17th September 2020 will mark the centenary of the National Football League. It will reach that landmark as a behemoth, an all-encompassing conglomerate that is the most lucrative sports league in the world - and also the dominant pop culture entity in the United States. The NFL is also making considerable gains worldwide. The International Series has been heading to London since 2007 with incredible sell-outs at the four games in 2019 at Wembley and the Tottenham Hotspur Stadiums. This may lead some to believe the league has always been a roaring success story. History contradicts that reputation, for the NFL of today is a by-product of the humblest beginnings. It is a rocky road filled with genius detours and wrong turns; with heroes and villains; and, most importantly, with thousands of games. Any Given Sunday will detail some of the biggest of those, beginning with the first contest ever played in 1920 and working through to multiple key fixtures from last season. Each chapter will be complemented by countless interviews with some of the game's true legends, from Hall of Fame players and coaches to owners and executives; first-hand accounts from games, including multiple Super Bowls; and, finally, full access to the Pro Football Hall of Fame and NFL Films' extensive archives, including pieces not available to the public. Any Given Sunday takes readers from the boardrooms to the field, into the locker-room and inside the journeys of legends, providing a full snapshot of the NFL's epic first century.

We remember the 1966 birth of the New Orleans Saints as a shady quid pro quo between the NFL commissioner and a Louisiana congressman. Moving the Chains is the untold story of the athlete protest that necessitated this backroom deal, as New Orleans scrambled to respond to a very public repudiation of the racist policies that governed the city. In the decade that preceded the 1965 athlete walkout, a reactionary backlash had swept through Louisiana, bringing with it a host of new segregation laws and enough social strong-arming to quash any complaints, even from suffering sports promoters. Nationwide protests assailed the Tulane Green Wave, the Sugar Bowl, and the NFL's preseason stop-offs, and only legal loopholes and a lot of luck kept football alive in the city. Still, live it did, and in January 1965, locals believed they were just a week away from landing their own pro franchise. All they had to do was pack Tulane Stadium for the city's biggest audition yet, the AFL All-Star game. Ultimately, all fifty-eight Black and white teammates walked out of the game to protest the town's lingering segregation practices and public abuse of Black players. Following that, love of the gridiron prompted and excused something out of sync with the city's branding: change. In less than two years, the Big Easy made enough progress to pass a blitz inspection by Black and white NFL officials and receive the long-desired expansion team. The story of the athletes whose bravery led to change quickly fell by the wayside. Locals framed desegregation efforts as proof that the town had been progressive and tolerant all along. Furthermore, when a handshake between Pete Rozelle and Hale Boggs gave America its first Super Bowl and New Orleans its own club, the city proudly clung to that version of events, never admitting the cleanup even took place. As a result, Moving the Chains is the first book to reveal the ramifications of the All-Stars' civil resistance and to detail the Saints' true first win.

An all-access pass into the powerhouse teams and passionate fanbases of the legendary Southeastern Conference, from one of the most influential men in college football: ESPN's Paul Finebaum.Proud owner of 14 prestigious college football programs, producing seven consecutive national championships, twelve NFL first round draft choices, and a budget that crushes the GDP of Samoa, the Southeastern Conference collects the most coveted ratings, rankings, and revenue of any conference in college football. With its pantheon of illustrious alumni like Bear Bryant, Herschel Walker, Peyton Manning, and Nick Saban, the SEC is the altar at which millions of Americans worship every Saturday, from Texas to Kentucky to Florida.If the SEC is a religion, its deity is radio talk-show host Paul Finebaum. In My Conference Can Beat Your Conference, Finebaum, chronicles the rise of the SEC and his own unlikely path to college football fame. Finebaum offers his blunt wisdom on everything from Joe Paterno and the Penn State scandal to the relevancy of Alabama quarterback AJ McCarron's girlfriend, and chronicles the best of his beloved callers, and the worst of his haters.My Conference Can Beat Your Conference is illustrated with 8 pages of color photos.

