With a completely unlikely but forever memorable cast of characters—including the slight, lisping coach Lou Holtz; the star quarterback, Tony Rice; five foot nothing Asian kicker, Reggie Ho; NFL-bound Ricky Watters; and a crazed and ferocious defensive line, among others—Notre Dame whipped millions of fans into a frenzy. This roller coaster season of football includes the infamous Catholics vs. Convicts game (Notre Dame vs. Jimmy Johnson's #1 ranked Miami Hurricanes). The two teams were undefeated when they met at Notre Dame Stadium, with the Irish winning in the final seconds by a final score of 31-30.With original reporting and interviews with everyone from the players to the coaches, detailed research, and access to the Notre Dame archives, Jerry Barca tells a gripping story of an unbelievable season and the players who would become legends. More than a Notre Dame book, Unbeatable is a compelling narrative of one of the most incredible sports stories of the last century—the unlikely tale of an underdog team coming together and making history.

    Yet in the span of a single generation in postwar America, the game charted an extraordinary rise in popularity, becoming a smartly managed, keenly marketed sports entertainment colossus whose action is ideally suited to television and whose sensibilities perfectly fit the modern age. Pro football’s ascent is an epic American story, and America’s Game does it full justice.Beginning with the World War II years, when the NFL was fighting for its very existence, Michael MacCambridge traces the game’s grand transformation, with particular attention paid to six key franchises–the Rams, Browns, Colts, Cowboys, Chiefs, and Raiders–and how their fortunes reflected the larger growth of the game itself. Along the way we meet the sport’s legendary architects, men such as Pete Rozelle, George “Papa Bear” Halas, Bert Bell, Tex Schramm, and Lamar Hunt, as well as a wide range of its memorable characters–including Johnny Unitas, Paul Brown, Vince Lombardi, Jim Brown, Al Davis, Joe Namath, Bill Walsh, and Deion Sanders. In the process we witness the rivalries, the games themselves, and the passion that have made professional football the nation’s signature sport.MacCambridge continues the story through the turbulent 1980s and 1990s, when labor disputes and off-field scandals shook the game to its core, and up to the sport’s present-day preeminence under Paul Tagliabue. The unique portrait of the modern game’s inner workings and relentless competitiveness sheds light on contemporary stars such as Ray Lewis and Peyton Manning, as well as on the men whose leadership skills are scrutinized and second-guessed by much of the country, celebrated coaches such as Bill Parcells, Dick Vermeil, Tony Dungy, and Brian Billick.Magisterial and sweeping, definitive and unprecedented in scope, America’s Game is cultural history at its finest. A thoroughly entertaining account of the entire universe of professional football, from locker room to boardroom, from playing field to press box, it is a unique lens through which to view the past sixty years of American history.

    As evidence began to build, however, a full on NFL investigation was launched, exploding an unsubstantiated rumor into an intense scandal that would lead news coverage for weeks. As shockwaves rippled throughout the NFL system, the very legitimacy of one of the league's most popular teams and their star quarterback began to erode, even as the Patriots and Brady went on to win that year's Super Bowl. But as the celebrations gave way to the offseason, the investigation only intensified, reopening old wounds between the Patriots' powerful owner, Robert Kraft, and the NFL commissioner, Roger Goodell. Brady was devastated and seemingly more nervous in front of a judge that on a game-winning drive. When the dust settled, Brady would be able to play again - but only after watching the first four games of the 2016 season from his couch. The pressure couldn't have been more intense: Brady's legacy was at stake. If he failed to return to his usual self, all the critics and even the history books would have to put a giant asterisk next to his name, signifying one thing: he was a cheater. 12 is the propulsive story of this gritty comeback. It's a drama that unfolds in the locker room, the court room, and under the brightest lights in all of sports -- the Super Bowl. Now for the first time, readers will have an exclusive look into Tom Brady's experience and the NFL's shocking strangle-hold on their players. With unprecedented access to Brady himself, his teammates, and his lawyers, we will see just how a football legend went up against one of the largest corporations in the world to stage the greatest comeback in NFL history and emerge a god of the gridiron.

    The Americans were outsiders to the sport, the underdogs of the event, a 500-to-1 long shot. But they were also proud and loyal men -- to one another, to their communities, and certainly to their country. Facing almost no time to prepare, opponents with superior training, and skepticism from the rest of the world, this ragtag group of unknowns was inspired to a stunning victory over England and one of the most thrilling upsets in the history of sports.Written by critically acclaimed author Geoffrey Douglas, and now a film directed by David Anspaugh (Hoosiers), The Game of Their Lives takes us back to a time before million-dollar contracts and commercial endorsements, and introduces us to the athletes -- the Americans -- who showed the world just how far a long shot could really go.

