American Football History

Alfredo Di Stéfano, Diego Maradona, Gabriel Batistuta, Juan Román Riquelme, Lionel Messi...Argentina has produced some of the greatest footballers of all time. But the rich, volatile history of Argentinian football is made up of both the sublime and the ruthlessly pragmatic. Jonathan Wilson, having lived there on and off during the last decade, is ideally placed to chart the sport's development in a country that, perhaps more than any other, lives and breathes football, its theories and its myths.

From Monday Night Football to Super Bowl Sunday, the NFL is a dominating force in the lives of millions of fans who tune in and passionately cheer for their favorite teams. And when the games are over, the conversation is just getting started. Who's the greatest player of all time? Which coaches truly shaped the game we known and love today? Why is professional football such an undeniable part of our culture? Three-time Super Bowl winner Michael Lombardi has done it all—from scout to executive to coach—and now he sets the record straight on these questions and more.

The United States Football League was the last football league to not merely challenge the mighty NFL but also to cause it to collectively shudder. It spanned three seasons, featured as many as 18 teams, secured multiple television deals, 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 Trump. Jeff Pearlman draws on more than 400 interviews to unearth all the salty, untold stories of one of the craziest sports entities to have ever captivated America.

From its early amateur days played in the Corinthian Spirit, Preston North End's "Invincibles" of 1888 and great players like Stanley Matthews and Pelé, to the Premier League glory days of Sir Alex Ferguson and Arsène Wenger, A History of Football is the story of the dominant teams, memorable occasions, and larger-than-life characters that shaped the game throughout its development. For all lovers of the beautiful game, this is an essential reference to its 150-year history.

The pro football season of 1963 was dominated by the unexpected. In April, months prior to the beginning of play, it was revealed that two All-Star players, Paul Hornung and Alex Karras, were gambling on the sport and would be suspended from play for at least a year. Even worse, in May, one of the league’s bigger-than-life personalities, Big Daddy Lipscomb, was found dead, with police saying he perished from a heroin overdose, something those who knew him best still dispute.

In the 1930s and 1940s, there was nothing bigger in Texas high school football than the Masonic Home Mighty Mites - a group of orphans bound together by hardship and death. These youngsters, in spite of being outweighed by at least 30 pounds per man, were the toughest football team around. They began with nothing - not even a football - yet in a few years were playing for the state championship on the highest level of Texas football. This is a winning tribute to a courageous band of underdogs from a time when America desperately needed fresh hope and big dreams.

The Chicago Bears are more than a football team - they are a legend. Founded in 1919, the Bears have won more regular season games than any other NFL franchise. With 26 players in the Pro Football Hall of Fame and thirteen retired jerseys, it’s no wonder the Bears can be defined by three phrases: Big, tough, and full of characters. The Bears, like Chicago, are not just people. They are personalities. In Amazing Tales From the Chicago Bears Sideline, Bears fans can hear about the men who have made the Bears one of the greatest franchises in pro football....

Two Brothers tells the story of a great sporting family, uncovering new details, exposing myths and placing Jack and Bobby Charlton in their historical context. It's a book about two English footballers but also about English football and England itself.

The NFL has come a long way from its founding in Canton, Ohio, in 1920. In the 100 years since that fateful day, football has become America’s most popular and lucrative professional sport. The former scrappy upstart league that struggled to stay afloat has survived a host of challenges to produce American icons like Vince Lombardi, Joe Montana, and Tom Brady. It is an extraordinary and entertaining history that could be told only by Joe Horrigan, former executive director of the Pro Football Hall of Fame and perhaps the greatest living historian of the NFL.

The never-before-told inside story of how the Premier League became the wildest, richest, most popular entertainment business on the planet. How did English football - once known for its stale pies, bad bookkeeping and hooligans - become a commercial powerhouse and the world's premium popular entertainment? This was a business empire built in only 25 years on ambition, experimentation and gambler's luck.