Seven decades of the intense Steelers-Browns rivalry.Football historians regard the games between the Cleveland Browns and the Pittsburgh Steelers as the basis for one of the greatest rivalries in NFL history. Authors Richard Peterson and Stephen Peterson, in telling the engaging story of these teams who play only a two-hour drive along the turnpike from each other, explore the reasons behind this intense rivalry and the details of its ups and downs for each team and its fans. The early rivalry was a tale of Browns dominance and Steelers ineptitude. In the 1950s and 1960s, the Browns-led by Hall of Famers ranging from Otto Graham and Marion Motley in the 1950s to Jim Brown, Bobby Mitchell, and Leroy Kelly in the 1960s-won 32 of the first 40 games played against the Steelers. In the 1970s, the Steelers-led by Terry Bradshaw, Franco Harris, and the Steel Curtain-finally turned things around. When the AFL and NFL merged in 1970, Art Rooney agreed to move the Steelers only if the Browns also moved into the AFC and played in the same division so that their rivalry would be preserved. Despite the fierce rivalry, these cities and their fans have much in common, most notably the working-class nature of the Steeler Nation and the Dawg Pound and their passion, over the decades, for their football teams. Many fans are able to regularly making the 130-mile trip to watch the games. From the first game on October 7, 1950, where Cleveland defeated the Steelers 30-17, to last season's infamous helmet incident with Mason Rudolph and Myles Garrett, the rivalry remains as intense as ever.

The Legendary Life of Ken Stabler

In 1926, Harvard athletic director Bill Bingham chose former Crimson All-American Arnold Horween as coach of the university's moribund football team. The pair instilled a fresh culture, one based on merit rather than social status, and in the virtues of honor and courage over mere winning. Yet their success challenged entrenched ideas about who belonged at Harvard and, by extension, who deserved to lay claim to the American dream. Zev Eleff tells the story of two immigrants' sons shaped by a vision of an America that rewarded any person of virtue. As a player, the Chicago-born Horween had led Harvard to its 1920 Rose Bowl victory. As a coach, he faced intractable opposition from powerful East Coast alumni because of his values and Midwestern, Jewish background. Eleff traces Bingham and Horween's careers as student-athletes and their campaign to wrest control of the football program from alumni. He also looks at how Horween undermined stereotypes of Jewish masculinity and dealt with the resurgent antisemitism of the 1920s.

Blood, guts, and glory-veteran players reveal the NFL you never see on TV Behind every glittering NFL game on television is a world of happy pain for a hundred men. NFL Unplugged lets you see that world through the eyes of the pros who live and sweat in it. Here are the places the cameras don't go: the locker room where coaches' speeches can deflate or motivate, the huddle where fart jokes vie with playcalling, the training camp where locusts and heat conspire to break the strongest bodies and shake the most determined minds. Now you can experience it all up close and unplugged. * Draws on firsthand accounts of more than thirty players and coaches from teams across the NFL, including Mark Schlereth, Bill Romanowski, Kevin Long, Kyle Turley, John Gruden, Hugh Douglas, Jon Runyan, and Michael Strahan * An unvarnished look at everything from training camp and broken dreams, conditioning and injuries, and camaraderie and hazing to the quest to gain a competitive edge and the exhilarating triumphs of the game *Written by one of the top figures in sports radio, Anthony Gargano of Philadelphia's 610-WIP From the injuries that never heal and the money that never lasts to the memories and the glory that never fade, NFL Unplugged shows the unbridled brutality and sheer brilliance of the game.

Soccer hooliganism has long been regarded as primarily an English - or perhaps British - disease, yet in fact it has long existed as a social problem worldwide. In this volume, experts consider hooliganism in 14 countries - eight soccer-playing countries in Europe (including Ireland), two in South America, Australia, South Africa, Japan, and, in the case of North America, a chapter on general sports-related violence. Why have problems of hooliganism from the outset become more regularly attached to soccer than to other global sports? The social roots and forms of soccer hooliganism are explored in the various countries. Do racial, religious or social class cleavages play a part in developing and fostering football violence? What part do the media play? Is hooliganism related to the degree to which soccer is central to the value-system of a country, and the length of time that it has occupied such a position? Though they themselves adhere to a range of different sociological perspectives, the contributors focus on the important theoretical framework devised by Eric Dunning and the Leicester School, in particular the role of aggressive masculinity and the hypothesis that attending matches is part of a "quest for excitement".

It's easy to be a Monday-morning quarterback, but the true football fan has the answers all week long. Doug Lennox, the all-pro of Q&A, leads the drive as he tells us why a touchdown is worth six points, who first decided to pick up the ball and throw it, and how a children's toy changed the sport's biggest championship. Along the way we'll meet players great and not-so-great and encounter the various leagues that have come and gone throughout the world. Why is the sport called "football"? Who first used the term sack? Why did one American president consider banning football? What football team was named after a Burt Reynolds character? Why are footballs shaped the way they are? How many times have NFL and CFL teams squared off? Which came first - the Ottawa Rough Riders or the Saskatchewan Roughriders? Whose Super Bowl ring is a size 25?