Download or read book It s Only a Game written by Terry Bradshaw and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2001-08-01 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the absolutely guaranteed 100% mostly true story of Terry Bradshaw: the man who gained sports immortality as the first quarterback to win four Super Bowls -- and the man who later became America's most popular sports broadcaster. IT'S ONLY A GAME "I had a real job once," begins a memoir as honest, unexpected, and downright hysterical as Bradshaw himself. From his humble beginnings in Shreveport, Louisiana, to his success as the centerpiece of the highest-rated football studio show in television history, Terry has always understood the importance of hard work. A veritable jack-of-all-trades, he has probably held more jobs than any other football Hall of Famer ever: pipeline worker, youth minister, professional singer, actor, television and radio talk show host, and now one of the nation's most popular speakers. But let's not forget one of the reasons why so many people know and love Terry Bradshaw: he won four Super Bowls! In It's Only A Game, Terry brings the reader right into the huddle and describes the game from the bottom of a two-ton pile to the top of the sports world. You'll sit right on the fifty-yard line and watch as Terry earns the title world's greatest benchwarmer. And you'll also hear about the single greatest play in pro football -- the Immaculate Reception -- as he never saw it. It's Only A Game is much more than a collection of Terry Bradshaw's favorite and funniest stories, it is the personal account of a great man's search for life before and after football...as only Terry could tell it.

Download or read book Steeler Pride written by Doug Yencho and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2012 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nothing better than being a Steeler fan, Right? Join me as we watch the Pittsburgh Steelers climb the "Stairway to Seven " Enjoy my humerous skits, recall a little Steelers history, and add a lttle fun to watching football as it is seen through my eyes. Thank you.

Download or read book Get Your Own Damn Beer I m Watching the Game written by Holly Robinson Peete and published by Rodale. This book was released on 2005-08-15 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A guide for women football fans explains each component of the game of football, describes the role of each position player, outlines common plays, and provides descriptions of some of the most memorable moments in NFL history.

Download or read book Slow Getting Up written by Nate Jackson and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2014-09-02 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One man's odyssey into the brutal hive of the National Football League As an unsigned free agent who rose through the practice squad to the starting lineup of the Denver Broncos, Nate Jackson took the path of thousands of unknowns before him to carve out a professional football career twice as long as the average player. Through his story recounted here—from scouting combines to preseason cuts to byzantine film studies to glorious touchdown catches—even knowledgeable football fans will glean a new, starkly humanized understanding of the NFL's workweek. Fast-paced, lyrical, dirty, and hilariously unvarnished, Slow Getting Up is an unforgettable look at the real lives of America's best athletes putting their bodies and minds through hell.

Download or read book Walking Miracle written by Ryan Shazier and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2021-11-30 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nearly four years after an errant tackle left him paralyzed below the waist, the inspiring comeback story of how former Pittsburgh Steeler Ryan Shazier recovered to walk again. As an All-American at Ohio State and All-Pro linebacker for the Pittsburgh Steelers, Ryan Shazier was living his best life while excelling at the game he loves, a game that has given him so much. But then Ryan was forced to redefine success. Suddenly, it was no longer measured by tackles or sacks, but by purpose and faith. WALKING MIRACLE is the story of this new definition of success, following the arc from December 4, 2017, when Shazier was injured playing the Cincinnati Bengals, to his retirement. For three years, Shazier doggedly pursued a return to professional football. He took small wins as “first downs” on the drive to return to the field: moving his toes, walking, dancing at his wedding, and ultimately running and returning to the team. What Shazier didn’t realize is that along the way, he was preparing himself for another purpose—that of father and husband, philanthropist, and football analyst. The journey was preparing him not for a renewed life as a middle linebacker, but a renewed life after the game. Here we see Shazier overcome childhood alopecia, which caused a great deal of emotional pain, and scoliosis, which nearly robbed him of his dreams of playing college and professional football. We gain insights into legendary coaches Urban Meyer and Mike Tomlin. And we see him star on the field. Shazier was one of the best defensive players in Steeler history—a history full of great defensive stars. WALKING MIRACLE—the message on a bracelet given to him by his godmother—is the story of Ryan’s comeback, but it’s also a book of life’s lessons, challenges, and a love letter to the power of positive thinking.

