This landmark work explores the vibrant world of football from the 1920s through the 1950s, a period in which the game became deeply embedded in American life. Though millions experienced the thrills of college and professional football firsthand during these years, many more encountered the game through their daily newspapers or the weekly Saturday Evening Post, on radio broadcasts, and in the newsreels and feature films shown at their local movie theaters. Asking what football meant to these millions who followed it either casually or passionately, Michael Oriard reconstructs a media-created world of football and explores its deep entanglements with a modernizing American society. Football, claims Oriard, served as an agent of "Americanization" for immigrant groups but resisted attempts at true integration and racial equality, while anxieties over the domestication and affluence of middle-class American life helped pave the way for the sport's rise in popularity during the Cold War. Underlying these threads is the story of how the print and broadcast media, in ways specific to each medium, were powerful forces in constructing the football culture we know today.

Gridiron football is the king of sports – it's the biggest game in the strongest and richest country in the world. In The King of Sports, Easterbrook tells the full story of how football became so deeply ingrained in American culture. Both good and bad, he examines its impact on American society. The King of Sports explores these and many other topics: * The real harm done by concussions (it's not to NFL players). * The real way in which college football players are exploited (it's not by not being paid). * The way football helps American colleges (it's not bowl revenue) and American cities (it's not Super Bowl wins). * What happens to players who are used up and thrown away (it's not pretty). * The hidden scandal of the NFL (it's worse than you think). Using his year-long exclusive insider access to the Virginia Tech football program, where Frank Beamer has compiled the most victories of any active NFL or major-college head coach while also graduating players, Easterbrook shows how one big university "does football right." Then he reports on what's wrong with football at the youth, high school, college and professional levels. Easterbrook holds up examples of coaches and programs who put the athletes first and still win; he presents solutions to these issues and many more, showing a clear path forward for the sport as a whole.

Mythical tales of the exploits of schoolboy football in the Lone Star state. Excellent compilation of news stories and photos covering the history of Texas high school football. Includes development of programs for all races (segregated and interracial) and sizes of teams (i.e., six man football).

This landmark work explores the vibrant world of football from the 1920s through the 1950s, a period in which the game became deeply embedded in American life. Though millions experienced the thrills of college and professional football firsthand during t

A biography of the football player who rose to fame as quarterback of the New York Jets.

The Football Factory centres on Tom Johnson, a reasoned 'Chelsea hooligan' who represents a disaffected society operating by brutal rules. We are shown the realities of life - social degradation, unemployment, racism, casual violence, excessive drink and bad sex - and, perhaps more importantly, how they fall into a political context of surveillance, media manipulation and division. Graphic and disturbing, sometimes very funny, and deeply affecting throughout, The Football Factory is a vertiginous rush of adrenaline - the most authentic book yet on the so-called English Disease.

This book analyzes the transformation of English football in the 1990s. In so doing, it provides a comprehensive account of football culture in contemporary Britain that not only contributes to the study of the sport but also sheds wider light on recent transformations in British society.Although the author draws on past writings on football, the scope and analytic focus of the book are original. Starting with a theoretical and historical framework, Anthony King goes on to examine the organic political and economic developments of the last thirty years which put the big city clubs in a position to effect a division from the rest of the league. By the mid-1980s football faced both economic and crowd control crises which began to affect the consumption of the game. The End of the Terraces looks at those who implemented the changes, the new business class, and those who have been most affected—the fans.