Inspired by the childhood of NFL superstars Tiki and Ronde Barber, this middle grade novel is a story of teamwork, perseverance, and what it takes to be a champion. “Hut! Hut! Go long, Tiki!” Tiki and Ronde’s twelfth summer is winding down—the nights are getting shorter and the evenings cooler. That means two things: The first day of junior high is just a few days away, and it’s almost the start of football season at last. With two championships and an 8-2 season last year, Tiki and Ronde are ready to graduate from the Peewee League and hit the field as starting players for the Hidden Valley Eagles. But junior high is a lot bigger than elementary school. The competition for starting spots is stiff, and seniority rules. If Tiki and Ronde make it past tryouts and cuts, will they get the chance to play, or will they have to spend the season watching from the bench with the other seventh graders?

It’s America’s most popular sport, played by thousands, watched by millions, and generating billions in revenues every year. It’s also America’s most controversial sport, haunted by the specter of life-threatening injuries and plagued by scandal, even among its most venerable personalities and institutions. At the college level, we often tie football’s tales of corruption and greed to its current popularity and revenue potential, and we have vague notions of a halcyon time--before the new College Football Playoff, power conferences, and huge TV contracts. Perhaps we conjure images of young Ivy Leaguers playing a gentleman’s game, exemplifying the collegial in collegiate. What we don’t imagine is a game described in 1905, not today, as "a social obsession--this boy-killing, man-mutillating, education-prostituting, gladiatorial sport." In The Opening Kickoff, Dave Revsine tells the riveting story of the formative period of American football (1890-1915). It was a time that saw the game’s meteoric rise, fueled by overflow crowds, breathless newspaper coverage and newfound superstars—including one of the most thrilling and mysterious the sport has ever seen. But it was also a period racked by controversy in academics, recruiting, and physical brutality that, in combination, threatened football’s very existence. A vivid storyteller, Revsine brings it all to life in a captivating narrative.

Follow Tiki and Ronde Barber as they try out for the Hidden Valley Eagles and develop as players on their junior high team. From unexpected wins to unexpected academic probation, Tiki and Ronde keep their team together and help each other grow on and off the field. Boxed set includes paperbacks of Kickoff!, Go Long! and Wild Card.

A budding football star strives to prove his potential.

When Tou Yang's football team plays the team from his former school, where he was picked on for being small, he struggles to remain focused and use his skills against Darren, who still wants to bully him.

Tiki and Ronde were the stars of their Pee Wee football team, the Cave Springs Vikings. But middle school is much bigger than elementary school and it’s a whole different game—on and off the field. When Coach Spangler takes a job coaching for the high school team and Tiki’s old science teacher Mr. Wheeler is tapped for the middle school coaching job, the beginning of the school year and the football season is off to a bumpy start. But through working together, the boys discover that the whole team is bigger than any of its parts.

When Tou Yang's football team plays the team from his former school, where he was picked on for being small, he struggles to remain focused and use his skills against Darren, who still wants to bully him.