Download or read book The Last Headbangers NFL Football in the Rowdy Reckless 70s the Era that Created Modern Sports written by Kevin Cook and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2012-09-03 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The inside story of the most colorful decade in NFL history—pro football’s raging, hormonal, hairy, druggy, immortal adolescence. Between the Immaculate Reception in 1972 and The Catch in 1982, pro football grew up. In 1972, Steelers star Franco Harris hitchhiked to practice. NFL teams roomed in skanky motels. They played on guts, painkillers, legal steroids, fury, and camaraderie. A decade later, Joe Montana’s gleamingly efficient 49ers ushered in a new era: the corporate, scripted, multibillion-dollar NFL we watch today. Kevin Cook’s rollicking chronicle of this pivotal decade draws on interviews with legendary players—Harris, Montana, Terry Bradshaw, Roger Staubach, Ken “Snake” Stabler—to re-create their heroics and off-field carousing. He shows coaches John Madden and Bill Walsh outsmarting rivals as Monday Night Football redefined sports’ place in American life. Celebrating the game while lamenting the physical toll it took on football’s greatest generation, Cook diagrams the NFL’s transformation from second-tier sport into national obsession.

Download or read book NFL Confidential written by Johnny Anonymous and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2016-01-05 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Meet Johnny Anonymous. No, that’s not his real name. But he is a real, honest-to-goodness pro football player. A member of the League. A slave, if you will, to the NFL. For the millions of you out there who wouldn’t know what to do on Sundays if there wasn’t football, who can’t imagine life without the crunch of helmets ringing in your ears, or who look forward to the Super Bowl more than your birthday, Johnny Anonymous decided to tell his story. Written during the 2014–2015 season, this is a year in the life of the National Football League. This is a year in the life of a player—not a marquee name, but a guy on the roster—gutting it out through training camp up to the end of the season, wondering every minute if he’s going to get playing time or get cut. Do you want to know how players destroy their bodies and their colons to make weight? Do you wonder what kind of class and racial divides really exist in NFL locker rooms? Do you want to know what NFL players and teams really think about gay athletes or how the League is really dealing with crime and violence against women by its own players? Do you wonder about the psychological warfare between players and coaches on and off the field? About how much time players spend on Tinder or sexting when not on the field? About how star players degrade or humiliate second- and third-string players? What players do about the headaches and memory loss that appear after every single game? This book will tell you all of this and so much more. Johnny Anonymous holds nothing back in this whip-smart commentary that only an insider, and a current player, could bring. Part truth-telling personal narrative, part darkly funny exposé, NFL Confidential gives football fans a look into a world they’d give anything to see, and nonfans a wild ride through the strange, quirky, and sometimes disturbing realities of America’s favorite game. Here is a truly unaffiliated look at the business, guts, and glory of the game, all from the perspective of an underdog who surprises everyone—especially himself. JOHNNY ANONYMOUS is a four-year offensive lineman for the NFL. Under another pseudonym, he’s also a contributor for the comedy powerhouse Funny Or Die. You can pretty much break NFL players down into three categories. Twenty percent do it because they’re true believers. They’re smart enough to do something else if they wanted, and the money is nice and all, but really they just love football. They love it, they live it, they believe in it, it’s their creed. They would be nothing without it. Hell, they’d probably pay the League to play if they had to! These guys are obviously psychotic. Thirty percent of them do it just for the money. So they could do something else—sales, desk jockey, accountant, whatever—but they play football because the money is just so damn good. And it is good. And last of all, 49.99 percent play football because, frankly, it’s the only thing they know how to do. Even if they wanted to do something “normal,” they couldn’t. All they’ve ever done in their lives is play football—it was their way out, either of the hood or the deep woods country. They need football. If football didn’t exist, they’d be homeless, in a gang, or maybe in prison. Then there’s me. I’m part of my own little weird minority, that final 0.01 percent. We’re such a minority, we don’t even count as a category. We’re the professional football players who flat-out hate professional football.

