The Nfls Pivotal Years

Download or read book The NFL's Pivotal Years written by Brad Schultz and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2021-03-26 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent years have been among the most challenging in NFL history, culminating in the 2020-21 coronavirus and social justice issues. Yet a complete understanding of where the NFL is today begins with a five-year period that was the most transformative for the league. From 1957 to 1962, the NFL saw: the advent of unionization, with a landmark Supreme Court decision; the legendary 1958 title game, the first to go into sudden death overtime; a challenge from the American Football League that would have important consequences for decades; the introduction of computerization and statistical analysis; the first steps towards globalization; and the hiring of legends Vince Lombardi and Tom Landry, who both contributed to the league's growing mythology. This book describes in detail the key events that helped shape the modern NFL, and why this period was so momentous to the league and its fans.

Download or read book Pro Football Championships Before the Super Bowl written by Joseph S. Page and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2010-12-10 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While the Super Bowl has become a worldwide cultural event, the annual league championship games had a long history even before the first Super Bowl in January, 1967. From the first American Football League's attempt to settle the league title on the gridiron in 1926 to the separate NFL and AFL championships of the 1965 season, this history offers a narrative of each game, including line-ups, box scores and team statistics.

Download or read book NFL 1965 written by David Kaiser and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2021-11-09 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the mid-1960s, when pro football eclipsed baseball as America's leading spectator sport, the NFL had the most exciting season in its history. The Eastern Conference Cleveland Browns were the champions in 1965 yet most of the action was in the Western Conference, where the reigning Baltimore Colts contended with the formidable Green Bay Packers and Chicago Bears. All three teams played two games apiece against the Detroit Lions, a power earlier in the decade, and the Minnesota Vikings and Los Angeles Rams, who were becoming dominant in the league. In those days the NFL played a wide-open game--long touchdown passes, fumbles and interceptions kept fans on the edges of their seats through seven games each weekend. The league's deep bench included such players as Jim Brown, Johnny Unitas, Tom Matte, Bart Starr, Paul Hornung and Dave Robinson, rookies Gale Sayers and Dick Butkus, and key coaches Don Shula, Vince Lombardi and George Halas. A fantastic final weekend led to a one-game playoff for the right to face the Browns for the championship. Drawing on interviews with surviving players and executives, this book recounts the thrilling drama of the '65 season and places it in the broader context of NFL history.

Download or read book Run to Glory and Profits written by David George Surdam and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2020-04-01 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The National Football League has long reigned as America's favorite professional sports league. In its early days, however, it was anything but a dominant sports industry, barely surviving World War II. Its rise began after the war, and the 1950s was a pivotal decade for the league. Run to Glory and Profits tells the economic story of how in one decade the NFL transformed from having a modest following in the Northeast to surpassing baseball as this country's most popular sport. To break from the margins of the sports landscape, pro football brought innovation, action, skill, and episodic suspense on "any given Sunday." These factors in turn drove attendance and rising revenues. Team owners were quick to embrace television as a new medium to put the league in front of a national audience. Based on primary documents, David George Surdam provides an economic analysis in telling the business story behind the NFL's rise to popularity. Did the league's vaunted competitive balance in the decade result from its more generous revenue sharing and its reverse-order draft? How did the league combat rival leagues, such as the All-America Football Conference and the American Football League? Although strife between owners and players developed quickly, pro-football fans stayed loyal because the product itself remained so good.

Download or read book NFL Football written by Richard C. Crepeau and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2020-09-14 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The new NFL Centennial Edition A multi-billion-dollar entertainment empire, the National Football League is a coast-to-coast obsession that borders on religion and dominates our sports-mad culture. But today's NFL also provides a stage for playing out important issues roiling American society. The updated and expanded edition of NFL Football observes the league's centennial by following the NFL into the twenty-first century, where off-the-field concerns compete with touchdowns and goal line stands for headlines. Richard Crepeau delves into the history of the league and breaks down the new era with an in-depth look at the controversies and dramas swirling around pro football today: Tensions between players and Commissioner Roger Goodell over collusion, drug policies, and revenue; The firestorm surrounding Colin Kaepernick and protests of police violence and inequality; Andrew Luck and others choosing early retirement over the threat to their long-term health; Paul Tagliabue's role in covering up information on concussions; The Super Bowl's evolution into a national holiday. Authoritative and up to the minute, NFL Football continues the epic American success story.

Download or read book Advancing the Ball written by N. Jeremi Duru and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-01-07 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following the NFL's desegregation in 1946, opportunities became increasingly plentiful for African American players--but not African American coaches. Although Major League Baseball and the NBA made progress in this regard over the years, the NFL's head coaches were almost exclusively white up until the mid-1990s. Advancing the Ball chronicles the campaign of former Cleveland Browns offensive lineman John Wooten to right this wrong and undo decades of discriminatory head coach hiring practices--an initiative that finally bore fruit when he joined forces with attorneys Cyrus Mehri and Johnnie Cochran. Together with a few allies, the triumvirate galvanized the NFL's African American assistant coaches to stand together for equal opportunity and convinced the league to enact the "Rooney Rule," which stipulates that every team must interview at least one minority candidate when searching for a new head coach. In doing so, they spurred a movement that would substantially impact the NFL and, potentially, the nation. Featuring an impassioned foreword by Coach Tony Dungy, Advancing the Ball offers an eye-opening, first-hand look at how a few committed individuals initiated a sea change in America's most popular sport and added an extraordinary new chapter to the civil rights story.

Download or read book NFL Century written by Joe Horrigan and published by Crown. This book was released on 2019-08-27 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the former executive director of the Pro Football Hall of Fame comes a sweeping and lively history of the National Football League, timed to coincide with the NFL’s 100th anniversary season. “I can think of no one better qualified—or more enthusiastic—to chronicle the National Football League’s century-long history than Joe Horrigan.”—Marv Levy, Hall of Fame NFL coach The NFL has come a long way from its founding in Canton, Ohio, in 1920. In the hundred years since that fateful day, football has become America’s most popular and lucrative professional sport. The former scrappy upstart league that struggled to stay afloat has survived a host of challenges—the Great Depression and World War II, controversies and scandals, battles over labor rights and competition from rival leagues—to produce American icons like Vince Lombardi, Joe Montana, and Tom Brady. It is an extraordinary and entertaining history that could be told only by Joe Horrigan, former executive director of the Pro Football Hall of Fame and perhaps the greatest living historian of the NFL, by drawing upon decades of NFL archives. Compelling, eye-opening, and authoritative, NFL Century is a must-read for NFL fans and anyone who loves the game of football. Advance praise for NFL Century “Joe Horrigan takes the reader on a delightful tour of the seminal moments of the NFL in the past one hundred years—the players, owners, coaches, executives, and historical events that made the game of football the most popular in America. It’s a wonderful walk down memory lane for any football fan, young or old.”—Michael Lombardi, author of Gridiron Genius “There is no one—and I mean no one—who knows more about the history of the NFL than Joe Horrigan, the heart and soul of the Pro Football Hall of Fame. As the gold standard of sports leagues celebrates its one hundredth season, it’s appropriate that the gold standard of sports historians has written NFL Century, an entertaining and educational journey.”—Gary Myers, New York Times bestselling author of Brady vs Manning