Football Culture

A hilarious but nonetheless groundbreaking contribution to the argument about which force shapes American life the most. For two kinds of readers—those who know it’s football and those who are about to find out. Chuck Klosterman—New York Times bestselling critic, journalist, and, yes...

How Football Became Football traces football's evolution from a version of rugby played before a handful of friends to a spectacle played in packed stadiums before television audiences of 100 million or more. Organized by era, How Football Became Football shows how football’s rules, tactics, and equipment shifted over time, as did its coaching, officiating, and fan behavior. Richly illustrated and written in a fun, engaging manner, readers learn why maul-ins, puntouts and quarterback kicks disappeared from the game, as well as how helmets, end zones, hash marks, and penalty flags became ...

Coaching high school football is more than drawing up plays. It is about building a program that lasts, shaping players into leaders, and creating systems that win under Friday night lights. High School Football Coaching: Building Programs and Players is a complete guide for coaches who want to teach discipline, strategy, and resilience in a way that endures beyond the scoreboard. Drawing on decades of field-tested experience, this book blends storytelling with structured frameworks. Each chapter opens with a real anecdote—humorous, humbling, or hard-earned—from practices, bus rides, ...

Coaching high school football is not just about plays, practices, or game-day adjustments. It’s about shaping young men, building resilient programs, and creating traditions that last long after the scoreboard goes dark. In Programs That Last: Building a High School Football Dynasty, readers step inside the locker room, the bus rides, the weight room, and the community to discover how great coaches build more than teams—they build legacies. Drawing from decades on the sidelines, this book blends two powerful voices. It tells stories in the style of Lou Holtz—humble, funny, and ...

A hard-hitting and powerful look at hockey's moment of reckoning in Canada, and the ways in which a game that is so universally loved has been rocked in recent years by court cases involving sexual assault and startling incidents of hazing and abuse throughout junior hockey. The allegations read...

Youth football can feel chaotic—short attention spans, restless players, and parents eager for wins. Without structure, practice unravels and game days become stressful. With the right foundation, though, football becomes more than a sport; it becomes a classroom for discipline, teamwork, and confidence. Coaching Youth Football: Foundations for Lifelong Success gives coaches and parents a clear, proven system for teaching players ages 6–12. Blending Lou Holtz’s anecdotal storytelling with Nick Saban’s process-driven clarity, it shows how to transform practices and games into ...

Championship programs are not built on slogans or highlight reels. They are built one shoelace, one stance, one rep at a time. Coaching College Football: Schemes, Recruiting, and Program Culture is both a playbook and a cultural blueprint, showing how the smallest details and disciplined systems shape programs that last. Drawing on decades of lessons from locker rooms, bus rides, weight rooms, and Saturday sidelines, this book weaves together parables of lived football experience with step-by-step frameworks for execution. Stories bring the lessons to life, while structured processes give ...

When the star players on a high school football team are accused of violence by another student, their secrets—and the secrets of their parents—threaten to shatter their entire community in a gripping novel of race, class, and privilege from the author of Members Only. “Timely and timeless...

Dynasties are never accidents. They are constructed with vision, discipline, and a relentless ability to adapt. Dynasty Builders: How Pro Football Franchisees Rise and Fall offers an unprecedented examination of the organizations that defined eras of professional football and rewrote the blueprint for sustained dominance. From the Steelers of the 1970s to the 49ers’ West Coast revolution, from the Cowboys’ 1990s empire to the Patriots’ two-decade reign, this book dissects the systems that separate fleeting champions from enduring dynasties. Each chapter reveals the architecture of ...

A captivating chronicle of the pivotal decade in American sports, when the games invaded prime time, and sports moved from the margins to the mainstream of American culture. Every decade brings change, but as Michael MacCambridge chronicles in THE BIG TIME, no decade in American sports history...

