When the 1905 football season ended, nineteen players were dead and countless others were critically injured. The public was outraged. The game had reached a make-or-break moment—fourth down and inches. Coaches, players, fans, and even the president of the United States had one last chance: change football or leave the field. Football's defenders managed to move the chains. Rule changes and reforms after 1905 saved the game and cleared the way for it to become America's most popular sport. But they didn't fix everything. Today, football faces a new injury crisis as dire as 1905's. With increased awareness about brain injury, reported concussions are on the rise among football players. But experts fear concussions may only be the tip of the iceberg. The injuries are almost invisible, but the stakes couldn't be higher: the brains of millions of young football players across the country. Award-winning author Carla Killough McClafferty takes readers on a bone-crunching journey from football's origins to the latest research on concussion and traumatic brain injuries in the sport. Fourth Down and Inches features exclusive photography and interviews with scientists, players, and the families of athletes who have literally given everything to the game. It's fourth and inches. Can football save itself again?

"Fourth Down in Dunbar tells the story of how one community, plagued by drugs and violence, where many children are fatherless, gives rise to an incredible number of stellar youth athletes. Using [Deion] Sanders as the centerpiece of the story, David Dorsey explores Dunbar's history to show how the same drug culture that ruined so many promising futures also serves as motivation for football success"--

Reproduction of the original.

Chip Hilton and his fellow sophomore stars of State's football team are riding high after their opening victory. State's hopes are suddenly shattered when Chip and his sophomore pals are all suspended for breaking curfew. There's a very good reason why Chip breaks curfew. Chip and his friends decide making the neighborhood a decent place is more important even than playing in State's big game.

The stakes are high even off the field in a scorching romance from the USA Today bestselling author of Pass Interference and Line of Scrimmage. When her relationship goes up in flames, Holly Funchess jumps straight back into the heat—by becoming a firefighter. Running as far away from her past as she can, Holly trains hard and lands a job with a small San Diego firehouse. With everything to prove, she has no problem putting her love life on the back burner. But where there’s smoke . . . A former football player with a string of failed relationships behind him, Chase DeMarco has put his all into his Coast Guard career and the youth football team he coaches. He’s not about to let anyone distract him—especially Holly, the woman at his gym who seems to relish getting under his skin. But when their skirmishes turn into full-contact workouts—and they face off against the dangers of their jobs—Chase and Holly must choose between letting the clock run down or playing to win… Praise for Desiree Holt and her fan-favorite novels “Readers can’t help but root for them to fall in love.”—RT Book Reviews “Her novels are about the story: the characters, their motivations, their flaws and back stories and always about human nature. They are also about mature love and respect and very steamy sex.”—Austin American-Statesman “I have read many other books by Desiree Holt and have enjoyed every one of them. Just keep them coming.”—Fresh Fiction

The job seems easy enough at first for private investigator Andy Hayes: save his client’s reputation by retrieving a laptop and erasing a troublesome video from its hard drive. But that’s before someone breaks into Andy’s apartment in Columbus; before someone else, armed with a shotgun, relieves him of the laptop; and before the FBI suddenly shows up on his doorstep asking questions. Soon, there’s a growing list of people with a claim on the computer, all of them with secrets they don’t want uncovered. When one of those people ends up dead, Andy has his hands full convincing authorities he’s not responsible, while trying to figure out who is—and who’s got the laptop—before someone else dies. Soon the trail leads to the last place Andy wants to go: back to Ohio State University, where few have forgiven him for a mistake he made two decades earlier in his days as the Buckeyes’ star quarterback. That misjudgment sent him on a downward spiral that cost him a playing career, two marriages, several wrecked relationships, and above all his legacy in Ohio’s capital city, where the fortunes of the OSU team are never far from people’s minds. As Andy tracks a laptop and a killer from the toniest of the city’s suburbs to its grittiest neighborhoods, he must confront a dark figure from his past and prove that this time he won’t drop the ball.