In The Boys from Old Florida, Buddy Martin takes the reader beneath the surface of Florida football as, without bias or sugar coating, he skillfully excavates the truths behind “The Gator Nation.” In this book, Martin, a Florida native, has chronicled the real stories of Gator coaches and players through their own eyes and in their words over a 55-year period since 1950—and not all are valentines. The school asked all but one of the coaches interviewed to leave or move up. Some players became estranged or never really felt appreciated. Yet, others are forever grateful for their experience as Gator players and feel a sense of brotherhood. Liberating moments such as the arrival of Ray Graves come to life through the words of somebody who experienced it firsthand. Martin’s fresh investigations have bolstered his sharp memory of those moments as they unfolded, including Graves’s firing after a fairy tale season with his “Super Sophs.”

Hidden far from sight, deep in the thick underbrush of the North Florida woods are the ghostly graves of more than thirty unidentified bodies, some of which are thought to be children who were beaten to death at the old Florida Industrial School for Boys at Marianna. It is suspected that many more bodies will be found in the fields and swamplands surrounding the institution. Investigations into the unmarked graves have compelled many grown men to come forward and share their stories of the abuses they endured and the atrocities they witnessed in the 1950s and 1960s at the institution. The White House Boys: An American Tragedy is the true story of the horrors recalled by Roger Dean Kiser, one of the boys incarcerated at the facility in the late fifties for the crime of being a confused, unwanted, and wayward child. In a style reminiscent of the works of Mark Twain, Kiser recollects the horrifying verbal, sexual, and physical abuse he and other innocent young boys endured at the hands of their "caretakers." Questions remain unanswered and theories abound, but Roger and the other 'White House Boys' are determined to learn the truth and see justice served.

Listen as you read! From Dixie to Rocky Top: Book Playlist, now on Spotify. The first book to explore the history of college fight songs as a culturally important phenomenon, From Dixie to Rocky Top zeroes in on the US South, where college football has forged a powerful, quasi-religious sense of meaning and identity throughout the region. Tracing the story of Southeastern Conference (SEC) fight songs from the late nineteenth to the early twenty-first century, author Carrie Tipton places this popular repertory within the broader commercial music industry and uses fight songs to explore themes of authorship and copyright; the commodification of school spirit; and the construction of race, gender, and regional identity in Southern football culture. This book unearths the history embedded in SEC football’s music traditions, drawing from the archives of the seventeen universities currently or formerly in the conference. Alongside rich primary sources, Tipton incorporates approaches and literature from sports history, Southern and American history, Southern and American studies, and musicology. Chronicling iconic Southern fight songs’ origins, dissemination, meanings, and cultural reception over a turbulent century, From Dixie to Rocky Top weaves a compelling narrative around a virtually unstudied body of popular music.

In 2008 over six million people attended an SEC football game. They spent thousands on season tickets, donated millions to athletic departments, and for three months a year ordered their entire lives around the schedule of their favorite team. As a Christian, Gibbs knows he cannot serve two masters, but at times his faith is overwhelmed by his f...

“We all like to prove people wrong who say we’re no good,” says the eternally driven Steve Spurrier, the 1966 Heisman Trophy winner and NFL quarterback who took off his helmet, put on his coaching visor, and turned three downtrodden universities into winners. Spurrier’s Fun ’N’ Gun offense at the University of Florida flummoxed defenses and rewrote playbooks across the Southeastern Conference, transforming SEC football into a modern phenomena. Spurrier tells the story of a preacher’s son from the Tennessee hills who has been overwhelming opponents with “ball plays” for nearly six decades. The climax of his storied career is uplifting the University of South Carolina, a school that lost more football games than it won between 1892 and 2005, and was believed for over a century to be cursed. The only Heisman Trophy winner ever to coach another Heisman Trophy Winner, Spurrier dared to enter the “graveyard of coaches” at South Carolina, confront his destiny, and turned the USC Gamecocks into an unlikely winner. Spurrier is the biography of the Ball Coach who has forever changed college football—and its impact on our culture.

Examines the history and tradition that takes place on football Saturdays at the University of Florida.

If all sports are really about war, then rugby is a heart-thumping epic of bayonet charges and hand-to-hand fighting. In Memoirs of a Rugby-Playing Man, bestselling author Jay Atkinson describes his thirty-five year odyssey in the sport-from his rough and rowdy days at the University of Florida, through the intrigue of various foreign tours, club championships, and all star selections, up to his current stint with the freewheeling Vandals Rugby Club out of Los Angeles. Jay has played in more than 500 matches, for which he's suffered three broken ribs, a detached retina, a fractured cheekbone and orbital bone, four deadened teeth, and a dislocated ankle. Written in the style of Siegried Sassoon's Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man, Atkinson's book explains why it was all worth it--the sum total of his violent adventures, and the valuable insights he has gained from them.