America's Game

July 22, 2019
Pro football superstar Rice and sportswriter Williams (coauthors, 50 Years, 50 Moments: The Most Unforgettable Plays in Super Bowl History) fumble with this poorly organized overview of NFL history. The objective is a worthy one—to provide an accessible look at a century of the NFL and introduce present-day fans to the origins of professional football and the significant players, coaches, and owners from its past. The authors divide their timeline into four quarters and insert sections on random topics throughout regardless of era: a history of quarterbacks, for instance, features Peyton Manning and Tom Brady in the second quarter (1945–1969). Topical issues—such as violence by players (an attack by Charlie Waters on fans who’d thrown a beer bottle at his teammate is treated as a joke) and concussions—are superficially covered. The authors claim Otto Graham to be the greatest quarterback in history, yet omit him from their choices for the roster of best of his time. Don Shula manages to be named best coach for both the third and fourth quarters of the NFL’s history, despite his retirement from coaching the Miami Dolphins in 1995, just when that last quarter began, and during the trophy-laden career of the New England Patriots’ Bill Belichick. This is a missed opportunity likely to disappoint both serious and casual fans.

July 12, 2019

For this history of the NFL's first 100 years, three-time Super Bowl champion and Hall of Famer Rice and sportswriter Williams have organized their book into four quarters, each consisting of 25 years. Unfortunately, they do not stick to that chronological format. After the first quarter, 1920-44, each succeeding quarter becomes less and less concerned with the time period and more driven by topical chapters with content that spans the full range of the NFL's first century. Chapters on the best quarterbacks, running backs, and business-oriented owners interrupt the flow and are generally given superficial treatment. The only three recurring themes are chapters on each era's top coaches, top postseason games, and its all-time team. Most sections read like sidebars, sometimes with actual sidebars within them. This topical approach also leads to repetition at times, with some intriguing factual nuggets and many quotes from veteran sportswriters and mostly modern players, but the authors tend to fudge over details and go with anecdotal apocrypha too much. VERDICT This is more an unfocused grab bag than a book with a coherent narrative.--John Maxymuk, Rutgers Univ.-Camden Lib., NJ

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2019
Hall of Fame wide receiver Rice and sportswriter Williams (co-authors: 50 Years, 50 Moments: The Most Unforgettable Plays in Super Bowl History, 2015) turn in a lively history of the NFL. A century ago, George Halas, the legendary Bears coach, "arguably the most influential figure in the history of professional football," caught a train to Ohio and created a league, the American Professional Football Association, made up of teams from Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and New York. Most of those teams--the Muncie Flyers and Rochester Jeffersons, anyone?--no longer exist, but the league itself evolved, and with it football became increasingly popular not just in pro stadiums, but also in high school and college. Early football wasn't pretty: It was a mud-spattered mess, made messier by the fact that the first players didn't have helmets--and many grew their hair long in the belief that "a thick shock of hair would help absorb the shock of collisions." The authors are comprehensive in their coverage, explaining the necessary partnership of quarterbacks and receivers--you can't have greats of either unless you have greats of both--and the machinations of the draft, with a roster of the best of all time. Rice and Williams serve up a rogues' gallery, taking in the great and the forgotten alike. The pace of the narrative is a little herky-jerky, switching from anecdote to stats and brief biographies that threaten to induce chronological whiplash; the book could benefit from both streamlining and a little more Ken Burns-like splashiness, given the occasion. But there are plenty of locker-room stories that are worth the price of admission--e.g., Detroit Lions QB Bobby Layne's habit of sending rookies out to buy beer just ahead of curfew, which was sure to bring on a fine, since they "couldn't refuse the best, most influential player on the team," and Rice's own habit, maddening to equipment managers, of trying on every pair of pants in the place before a game: "Everything had to be spanking new." A treat for gridiron fans.

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September 1, 2019
Jerry Rice is arguably the NFL's greatest receiver of all time. In 2015, he and Randy O. Williams coauthored 50 Years, 50 Moments, an entertaining history of the first 50 Super Bowls. This follow-up offers a cleverly organized overview of the NFL's first 100 years. It's broken down into four quarters, like an NFL game. Each 25-year period features profiles of the era's greatest players, coaches, and trends. There are also sidebars in which the authors focus on a particular trend. The first quarter also includes a chapter on the evolution of equipment, from leather helmets to more-solid headgear and face masks, allowing players to keep most of their teeth. There's a great chapter on the evolution of placekicking, from the days of the 16-man rosters, when somebody had to do it, to the introduction of the modern sidewinder, a variation of soccer's free kick. It's a daunting task to compress 100 years of history into just under 500 pages with any coherency, but Rice and Williams manage the task ably. It's a fun read and very informative, nicely augmented by black-and-white and color photos.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)