Tackle football has been primarily viewed as a male sport, but at a time when men's participation rates are decreasing, an increasing number of women are entering the gridiron-and they have a long history of doing so. Women's American Football is a narrative history of girls and women participating in American football in the United States since the 1920s, when a women's team played at halftime during an early NFL game. The women's game became more organized in 1974, when the National Women's Football League was established, with notable teams such as the Dallas Bluebonnets, Toledo Troopers, Oklahoma City Dolls, and Detroit Demons. Today there are two main professional leagues in the United States: the Women's Football Alliance, with nearly seventy teams, and the Women's National Football Conference, with eighteen, in addition to a number of smaller leagues. The National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics and the NFL have recently begun sponsoring flag football teams at the college level, and the game is growing for high school girls as well. In 2021 more than two thousand girls played on mostly boys' teams, and there are currently four all-girls leagues in the United States and Canada, in Manitoba, Utah, Indiana, and New Brunswick. In addition to the rapid growth of women playing football, there have been advancements in other areas of the game. Beginning with Jennifer Welter in 2015, several women have earned positions coaching the professional game. In 2020 ESPN aired Born to Play, a documentary on the Boston Renegades, the 2019 champion of the Women's Football Alliance. Based on extensive interviews with women players and focusing closely on leagues, teams, and athletes since the passage of Title IX in 1972, Russ Crawford illuminates the rich history of the women who have played football, breaking barriers on and off the field.

There are two kinds of football in France. American football was first played in France in 1909 during the cruise of the Great White Fleet. Then, during World War I, the American military shipped footballs, helmets, and shoulder pads alongside rifles and ammunition to the western front. A 1938 tour of two teams lead by Jim Crowley of Fordham University maintained the game until World War II, when the arrival of millions of young Americans in France motivated the U.S. military to sponsor several bowl games. During the 1950s and 1960s, when the United States occupied bases in France during the Cold War, American soldiers, sailors, and airmen played more than a thousand football games. When France withdrew from NATO, however, American bases were forced to close, leaving American football without a natural home on Gallic shores. In the 1970s American college and semi-pro teams tried once more to generate interest in the game among French nationals through a series of tours, but until a French physical education instructor vacationed in Colorado and brought equipment back to France, there was little local enthusiasm for the sport. On the back of that vacation, and from one team in Paris, organized American football in France grew to more than 215 teams with more than 22,000 active players today. Le Football tackles the struggles and successes of American football in France and discusses how, unlike baseball and basketball, football has never been an overt instrument of American cultural influence. Russ Crawford keeps the chains moving as he shows how the modern, homegrown sport developed largely independent of American encouragement into a small but successful culture.