The Sunday Game

August 3, 1998
With today's multimillion-dollar player contracts and equally grandiose sponsorship deals in football, it's hard to imagine the game's modest beginnings. This book is a detailed chronicle of the start of semi-professional football, focusing on the period from 1915 to 1917. During these three seasons, players were paid for the first time; fans were charged admission; teams were sponsored (often by railroad companies) and newspaper coverage of games became more significant. Many of these early football teams became members of the National Football League, particularly where there was strong community support and interest. Not surprisingly, rivalry between neighboring cities and teams was fairly common. This book is a very precise description of the players, managers and atmosphere with the occasional interesting vignette, such as when one team refused to get on the field because the opposition had a black player. However, the play-by-play accounts of some games and details about the team schedules are just boring. Also, much of the early history takes place in the Midwest and is associated mostly with college teams, which further limits the book's appeal. Today's fans simply accept the existence of the game and probably aren't curious enough to read a play-by-play of games from 80 years ago.

July 1, 1998
Even before the NFL, there was professional football. This amazing bit of research into old Midwestern factory town newspapers details the forgotten origins of the professional game as it made the transition from independent teams to a fully professional league. The book is divided into team-by-team histories from 1915 to 1917, with four chapters devoted to the Canton/Massillon rivalry between the era's two best squads. An assortment of period photographs is interspersed with the somewhat dry text, and an appendix lists rosters and schedules for the teams. McClellan, editor of the Employee Assistance Quarterly and a member of the Pro Football Researchers Association, draws a parallel with contemporary times by emphasizing the importance of community pride in the support and success of teams and the inherent competitive disadvantage for smaller market teams. Recommended for public and academic libraries less for its writing than for its significant historic value.--John M. Maxymuk, Rutgers Univ. Lib., Camden, NJ

September 1, 1998
This account of the fledgling sport of football in the years just prior to World War I is at once both a culturally significant book--we should understand the roots of the sport that dominates airwaves and newsprint seven months a year--and a very entertaining one. McClellan's extensive research into the game as it was played during the years 1915^-20 reveals a fairly sophisticated association of teams that recruited players from local colleges, high schools, and sandlots. They charged admission, often drew crowds of 2,000 to 5,000, and generated significant local press coverage. And beyond giving the relevant facts and figures, McClellan homes in on the telling human detail that provides a context for the dedication these men brought to their sport. One is left wondering what these small-town pigskin pioneers would think of today's football-crazy America. As a group, they might proudly say, "See? What'd we tell you?" ((Reviewed September 1, 1998))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1998, American Library Association.)