The new NFL Centennial Edition A multi-billion-dollar entertainment empire, the National Football League is a coast-to-coast obsession that borders on religion and dominates our sports-mad culture. But today's NFL also provides a stage for playing out important issues roiling American society. The updated and expanded edition of NFL Football observes the league's centennial by following the NFL into the twenty-first century, where off-the-field concerns compete with touchdowns and goal line stands for headlines. Richard Crepeau delves into the history of the league and breaks down the new era with an in-depth look at the controversies and dramas swirling around pro football today: Tensions between players and Commissioner Roger Goodell over collusion, drug policies, and revenue; The firestorm surrounding Colin Kaepernick and protests of police violence and inequality; Andrew Luck and others choosing early retirement over the threat to their long-term health; Paul Tagliabue's role in covering up information on concussions; The Super Bowl's evolution into a national holiday. Authoritative and up to the minute, NFL Football continues the epic American success story.

An authorized visual history of America's most popular sport Timed to coincide with the National Football League's 100th anniversary, NFL 100 celebrates the history of America's most popular and highly watched sport. From its humble beginnings in Canton, Ohio, to its emergence as a sport cherished by millions, all the key moments and famous athletes are honored within the pages of this handsomely produced book. In addition to the lively text, and action and portrait photography, the story of the game and the context in which it grew are animated by original lists, charts, creative statistics, and infographics, along with beautiful photos of the evolving equipment and artifacts essential to the story of the sport. A perfect gift, NFL 100 will be cherished by every football fan, new or old.

The First Instructional Manual for Football Players and Coaches Ever Published by the National Football LeaguePosition by position Guide to Learning to Play the GameQuarterbackRunning backReceiverOffensive LineDefensive LineLinebackerDefensive BackPlacekickerPunterKick Returner

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The story of how the NFL, over a period of nearly two decades, denied and sought to cover up mounting evidence of the connection between football and brain damage “League of Denial may turn out to be the most influential sports-related book of our time.”—The Boston Globe “Professional football players do not sustain frequent repetitive blows to the brain on a regular basis.” So concluded the National Football League in a December 2005 scientific paper on concussions in America’s most popular sport. That judgment, implausible even to a casual fan, also contradicted the opinion of a growing cadre of neuroscientists who worked in vain to convince the NFL that it was facing a deadly new scourge: a chronic brain disease that was driving an alarming number of players—including some of the all-time greats—to madness. In League of Denial, award-winning ESPN investigative reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Steve Fainaru tell the story of a public health crisis that emerged from the playing fields of our twenty-first-century pastime. Everyone knows that football is violent and dangerous. But what the players who built the NFL into a $10 billion industry didn’t know—and what the league sought to shield from them—is that no amount of padding could protect the human brain from the force generated by modern football, that the very essence of the game could be exposing these players to brain damage. In a fast-paced narrative that moves between the NFL trenches, America’s research labs, and the boardrooms where the NFL went to war against science, League of Denial examines how the league used its power and resources to attack independent scientists and elevate its own flawed research—a campaign with echoes of Big Tobacco’s fight to deny the connection between smoking and lung cancer. It chronicles the tragic fates of players like Hall of Fame Pittsburgh Steelers center Mike Webster, who was so disturbed at the time of his death he fantasized about shooting NFL executives, and former San Diego Chargers great Junior Seau, whose diseased brain became the target of an unseemly scientific battle between researchers and the NFL. Based on exclusive interviews, previously undisclosed documents, and private emails, this is the story of what the NFL knew and when it knew it—questions at the heart of a crisis that threatens football, from the highest levels all the way down to Pop Warner.

Filled with compelling photos of the most important teams, games, players and events as determined by the officials of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, this fascinating and in-depth book will enthrall sports fans.

"Draws upon the experiences of hundreds of former players as they describe their lives after their football days are over. It also incorporates stories about their playing careers, even before entering the NFL, to provide context for understanding their current situations. The authors begin with an analysis of the 'bubble'-like conditions of privilege that NFL players experience while playing, conditions that often leave players unprepared for the real world once they retire and must manage their own lives. The book also examines the key issues affecting former NFL players in retirement: social isolation, financial concerns, inadequate career planning, psychological challenges, and physical injuries"--Amazon.com.

CTE, Media, and the NFL: Framing a Public Health Crisis as a Football Epidemic examines the central role of mediain constructing an entangled relationship between chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) and the National Football League (NFL), challenging a predominately symbiotic sports/media complex. The authors of this book analyze more than a decade of media coverage, along with three prominent films, to unpack how media discourse resurrects CTE, a preventable degenerative brain disease linked to boxing in 1928, and subsequently frames it as a football epidemic dating back to 2005. The authors position CTE as a public health crisis, whereby media coverage of CTE and the NFL’s vigorous reliance on controversial published research by the Mild Traumatic Brain Injury (MTBI) Committee parallels the moral panic of the HIV/AIDS epidemic and Big Tobacco’s manufacturing of doubt through faulty science. This book argues that the continued aspiration and idolization of the NFL, and its lack of accountability for health concerns surrounding brain injuries, highlight the firm grasp of hegemonic masculinity on the ideology of American football - further problematizing media’s glorification of the sport. Scholars of sports media, health communication, and general media studies will find this book particularly useful to discuss longitudinal effects of media framing centered on critical health risks in sport and the challenge of translating accurate scientific knowledge to the public domain.