Sports & Recreation : Football

December 10, 2005: Amid a roaring ovation and media crush, with his family standing proudly by his side, Reginald Alfred Bush is named the year's Heisman Trophy winner. With his honest demeanor, effervescent smile and, of course, stunning talent displayed on the fields of the University of Southern California, Reggie Bush is, on that celebratory night, the portrait of a great American sportsman, and the pinnacle of everything the NCAA espouses in its athletes. What America didn't know about the acclaimed college star was that, in direct violation of NCAA policies, Bush and his family had allegedly taken hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and gifts long before he ever laid his hands on the Heisman. more...

Price: $17.99

Tiki Barber, former running back for the New York Giants and current Today show correspondent, has seemingly led a charmed life. Whether on the field or in front of the camera, the Smiling Giant makes everything look easy. But it has taken a lot of motivation, hard work, and help from those around him to get where he is today more...

Price: $11.99

Since the time of Knute Rockne, fans have been drawn to Notre Dame for reasons that go far beyond the normal allegiances. Just as Ohioans root for Ohio State, Los Angelenos for UCLA, Catholics everywhere root for Notre Dame. Over the decades their devotion to team and institution has become a religion in ways that exceed metaphor. Millions in number, these modern-day fans treat the Notre Dame campus as a pilgrimage site, and six times a year, for each home game, the action moves from the profane to the sacred. For the fans, Notre Dame has become a symbol of the American immigrant bootstrap ethos of hard work, of the Catholic faith, and of the notion that the two entwined can only produce the good life. Touchdown Jesus is the intimate chronicle of Notre Dame's 2004 football season as seen through the eyes of a fan base unlike any other. more...

Price: $17.99

Noted Washington Post sports reporter and columnist Mark Maske has written the Moneyball of professional football, a behind-the-scenes account of a year in the life of the on- and off-field competition between four of the NFL's bitterest rivals: the New York Giants, Washington Redskins, Philadelphia Eagles, and Dallas Cowboys. The NFL's NFC East is perhaps the most storied division in all of professional sports. The rivalries are ancient and bitter, the markets are sports mad, media saturated, and very impatient with failure, and the owners, coaches, and players include many of the most outsized egos in the game. How better, then, to understand the big competition and big business of pro football today than by spending a year with a behind-the-scenes pass in the cockpits of all four organizations, chronicling the strategy and tactics employed over the course of an unrelenting four-season struggle? To place the story of the NFC East within its larger context, Mark Maske has secured extraordinary access to the new league commissioner's office as well as that of the players association head, Gene Upshaw, and the most important agents in the game. But the heart of Maske's story is his relentlessly reported account of the view from the leadership level of each of these four franchises, all in their way struggling with dramatic personality conflicts and unexpected changes in personnel and fortune. The result is nirvana for sports fans, an engrossing ride through a competitive free-fire zone in which the pressure is unremitting and the punishment for failure is swift and sure. The NFL is the most successful professional sports league in America, and its influence on the culture enormous: Through the story of these four organizations locked in a steelcage match with one another over the course of this one year, Mark Maske takes the measure of this league in a way no one before has and few others could. more...

Price: $25.95

Chronicles the 1940 phenomenon of the T-formation offense, from the hiring of coach Clark Shaughnessy to his marshalling of the untapped talents of such future standouts as Frankie Albert, Hugh Gallarneau and Pete Kmetovic, and Norm Standlee, to his reintroduction of the out-of-favor T-formation and its profound and enduring effect on football. more...

Price: $16.95