Do you remember a time when footballers' perms were tighter than their shorts? When supporters still swayed on terraces? When a chain-smoking doctor played central midfield for Brazil? Take a nostalgic stroll back to an era when football on TV was still an occasional treat, when almost anyone could finish runners-up to Liverpool and when finishing fourth in the top flight was not a cause for celebration but a sackable offence! Football in the 1980s is an affectionate look at all the essential facts, stats and anecdotes from the decade before the national game was commercially rebranded. Including both some of modern football's darkest days and its most memorable matches, Football in the 1980s will take you back to a time of tough tackles, muddy pitches and cheap seats. Read on for a grandstand view . . .

What Was Football Like in the 1980s? provides a fascinating and insightful perspective on the game in a decade when football faced major challenges on and off the field. The author's own memories and experiences are augmented by a wealth of research to bring you the definitive account of the clubs, players, managers, referees, grounds, crowds and competitions that defined '80s football. The book examines the Hillsborough, Heysel and Bradford fire tragedies, along with the increasingly commercialised aspects of the game and the evolution of televised football. The scourge of hooliganism - which reached its height in the 1980s - is also given due consideration. What Was Football Like in the 1980s? is an enthralling and illuminating account of a truly remarkable decade for the beautiful game, penned by a respected football author and journalist. How different was the sport 30 to 40 years ago? Richard Crooks gives you the answer, leaving no stone unturned.

From three recognized football and statistics experts comes a revealing and lively look at the pro game, with new stats, unusual facts and figures, revolutionary strategies, and keys to picking the winners.

Set in an easy-to-read Q&A format, this volume is full of the stories and firsthand accounts from many of the men who helped shape the 1970s into one of the most exciting and memorable eras in National Football League history.

From a multiple New York Times bestselling author, the rollicking, outrageous, you-can't-make-this-up story of the USFL The United States Football League--known fondly to millions of sports fans as the USFL--was the last football league to not merely challenge the NFL, but cause its owners and executives to collectively shudder. It spanned three seasons, 1983-85. It secured multiple television deals. It drew millions of fans and launched the careers of legends. But then it died beneath the weight of a particularly egotistical and bombastic owner--a New York businessman named Donald J. Trump. The league featured as many as 18 teams, and included such superstars as Steve Young, Jim Kelly, Herschel Walker, Reggie White, Doug Flutie and Mike Rozier. In Football for a Buck, the dogged reporter and biographer Jeff Pearlman draws on more than four hundred interviews to unearth all the salty, untold stories of one of the craziest sports entities to have ever captivated America. From 1980s drug excess to airplane brawls and player-coach punch outs, to backroom business deals, to some of the most enthralling and revolutionary football ever seen, Pearlman transports readers back in time to this crazy, boozy, audacious, unforgettable era of the game. He shows how fortunes were made and lost on the backs of professional athletes and also how, thirty years ago, Trump was a scoundrel and a spoiler. For fans of Terry Pluto's Loose Balls or Jim Bouton's Ball Four and of course Pearlman's own stranger-than-fiction narratives, Football for a Buck is sports as high entertainment--and a cautionary tale of the dangers of ego and excess.

For the last twenty-five years, the most dominant offensive strategy in college football has been the spread offense, which relies on empty backfields, lots of receivers and passing, and no huddles between plays. Where the spread offense started, why it took so long to take hold, and the evolution of its many variations are the much-debated mysteries that Bart Wright sets about solving in this book. Football Revolution recovers a key, overlooked, part of the story. The book reveals how Jack Neumeier, a high school football coach in California in the 1970s, built an offensive strategy around a young player named John Elway, whose father was a coach at nearby California State University, Northridge. One of the elder Elway’s assistant coaches, Dennis Erickson, then borrowed Neumeier’s innovations and built on them, bringing what we now know as the spread offense onto the national stage at the University of Miami in the 1980s. With Erickson’s career as a lens, this book shows how the inspiration of a high school coach became the dominant offense in college football, prepping a whole generation of quarterbacks for the NFL and forever changing the way the game is played.

The lead college football writer for Sports Illustrated examines the myths that surround college football and obscure the reality of the game.