Download or read book Goose written by Tony Siragusa and published by Random House Digital, Inc.. This book was released on 2012 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A hugely popular and beloved football commentator and former player with the Indianapolis Colts and the Baltimore Ravens, Tony Siragusa offers his uncensored insider's look at the NFL and his hilarious take on life off the gridiron. The New York Times called him a "modern-day John Madden." Tony Soprano called him "Frankie Cortese." His teammates called him "Goose." Whatever you call him, Tony Siragusa is larger than life in every possible sense, from his personality to his physique to his colorful career, hilarious stories, and bombastic take on life. Goose is the book that Siragusa's fans have been clamoring for, to hear more from the Super Bowl champ-turned-commentator-turned-actor, who has brought his unmistakable style and intense love for life to every endeavor. In a memoir that is guaranteed to make you laugh, cheer, shake your head, laugh some more, and then think seriously, Siragusa offers stories, life lessons, and perspective gained from his unbelievable collection of experiences. He also offers a no-holds-barred look at the NFL, with locker room stories and surprising glimpses at the way things are done when the cameras (or the refs) aren't looking. His narratives range from hilarious anecdotes about his New Jersey childhood and wild college days, to behind-the-scenes glimpses at some of the greatest players in football history, to Goose's opinions about the current state of the NFL. And he shares them all with his signature love for life and uncensored insight.

Download or read book About Three Bricks Shy of a Load written by Roy Blount and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2013-12-10 with total page 474 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now celebrating its fortieth anniversary, Roy Blount Jr.’s classic account of the 1973 Pittsburgh Steelers—a team on the cusp of once-in-a-generation greatness The Pittsburgh Steelers of the 1970s are mentioned in any conversation about the greatest dynasties in NFL history. A year before Pittsburgh’s first Super Bowl victory launched a decade of domination, Roy Blount Jr. spent a season traveling with the team, recording the ups and downs, both large and small, in the lives of men who would soon reach the pinnacle of success in their sport. He covers everything from the birth of the “Steel Curtain” defense to the unique connection the people of Pittsburgh had with their hard-nosed team. Interspersed with vivid depictions of players like Terry Bradshaw, “Mean” Joe Greene, and Ernie “Fats” Holmes, as well as the team owners, the Rooney clan, About Three Bricks Shy of a Load harks back to a bygone era when offensive linemen could weigh about the same as the backs they blocked for, when the highest-paying team’s highest-paid player—Bradshaw—made $400,000, and when one team was able to win four Super Bowls in six years—a feat that remains unrivaled today. Uproariously funny and brilliantly written, About Three Bricks Shy of a Load was named one of the Top 100 Sports Books of All Time by Sports Illustrated.

Download or read book Celebrating the Super Bowl written by Linda K. Fuller and published by Common Ground Research Networks. This book was released on 2024-02-10 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A de facto American national holiday and phenomenon, the Super Bowl claims a spot as one of the most significant sporting events in the world and the most widely celebrated, feasted and feasting event of the year— with $14+ billion at stake, commercials costing $7 million for a 30-second spot, record-setting broadcast ratings, and 113+ million viewers. More avocados (105 million pounds) are consumed, and more beer is drunk (325 million gallons) on the single day of Superbowl Sunday. But there is much more at play than partying at our annual sports extravaganza, as this scholarly researched yet readable volume demonstrates: Here you will read a historical perspective that includes discussions of the meta-event’s economics (stakeholders, host cities, advertising, gambling, and media), fandom, ratings, halftime entertainment, the roles of mythic spectacle and religion, football’s sexist, militaristic language, gender issues like cheerleaders and sex trafficking, the Puppy Bowl, medical concerns like concussions and violence, tailgating and foodie ideas—all along with tidbits about your favorite team(s) and player(s). Touchdown!

