The League

July 30, 2018
Sportswriter Eisenberg’s enlightening history chronicles the first three decades of the National Football League. As he describes it, today’s multibillion-dollar National Football League bears little resemblance to the underdog association launched in 1920 as the American Professional Football Association in the showroom of an automobile dealership in Canton, Ohio. By 1932, the league consisted of 14 teams, none of them west of Chicago, and professional football was overshadowed by baseball and college football. Thanks to the tenacity of George Halas, the league’s founding father and legendary Chicago Bears owner, and four other team owners—Bert Bell (Philadelphia Eagles), Tim Mara (New York Giants), George Preston Marshall (Washington Redskins), and Art Rooney (Pittsburgh Steelers)—the NFL survived, despite competition with other leagues, public backlash against racially integrated teams (the first African-American player was drafted in 1939), and a lack of players during WWII. The original generation of team owners introduced many elements to the game that still exist today, including the draft and intricate rules relating to ball placement after fumbles and penalties. Drawing on extensive research and personal interviews with descendants of the principle figures, Eisenberg (That First Season) puts a nearly century-old story into contemporary context. Football fans of all teams will appreciate this fascinating history.

August 1, 2018

Eisenberg (That First Season) offers a deep dive into the origins of the National Football League and its first 40 years of development. In particular, five key team founders whose ability to work together and find solutions--despite being in competition with one another--kept the league afloat and allowed it to grow. These include George Halas of the Bears, Tim Mara of the Giants, George Preston Marshall of the Redskins, Art Rooney of the Steelers, and Bert Bell of the Eagles, who later became NFL commissioner. Four were charter members of the Hall of Fame and the fifth (Rooney) was elected a year later. A great deal of coverage is given to backroom dealings, much of it drawn from the league meeting minutes and other primary sources. VERDICT A readable and fresh look at the early history of the NFL.

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 15, 2018
A rich history of the rise of the National Football League from its virtual obscurity at its genesis in the 1920s to its position as an economic and cultural powerhouse today.Former Baltimore Sun sportswriter Eisenberg (The Streak: Lou Gehrig, Cal Ripken Jr., and Baseball's Most Historic Record, 2017, etc.) returns with the story of how five owners--George Halas, Bert Bell, George Preston Marshall, Art Rooney, and Tim Mara--refused to give up on the struggling league and lived to see (and cause) its current dominance. Thoroughly researched and gracefully told, the story begins with the background of each of the five, then moves chronologically through the early years of the league--struggles, controversies (among the most significant was the arrival of black players), adjustments (to radio and then TV)--to its full arrival in 1958, when 40 million people watched the Baltimore Colts defeat the New York Giants in the exciting championship game. As the author repeatedly points out, these five were fierce rivals, but they knew that to make the league survive and flourish, they could not destroy one another. So they compromised and changed rules to make the game more exciting; all would live to see the league's vigorous health. (The final chapter deals with the deaths of each.) Although Eisenberg is admiring of the founders, he also recognizes--and highlights--their weaknesses. Marshall, for example, was a racist, the last to bring blacks onto his team, the Washington Redskins. Although the author provides some details about some key games (and iconic players like Red Grange, Marion Motley, and Sam Huff), the narrative is not a rehearsal of games but of the history of a game, a business, and five men who took a chance, lost money, and then found great success.An engaging and informative cultural history, on and off the gridiron.

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September 1, 2018
Today the NFL is a $13 billion behemoth, but once it was a shoestring operation, struggling to survive. The Chicago Bears' George Halas is generally recognized as the league's founder, but veteran sportswriter Eisenberg digs deeper to tell the stories of four other men who played huge roles in the league's early success: Art Rooney, Tim Mara, Bert Bell, and George Preston Marshall. Washington Redskins owner Marshall's story is perhaps the most interesting. His vision was to market the league as entertainment, and he advocated rules changes to inject the NFL with more excitement. Liberalizing the rules governing the passing game may have been the key change, but moving the goal posts to the front of the end zones and instituting hash marks to give offenses more room to operate were crucial as well. Eisenberg also makes the point that these five men were all self-made, borrowing money and (in Halas' case) raiding college funds to keep the league afloat. Fans who only know the league as it exists today will be shocked and fascinated by its early years.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)