England invented football, codified it, became champions of the world in 1966 but humiliatingly then forgot how to play the greatest game of all. England took their eye off a ball they arrogantly thought they owned, allowing other nations to run off with it. It has been 50 years of hurt since Bobby Moore lifted the World Cup trophy at Wembley, and in this groundbreaking book Henry Winter addresses the state England are in on the golden anniversary of their greatest moment.

King Power Stadium, countdown to kick off. Out on the pitch, a lone brass player sounds the haunting 'Post Horn Gallop', for 80 years the home players' entrance tune. Spines tingle. Air is gulped into opposition lungs. Game time, time to begin the chase. Burning fox eyes peer down from between the decks of one of the stands. On the stadium's outside wall, a royal-blue LCD display says '#Fearless'. Welcome to Leicester City.

Want to know what really happened? Stan Isaacs knows. He was there! "The Shot Heard Round the World," in 1951. "The Fight of the Century," in 1971. The horror of the 1972 Munich Olympics. Secretariat's legendary win at the 1973 Belmont Stakes. Stan Isaacs saw them all live. Isaacs covered thousands of sports stories in his more than fifty years as a journalist. But ten moments stand out in his memory. Ten Moments That Shook the Sports World offers Isaacs' eyewitness accounts of the events that changed sports history.

The National Football League's current dominance has obscured how professional football got its start. In The League, John Eisenberg reveals that Art Rooney, George Halas, Tim Mara, George Preston Marshall, and Bert Bell took an immense risk by investing in the professional game. At that time, the sport barely registered on the national scene. The five owners succeeded only because at critical junctures in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, each sacrificed the short-term success of his team for the longer-term good of the League.

New York Times best-selling, award-winning historian S. C. Gwynne tells the incredible story of how Hal Mumme and Mike Leach - two unknown coaches who revolutionized American football in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s - changed the way the game is played at every level, from high school to the NFL. Hal Mumme is one of a handful of authentic offensive geniuses in the history of American football. In 2015 ESPN Magazine, the nation's leading sports magazine, called him the single most influential football coach in the last quarter century.

In 11 seasons with the Buffalo Bills, the diminutive 5-foot-9, 175-pound Steve Tasker was a huge contributor as the Bills strung together an unprecedented four consecutive Super Bowl appearances in the early 1990s. Along the way, Tasker earned seven invitations to the Pro Bowl, and during the National Football League’s 75th anniversary celebration, he was named the greatest special-teams player of all time.

Relive the greatest Giants moments through the eyes of the players themselves - newly revised to include Super Bowl XLVI! The New York Giants have long been one of the NFL’s most popular and storied franchises. Now fans of this dynamic football powerhouse will relive all the greatest gridiron moments through the eyes of the players themselves in this newly updated edition of Game of My Life New York Giants.

The victory and legend of the Super Bowl XLV-winning Green Bay Packers continues in Chuck Carlson’s Tales from the Green Bay Packers Sideline. In this behind-the-scenes look at the NFL’s second oldest franchise, Carlson captures the determination, aggression, and vision that have constantly spurred the Packers to greatness. Through interviews and extensive research, Carlson brings to life stories from Packers legends such as Curly Lambeau, Vince Lombardi, Bart Starr, Ray Nitschke, Brett Favre, and the stars of today’s Packers like Aaron Rodgers and Clay Matthews, Jr.

Bill Parcells may be the most iconic football coach of our time. During his decades-long tenure as an NFL coach, he turned failing franchises into contenders. He led the ailing New York Giants to two Super Bowl victories, turned the New England Patriots into an NFL powerhouse, reinvigorated the New York Jets, brought the Dallas Cowboys back to life, and was most recently enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

It was the end of an era in professional football. After years of competing against each other, the American Football League (AFL) and the National Football League (NFL) merged to form one football powerhouse in 1970. After the merger, the league split into two conferences: the AFC and the NFC. In the year 1970, 13 teams would battle in each conference to meet in Super Bowl V. After a history of tough losses in big games, two teams rose to the top—the Dallas Cowboys and the Baltimore Colts.