Download or read book League of Denial written by Mark Fainaru-Wada and published by Crown. This book was released on 2014-08-26 with total page 457 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book The New Yorker written by Harold Wallace Ross and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 580 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Incomplete Book of Running written by Peter Sagal and published by Simon & Schuster. This book was released on 2019-09-10 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Peter Sagal, the host of NPR’s Wait Wait...Don’t Tell Me! and a popular columnist for Runner’s World, shares “commentary and reflection about running with a deeply felt personal story, this book is winning, smart, honest, and affecting. Whether you are a runner or not, it will move you” (Susan Orlean). On the verge of turning forty, Peter Sagal—brainiac Harvard grad, short bald Jew with a disposition towards heft, and a sedentary star of public radio—started running seriously. And much to his own surprise, he kept going, faster and further, running fourteen marathons and logging tens of thousands of miles on roads, sidewalks, paths, and trails all over the United States and the world, including the 2013 Boston Marathon, where he crossed the finish line moments before the bombings. In The Incomplete Book of Running, Sagal reflects on the trails, tracks, and routes he’s traveled, from the humorous absurdity of running charity races in his underwear—in St. Louis, in February—or attempting to “quiet his colon” on runs around his neighborhood—to the experience of running as a guide to visually impaired runners, and the triumphant post-bombing running of the Boston Marathon in 2014. With humor and humanity, Sagal also writes about the emotional experience of running, body image, the similarities between endurance sports and sadomasochism, the legacy of running as passed down from parent to child, and the odd but extraordinary bonds created between strangers and friends. The result is “a brilliant book about running…What Peter runs toward is strength, understanding, endurance, acceptance, faith, hope, and charity” (P.J. O’Rourke).

Download or read book The Silver Linings Playbook written by Matthew Quick and published by Sarah Crichton Books. This book was released on 2010-04-27 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times bestseller, The Silver Linings Playbook was adapted into the Oscar-winning movie starring Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence. It tells the riotous and poignant story of how one man regains his memory and comes to terms with the magnitude of his wife's betrayal. During the years he spends in a neural health facility, Pat Peoples formulates a theory about silver linings: he believes his life is a movie produced by God, his mission is to become physically fit and emotionally supportive, and his happy ending will be the return of his estranged wife, Nikki. When Pat goes to live with his parents, everything seems changed: no one will talk to him about Nikki; his old friends are saddled with families; the Philadelphia Eagles keep losing, making his father moody; and his new therapist seems to be recommending adultery as a form of therapy. When Pat meets the tragically widowed and clinically depressed Tiffany, she offers to act as a liaison between him and his wife, if only he will give up watching football, agree to perform in this year's Dance Away Depression competition, and promise not to tell anyone about their "contract." All the while, Pat keeps searching for his silver lining. In this brilliantly written debut novel, Matthew Quick takes us inside Pat's mind, deftly showing us the world from his distorted yet endearing perspective. The result is a touching and funny story that helps us look at both depression and love in a wonderfully refreshing way.

Download or read book Chuck Noll written by Michael MacCambridge and published by University of Pittsburgh Press. This book was released on 2017-03-31 with total page 451 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chuck Noll won four Super Bowls and presided over one of the greatest football dynasties in history, the Pittsburgh Steelers of the '70s. Later inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, his achievements as a competitor and a coach are the stuff of legend. But Noll always remained an intensely private and introspective man, never revealing much of himself as a person or as a coach, not even to the players and fans who revered him. Chuck Noll did not need a dramatic public profile to be the catalyst for one of the greatest transformations in sports history. In the nearly four decades before he was hired, the Pittsburgh Steelers were the least successful team in professional football, never winning so much as a division title. After Noll's arrival, his quiet but steely leadership quickly remolded the team into the most accomplished in the history of professional football. And what he built endured well beyond his time with the Steelers—who have remained one of America's great NFL teams, accumulating a total of six Super Bowls, eight AFC championships, and dozens of division titles and playoff berths. In this penetrating biography, based on deep research and hundreds of interviews, Michael MacCambridge takes the measure of the man, painting an intimate portrait of one of the most important figures in American football history. He traces Noll's journey from a Depression-era childhood in Cleveland, where he first played the game in a fully integrated neighborhood league led by an African-American coach and then seriously pursued the sport through high school and college. Eventually, Noll played both defensive and offensive positions professionally for the Browns, before discovering that his true calling was coaching. MacCambridge reveals that Noll secretly struggled with and overcame epilepsy to build the career that earned him his place as "the Emperor" of Pittsburgh during the Steelers' dynastic run in the 1970s, while in his final years, he battled Alzheimer's in the shelter of his caring and protective family. Noll's impact went well beyond one football team. When he arrived, the city of steel was facing a deep crisis, as the dramatic decline of Pittsburgh's lifeblood industry traumatized an entire generation. "Losing," Noll said on his first day on the job, "has nothing to do with geography." Through his calm, confident leadership of the Steelers and the success they achieved, the people of Pittsburgh came to believe that winning was possible, and their recovery of confidence owed a lot to the Steeler's new coach. The famous urban renaissance that followed can only be understood by grasping what Noll and his team meant to the people of the city. The man Pittsburghers could never fully know helped them see themselves better. Chuck Noll: His Life's Work tells the story of a private man in a very public job. It explores the family ties that built his character, the challenges that defined his course, and the love story that shaped his life. By understanding the man himself, we can at last clearly see Noll's profound influence on the city, players, coaches, and game he loved. They are all, in a real sense, heirs to the football team Chuck Noll built.