Football in America has never been just a game. From high school fields to Super Bowl Sundays, it has mirrored the nation’s greatest struggles and most defining moments. In Football and Politics: Power, Protest, and the American Gridiron, the story of the sport is told as a story of America itself—where debates over race, class, gender, labor, and patriotism are played out under the stadium lights. This book explores how football has always doubled as a stage for national conflict. It shows why a touchdown can symbolize more than points, why a player’s protest can spark nationwide ...

In the spring of 2013, a study showed that despite huge economic problems, 27 states were awarding their highest salaries to college football coaches. College football has doubled in size in the last decade thanks to generous tax breaks, lavish TV deals, and corporate sponsors eager to slap their logos on everything from scoreboards to footballs and uniforms. In one recent year, the 10 biggest programs took in $800 million from football, with profit margins far surpassing those of Fortune 500 companies.

Great teams aren’t built on talent alone. They’re built on systems—disciplined frameworks of preparation, culture, and execution. The Pro Standard reveals how the league’s best coaches and players turn chaos into clarity, week after week, season after season. From Sunday night film sessions to Saturday walkthroughs, this book strips down the rhythms of professional football and rebuilds them into a blueprint any coach can apply. It is not theory—it is process. Every chapter delivers practical systems tested under the brightest lights in sports. Readers will walk through the ...

🎉 Step Up to the Plate, Hit a Slam Dunk, and Score Big Laughs with the Ultimate Sports Flashback! Do you remember when sports heroes were larger than life, and the halftime show was a bathroom break—not a concert? When the crack of a wooden bat or the roar of a vintage muscle car was the soundtrack of summer? If you grew up anywhere near the golden age of sports—or just love a good stroll down memory lane—this is the trivia book you’ve been waiting for! Introducing THE ULTIMATE BABY BOOMERS’ SPORTS TRIVIA QUIZ BOOK—a nostalgic, side-splitting, and brain-boosting ride through ...

The inside story of the rise, fall, and rise of FanDuel and DraftKings - two companies that began as obscure startups and, seemingly overnight, became billion dollar companies, and just as quickly found themselves the target of the FBI and Department of Justice and the center of a national scandal.

"Sullivan has found the transcendent in the horse."--Sports Illustrated Winner of a 2004 Whiting Writers' Award One evening late in his life, veteran sportswriter Mike Sullivan was asked by his son what he remembered best from his three decades in the press box. The answer came as a surprise. "I...

🏈 The Commissioner’s Playbook A Guide to Creating the Fantasy Football League of Your Dreams—and a Legacy That Lasts Foreword by Field Yates The ultimate fantasy football commissioner guide—100% built to elevate your league experience and help you create something bigger than the game itself: a legacy of connection, creativity, and unforgettable fun that lasts for years to come. Whether you're launching your first league or revitalizing a league that has been around for over 20 years, The Commissioner’s Playbook is your all-in-one blueprint to build something unforgettable. ...

In From Sandlots to the Super Bowl, Craig R. Coenen recounts the NFL's ascension from a cash-strapped laughingstock to a perennial autumn obsession for millions of sports fans. It offers an in-depth summary of the NFL's early years and its struggles to build an identity. This book approaches the history of the National Football League not only with stats and scores but with what happened beyond the gridiron.

An incisive narrative about a teen rape case that divided a Rust Belt town, exposing the hostile and systemic undercurrents that enable sexual violence, and spotlighting ways to make change. In football-obsessed Steubenville, Ohio, on a summer night in 2012, an incapacitated sixteen-year-old...

In an increasingly secular, fragmented, and distracted culture, nothing brings Americans together quite like sports. On Sundays in September, more families worship at the altar of the NFL than at any church. This appeal, which cuts across all demographic and ideological lines, makes sports perhaps the last unifying mass ritual of our era, with huge numbers of people all focused on the same thing at the same moment. That timeless, live quality makes sports very powerful, and very lucrative. And the media spectacle around them is only getting bigger, brighter, and noisier.