
compassion, frustration, and honesty. What Friday Night Lights did
for small-town Texas, Carry the Rock does for the urban South and
for any place like Little Rock where sports, race, and community
intersect.
On any given workday, any little thing might send Steve Smith's
thoughts spinning back to Saturday--last Saturday, Saturday two
weeks ago, Saturday two years ago, back into the thrilling minutiae
of game day--until reality reminds him: this is not how
well-adjusted adults act. Steve Smith is not a well-adjusted adult.
He's a Nebraska football fan, and this is his rollicking account of
what it's like to be one of those legendary enthusiasts whose
passion for the Cornhuskers is at once alarming and hilarious. A
journey into an obsessed Nebraska fan's soul, Forever Red immerses
readers in the mad, mad world of Cornhusker football fandom--where
wearing the scarlet-and-cream Huskers gear has its own peculiar
rules; where displaced followers act as the program's ambassadors,
finding Cornhusker subculture beyond the pale; and where the team's
performance can barely keep pace with its followers' expectations
but sometimes exceeds their wildest dreams. Blending wit and
insight, Smith's story of twenty-plus years following the team
takes readers back to memorable game moments from 1980 to the new
era under coach Bill Callahan, offering the uninitiated and the
fellow fanatic alike a window on the world where fantasy and
football meet, where dreams of glory and gritty gridiron realities
forever join.
|
|