Download or read book We Are Penn State written by Lou Prato and published by Triumph Books. This book was released on 2013-09-01 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No college football program has ever had to deal with the obstacles, hostility, and challenges encountered by the players and coaches of the 2012 Penn State Nittany Lions, and this book is an account of that unforgettable season in which the team rebounded from a disillusioning 0-2 start to surprise everyone and finish with an 8-4 record, third best in the Big Ten Conference. The turmoil at Penn State began in early November 2011 with the shocking arrest of retired assistant coach Jerry Sandusky for multiple charges of sexual child abuse, and within days legendary head coach Joe Paterno was fired in what would be termed the biggest scandal in college football history. By the end of January, Paterno was dead from lung cancer and a new head coach without any Penn State connections, Bill O’Brien, began putting together his staff while finishing up his job as offensive coordinator of the Super Bowl bound New England Patriots. We Are Penn State tells the story of how this team overcame unprecedented NCAA sanctions, including a four-year bowl ban and the loss of 45 scholarships over the same period, the transfer of several of its star players, and overwhelming predictions that the 2012 season would be a disaster to put together a successful season and restore some dignity to what was once considered one of the elite programs in college football.

Download or read book Striking Gridiron written by Greg Nichols and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2014-09-16 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the midst of a strike and economic uncertainty, a football team from an iconic steel town just outside Pittsburgh set out to capture its sixth straight season without a loss, uniting a region and inspiring the nation. In the summer of 1959, most of the town of Braddock, Pennsylvania--along with half a million steel workers around the country--went on strike in the longest labor stoppage in American history. With no paychecks coming in, the families of Braddock looked to its football team for inspiration. The Braddock Tigers had played for five amazing seasons, a total of 45 games, without a single loss. Heading into the fall of ‘59, this team from just outside Pittsburgh, whose games members of the Steelers would drop by to watch, needed just eight victories to break the national record for consecutive wins. Sports Illustrated and other media descended upon the banks of the Monongahela River to profile the team and its revered head coach, future Hall of Famer Chuck Klausing, who molded his boys into winners while helping to effect the racial integration of his squad. While the townspeople bet their last dollars on the Tigers, young black players like Ray Henderson hoped that the record would be a ticket to college and spare them from life in the mills alongside their fathers. In Striking Gridiron, author Greg Nichols recounts every detail of Braddock's incredible sixth, undefeated season--from the brutal weeks of summer training camp to the season's final play that defined the team's legacy. In the words of Klausing himself, "Greg Nichols couldn't have written it better if he'd been on the sidelines with us." But even more than the story of a triumphant season, Nichols's narrative is an intimate chronicle of small-town America during the hardest of times. Striking Gridiron takes us from the sidelines and stands on game day into the school hallways, onto the street corners, and into the very homes of Braddock to reveal a beleaguered blue-collar town from a bygone era--and the striking workers whose strength was mirrored by the football heroics of steel-town boys on Friday nights and Saturday afternoons.