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From all-time greats such as Joe Montana and Jerry Rice to current superstars like Aaron Rodgers, readers will enjoying learning all about their favorite football players. Record-breaking stats, famous quotes, history-making plays, and more celebrate the best football stars on both the offensive and defensive ends of the field.
When Cyril Letzelter's family moved to the small Ohio mill community of Martins Ferry, just across the Ohio River from Wheeling, West Virginia, they figured out quickly the city had a love for football bordering on obsessive. And it's not hard to understand why. Success in football and the path it offered out of the coal mines and steel mills to the promise of higher education and opportunity was the stuff of dreams.He emerged as one of the Ohio Valley's most prominent stars when the sport was exploding into the public consciousness like never before. The 1920s are rightly considered the golden age of college football, and his path out of the valley into the national elite offers a unique window into the evolution of the game and the changes in the nation that occurred between Reconstruction and post-WWI America. Long forgotten over the years, Cyril starred in some of the biggest games of the era. His talent was recruited by major teams from Stanford on the west coast to Army in the East. His playmaking ability was feared by giants of the game like Knute Rockne. And in the end, his sometimes rocky path out of the Ohio Valley mill towns to a better life involved taking risks to get ahead and sometimes being manipulated by stronger forces beyond his reach. This is a story of America and college football, as seen through the eyes of a forgotten star, Cyril Letzelter, who deserves to be remembered again.
Consistently ranked among the top ten college football rivalries by fans and pundits alike-and often ranked among the top five-the annual Army-Navy game is the one rivalry that, as one commentator has noted, "stops the most powerful men and women in the world in their tracks for one day a year." It is also quite possible that it is the only rivalry to raise over $58 million in war bonds (1944 game), have an outcome so contentious that the game had to be suspended for six years by the President (1893), or be played in the Rose Bowl (1983), requiring a military "airlift" of nine thousand cadets and midshipmen to California. But Army-Navy is first and foremost about football, and as Barry Wilner and Ken Rappoport relate in this engaging history, it may be college football in its purest form-and not just as a "training ground for the NFL." Though struggling for national ranking, the service academies have done surprisingly well over the years given their recruiting handicap, producing five Heisman Trophy winners and a number of national champions. The rivalry's most successful player may have been Roger Staubach, Heisman winner and Hall of Fame quarterback, who led the Dallas Cowboys to two Super Bowls in the 1970s following his four-year mandatory service in the U.S. Navy. The Army-Navy rivalry is also about traditions, and in a concluding chapter on the 2004 game, the authors take us through the pageantry: the march into the stadium by the student bodies of both schools; freshman push-ups after each score; and the final, moving show of sportsmanship following the game as thousands of cadets and midshipmen stand at attention while the alma mater of each school is played by their respective bands. A rivalry like no other, Army versus Navy receives due recognition in this colorful, thorough history.
Even the most casual sports fans celebrate the achievements of professional athletes, among them Jackie Robinson, Muhammad Ali, and Joe Louis. Yet before and after these heroes staked a claim for African Americans in professional sports, dozens of college athletes asserted their own civil rights on the amateur playing field, and continue to do so today. Integrating the Gridiron, the first book devoted to exploring the racial politics of college athletics, examines the history of African Americans on predominantly white college football teams from the nineteenth century through today. Lane Demas compares the acceptance and treatment of black student athletes by presenting compelling stories of those who integrated teams nationwide, and illuminates race relations in a number of regions, including the South, Midwest, West Coast, and Northeast. Focused case studies examine the University of California, Los Angeles in the late 1930s; integrated football in the Midwest and the 1951 Johnny Bright incident; the southern response to black players and the 1955 integration of the Sugar Bowl; and black protest in college football and the 1969 University of Wyoming "Black 14." Each of these issues drew national media attention and transcended the world of sports, revealing how fans--and non-fans--used college football to shape their understanding of the larger civil rights movement.
Brief biographies of coaches, players, trailblazers, innovators, record setters--all football immortals.
During World War I, American army camps, navy stations and marine barracks formed football's first true all-star teams, competing against each other and top colleges while raising millions of dollars for the war effort. More than fifty college football hall-of-famers, dozens of future generals, and two Medal of Honor winners would play for, coach, or promote military teams during the war, including Dwight Eisenhower, Walter Camp, and George Halas. In War Football: World War I and the Birth of the NFL, Chris Serb recounts a fascinating chapter of military and sports history. He details three of the best but long-forgotten seasons of American football, when college amateurs mixed with blue-collar pros on the field of play. These games showed investors a lucrative market for teams of post-collegiate stars and made players realize that their football careers didn’t have to end after college. Soon the barriers to professionalism began to fall, and within two years of the Armistice the National Football League was born. War Football explores for the first time this lost chapter of sports history and makes a direct connection between World War I and the founding of the NFL. Seven future Hall-of-Famers led the charge of more than 200 military veterans who played in, coached for, and shaped the character of the young league. Football fans, sports historians, and military historians alike will find this book a fascinating read.
"The Jesuit review of faith and culture," Nov. 13, 2017-