Contents:
He was a lineman, and a second-team one at that, but he knows firsthand the joy as well as the pain that football can give to those who play it, and he cherishes that joy as experienced by players and fans alike.
He is concerned about "oversaturation" of NFL games and products, but he thinks "the greater danger lies in devaluing the actual football games if they become simply part of a larger spectacle or a multipronged marketing campaign. You must provide good entertainment value irrespective of the product on the field.
Before 'Monday Night Football' in , no such 'irrespective' was conceivable. Now, it informed the fundamental thinking of NFL owners and league executives. Namath brought to pro football a "live-and-let-live philosophy in defiance of tradition and the Establishment," and when his Jets beat the Baltimore Colts in the Super Bowl -- the greatest upset in the pro game's history -- the staid old NFL was forced to change in order to accommodate the altered realities of posts America.
It became somewhat hipper and, like the hippies who metamorphosed into yuppies, it went commercial. Oriard traces this evolution in convincing detail. He is scarcely the first former player to write about the game -- Jerry Kramer's Instant Replay , published while its author was still a member of the Green Bay Packers, remains to this day the best book about football qua football -- but the combination of his playing experience and his deep knowledge of the league's inner business workings makes for a unique and useful point of view.
Much of the material in the first two-thirds of the book will be familiar to readers of Michael MacCambridge's America's Game , the best history of pro football to date, but his discussion of what can fairly be called the game's larger meaning is especially interesting and insightful. Oriard wastes no time in declaring himself: Readers may occasionally find a former player's bias in the chapters that follow.
It is sophisticated and accessible, it is also more succinct than Oriard's previous football histories. Brand NFL is especially appropriate for undergraduate and non-scholarly readers. If you would like to authenticate using a different subscribed institution that supports Shibboleth authentication or have your own login and password to Project MUSE, click 'Authenticate'. View freely available titles: Book titles OR Journal titles.
Project MUSE promotes the creation and dissemination of essential humanities and social science resources through collaboration with libraries, publishers, and scholars worldwide. Forged from a partnership between a university press and a library, Project MUSE is a trusted part of the academic and scholarly community it serves.
Built on the Johns Hopkins University Campus.
Liberty drove players' wages into the stratosphere and it allowed franchises to extort enormous concessions from their host cities. The combination of labor peace, new stadiums, and television networks competing to contract with the NFL made professional football inordinately profitable in the s. He thinks and he's right that despite the genuine progress the league has made on race, it is still woefully short of genuine equality in the front offices as well as on the field. Contact Contact Us Help. He was a lineman, and a second-team one at that, but he knows firsthand the joy as well as the pain that football can give to those who play it, and he cherishes that joy as experienced by players and fans alike.
This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website. Without cookies your experience may not be seamless.
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Jeffrey Montez de Oca. It's really interesting to read an academic study from a former football player I enjoyed the perspective.
Aug 10, Chandler rated it really liked it. Good, yet unbalanced presentation of the vast gains of the NFL from the early s to the present. I wish the author had focused more on the strikes and labor issues especially since he experienced it firsthand and less on race and team economics, but overall it was a eye-opening read. Sep 28, Lizette rated it liked it. Really help me understand some of what goes on when I watch the games and such with my husband. Mar 27, Andy rated it really liked it Shelves: Rosemary Moore rated it really liked it Mar 31, Jesse rated it really liked it Apr 22, W rated it really liked it Nov 12, Larry rated it it was amazing Dec 31, DJ rated it it was amazing Jan 30, Gretchen rated it it was ok Dec 26, John rated it really liked it Nov 20, Paul Mudd rated it really liked it Aug 08, Micaella rated it did not like it Aug 19, Scott Tappa rated it liked it Dec 10, Manav rated it liked it Oct 21,