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Fourth and Long: The Fight for the Soul of College Football
John U. Bacon · back to the book
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorThe Breaks of the Game
David Halberstam · 400 pages
The story of one season with the Portland Trail Blazers basketball team touches on many aspects of professional sports: stars, salaries, the media, fans, ethics, drugs, and racial tension.
The Fight
Norman Mailer · 247 pages
In 1974 in Kinshasa, Zaïre, two African American boxers were paid five million dollars apiece to fight each other. One was Muhammad Ali, the aging but irrepressible “professor of boxing.” The other was George Foreman, who was as taciturn as Ali was voluble. Observing them was Norman Mailer, a commentator of unparalleled energy, acumen, and audacity. Whether he is analyzing the fighters’ moves, int
The Arm: Inside the Billion-Dollar Mystery of the Most Valuable Commodity in Sports
Jeff Passan · 384 pages
The Jordan Rules: The Inside Story of Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls
Sam Smith · 333 pages
The Last Shot: City Streets, Basketball Dreams
Darcy Frey · 231 pages
It ought to be just a game, but basketball on the playgrounds of Coney Island is much more than that - for many young men it represents their only hope of escape from a life of crime, poverty, and despair. It is their last shot. This is the story of a small group of high school boys who have given their young lives to basketball, as neighborhood stars and as team members of the Abraham Lincoln Hig
Next Man Up: A Year Behind the Lines in Today's NFL
John Feinstein · 507 pages
In the NFL there is only one certainty: that every day, someone will have to be the Next Man Up. Football is an unrelentingly punishing sport, played and practiced at undiminished intensity, and it devours its players. Confronting injuries, trades, and the grim reality of competition, every NFL team prepares constantly for the likelihood--the certainty--that even franchise players can go down at
In These Girls, Hope is a Muscle
Madeleine Blais · 266 pages
The System: The Glory and Scandal of Big-Time College Football
Jeff Benedict, Armen Keteyian · 432 pages
A revelatory account based on the authors' unprecedented access to the NCAA's highest-level programs throughout the 2012 season describes its high-powered system of billion-dollar television deals, high-priced coaches, football "hostessing," castoff athlete-students and paid test takers.
A Few Seconds of Panic: A 5-Foot-8, 170-Pound, 43-Year-Old Sportswriter Plays in the NFL
Stefan Fatsis · 346 pages
Drawing on rare access to an NFL team’s players, coaches and facilities, the author of The New York Times bestseller Word Freak trains to become a professional-caliber placekicker. As he sharpens his skills, he gains surprising insight into the daunting challenges—physical, psychological, and intellectual—that pro athletes must masterIn Word Freak, Stefan Fatsis infiltrated the insular world of co
Welcome to Paradise, Now Go to Hell: A True Story of Violence, Corruption, and the Soul of Surfing
Chas Smith · 256 pages
"For two months every winter, when Pacific storms make landfall, Oahu's paradisical North Shore turns into a fiery hell. Its normal population of sixteen thousand more than triples and this explosion of mainlanders, Brazilians, Australians, and Europeans creates one of the most combustible milieus on earth. Waves, like gold and oil, are a limited resource and, as such, are fiercely fought over by
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game
Michael Lewis · 318 pages
"This delightfully written, lesson-laden book deserves a place of its own in the Baseball Hall of Fame." ―Forbes Moneyball is a quest for the secret of success in baseball. In a narrative full of fabulous characters and brilliant excursions into the unexpected, Michael Lewis follows the low-budget Oakland A's, visionary general manager Billy Beane, and the strange brotherhood of amateur basebal
The Formula: How Rogues, Geniuses, and Speed Freaks Reengineered F1 into the World's Fastest-Growing Sport―A High-Octane History of Formula 1's Rise in America, Racing Culture, and Engineering Marvels
Joshua Robinson · 304 pages
Play Their Hearts Out: A Coach, His Star Recruit, and the Youth Basketball Machine
George Dohrmann · 435 pages
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist George Dohrmann's remarkable debut offers an up-close and unforgettable narrative that reveals the gritty reality hiding behind the romanticized hoop dreams of America's basketball prodigies.
Our Boys: A Perfect Season on the Plains with the Smith Center Redmen
Joe Drape · 269 pages
Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman
Jon Krakauer · 416 pages
The bestselling author of Into the Wild, Into Thin Air, and Under the Banner of Heaven delivers a stunning, eloquent account of a remarkable young man's haunting journey. Like the men whose epic stories Jon Krakauer has told in his previous bestsellers, Pat Tillman was an irrepressible individualist and iconoclast. In May 2002, Tillman walked away from his $3.6 million NFL contract to enlist in th
Joe DiMaggio: The Hero's Life
Richard Ben Cramer · 553 pages
"In this biography, Richard Ben Cramer presents a stunning, often shocking portrait of the hero nobody knew. It is a story that sweeps through the twentieth century, bringing to light along the way not just America's national game, but her movie stars, mobsters, pols, writers...the birth (and the price) of modern national celebrity.". "This is the story Joe DiMaggio never wanted to tell - and nev
Death to the BCS: The Definitive Case Against the Bowl Championship Series: Totally Revised and Updated 2011 Edition
Dan Wetzel, Josh Peter, Jeff Passan · 238 pages
Reinvigorates the old argument against the BCS with new evidence and pulls back the curtain on the inner workings of college sports' most despised postseason.
Eight Men Out: The Black Sox and the 1919 World Series
Eliot Asinof · 302 pages
Seven Deadly Sins: My Pursuit of Lance Armstrong
David Walsh · 426 pages
Traces the journalist's efforts to uncover the truth behind cycling's biggest star.
The Best Team Money Can Buy
Molly Knight · 336 pages
"The inside-the-clubhouse story of two tumultuous years when the Los Angeles Dodgers were re-made from top to bottom, from the ownership of the team to management to the players on the field, becoming the most talked-about and most colorful team in baseball"-- In 2012, an investment group bought the Los Angeles Dodgers from Frank McCourt, who had driven the team into bankruptcy in the midst of an
Outcasts United: A Refugee Team, an American Town
Warren St. John · 288 pages
The extraordinary tale of a refugee youth soccer team and the transformation of a small American townClarkston, Georgia, was a typical Southern town until it was designated a refugee settlement center in the 1990s, becoming the first American home for scores of families in flight from the world's war zones--from Liberia and Sudan to Iraq and Afghanistan. Suddenly Clarkston's streets were filled wi
How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization
Franklin Foer · 261 pages
Soccer is much more than a game, or even a way of life. It is a perfect window into the cross-currents of today's world, with all its joys and its sorrows. In this remarkably insightful, wide-ranging work of reportage, Franklin Foer takes us on a surprising tour through the world of soccer, shining a spotlight on the clash of civilizations, the international economy, and just about everything in b
Counting Coup: A True Story of Basketball and Honor on the Little Big Horn
Larry Colton · 434 pages
In Native American tradition, a warrior gained honor and glory by "counting coup" -- touching his enemy in battle and living to tell the tale. This is a modern story of...COUNTING COUPIn this extraordinary work of journalism, Larry Colton journeys into the world of Montana's Crow Indians and follows the struggles of a talented, moody, charismatic young woman named Sharon LaForge, a gifted basketba
One Mountain Thousand Summits: The Untold Story of Tragedy and True Heroism on K2
Freddie Wilkinson · 347 pages
"In the early morning hours of August 1, 2008, more than two dozen men readied in the starry darkness for their final ascent to the summit of K2, the world's second-highest mountain. In little more than 24 hours, eleven climbers would be dead." -- back cover.