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Baseball, America's diamond mind, 1919-1941

NFL football : a history of America's new national pastime

"The National Football League was founded in 1920 as the American Football Association. At first is struggled in the shadow of baseball as a vaguely disreputable professional sport, and had trouble competing for athletes and fans. Through a series of mergers, moves between cities, and the advent of television, the NFL gradually grew into one of the nation's most successful professional sports, with cities competing for franchises, and networks competing for broadcast rights. Its stars became national celebrities and its championship game became an annual extravaganza. The highly respected sports historian Richard Crepeau will write a history of the NFL from its hardluck origins to its current glory. He will deal not only with the great teams, great games, and great rivalries, but also with the place of NFL within American culture"--This wide-ranging history synthesizes scholarship and media sources to give the reader an inside view of the television contracts, labor issues, and other off-the-field forces that shaped the National Football League. Historian Richard Crepeau shows how Commissioner Pete Rozelle's steady leadership guided the league's explosive growth during the era of Monday Night Football and the Super Bowl's transformation into a mid-winter spectacle. Crepeau also delves into the league's masterful exploitation of media from radio to the internet, its ability to get taxpayers to subsidize team stadiums, and its success in delivering an outlet for experiencing vicarious violence to a public uneasy over the changing rules of masculinity. Probing and learned, NFL Football tells an epic American success story peopled by larger-than-life figures and driven by ambition, money, sweat, and dizzying social and technological changes.

NFL football : a history of America's new national pastime

"The National Football League was founded in 1920 as the American Football Association. At first is struggled in the shadow of baseball as a vaguely disreputable professional sport, and had trouble competing for athletes and fans. Through a series of mergers, moves between cities, and the advent of television, the NFL gradually grew into one of the nation's most successful professional sports, with cities competing for franchises, and networks competing for broadcast rights. Its stars became national celebrities and its championship game became an annual extravaganza. The highly respected sports historian Richard Crepeau will write a history of the NFL from its hardluck origins to its current glory. He will deal not only with the great teams, great games, and great rivalries, but also with the place of NFL within American culture"--This wide-ranging history synthesizes scholarship and media sources to give the reader an inside view of the television contracts, labor issues, and other off-the-field forces that shaped the National Football League. Historian Richard Crepeau shows how Commissioner Pete Rozelle's steady leadership guided the league's explosive growth during the era of Monday Night Football and the Super Bowl's transformation into a mid-winter spectacle. Crepeau also delves into the league's masterful exploitation of media from radio to the internet, its ability to get taxpayers to subsidize team stadiums, and its success in delivering an outlet for experiencing vicarious violence to a public uneasy over the changing rules of masculinity. Probing and learned, NFL Football tells an epic American success story peopled by larger-than-life figures and driven by ambition, money, sweat, and dizzying social and technological changes.