    Sunday lunchtime kick-offs. Absurd ticket prices. Non-black boots. Football's menu of ills is long. Where has the joy gone? Why do we bother? Saturday, 3pm offers a glorious antidote. It is here to remind you that football can still sing to your heart.Warm, heartfelt and witty, here are fifty short essays of prose poetry dedicated to what is good in the game. These are not wallowing nostalgia; they are things that remain sweet and right: seeing a ground from the train, brackets on vidiprinters, ball hitting bar, Jimmy Armfield's voice, listening to the results in a traffic jam, football towns and autograph-hunters. This is fan culture at its finest, words to transport you somewhere else and identify with, words to hide away in a pub and luxuriate in.Saturday, 3pm is a book of love letters to football and a clarion call, helping us find the romance in the game all over again.

    And their fans had ulcers. Now, veteran sports columnist Terry Pluto explains why everything kept going wrong. This detailed report on two decades of disappointment takes a behind-the-scenes look at upheaval in the front office, frustration on the field, and headaches and heartache in the stands. His earlier book False Start: How the New Browns Were Set Up to Fail told how the NFL hamstrung the new franchise. Who could have predicted the limping would last 19 years? This book picks up the story. Season after season began with hope in spring for the NFL draft (“the Browns’ version of the Super Bowl,” a fan called it) . . . often a new coach or GM or quarterback (or all three) . . . then the losses . . . and back to rebuilding. Pluto reviews all the major moves—draft choices and deals, hiring and firing and reshuffling—and the results. If you’re a Browns fan who wants to understand what went wrong with your team, this is the place to start. Includes heartfelt and humorous opinions contributed by fans.

    With lively reporting, penetrating insight, and a keen sense of history, Shaughnessy brings the 2004 baseball season alive in all its glory, drama, and garishness as the Boston Red Sox victory turns everyday sports into the stuff of legend.

    They may even have a point. But to build something so successful, so popular, so inescapable, you've got to have mighty strong foundations.Prior to 1992, the old First Division was England's premier prize. Its rich tapestry winds back to 1888 and the formation of the Football League. A grand century-long tradition in danger of being lost in the wake of Premier League year zero.No more! In The Title Scott Murray tells the lively, cherry-picked story of English football through the prism of the First Division. Rich with humour yet underpinned with solid research, this is a glorious meander across our national sport's varied terrain.With as much about Burnley, Wolves, West Brom and Portsmouth as the likes of Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester United, we learn the less well-known stories the sport has to tell, such as the plight of Glossop, the smallest club to ever play top-flight football, and final day drama involving Huddersfield and Cardiff that knocks Michael Thomas into a cocked hat. We bask in the managerial genius of Tom Watson, the bowler-hatted Victorian Mourinho; celebrate the joy of the Busby Babes; discover the shameless showmanship of George Allison; embark on righteous escapades with Hughie Gallacher; and meet some old favourites in Don Revie, Bill Shankly, Alex Ferguson and Brian Clough.At turns exciting, surprising, witty and bittersweet, The Title is a highly informed, fresh and affectionate love-letter to the English game, and a delight for any football fan.

    Advanced tight line nymphing tactics, including Czech, Polish, French, Spanish, and American techniques Rigging and fishing dry and droppers, curly Qs, and conventional indicators Fishing the extremes: shallow water, cold weather, high water, wind Casting and technique sequences that include tuck cast, bow and arrow cast, as well as elevating and leading when tight line nymphing62 nymph patterns

    The former and latter have been covered extensively. Yet there has never been a book detailing the biggest drug trials in baseball history. The Pittsburgh Cocaine Seven tells the whole story in all its shocking details. The MLB participants were among the game's elite, as a virtual all-star team had come to Pittsburgh. Implicated as cocaine users: Keith Hernandez, Dave Parker, Lee Mazzilli, Dusty Baker, Lonnie Smith, Joaquin Andujar, John Milner, Dale Berra. Mentioned as using amphetamines: Willie Mays, Willie Stargell. But the guys who took the fall for these superstars were just average fans, not heavy hitters or major drug dealers, and this book reveals the often comic circumstances of how they set up deals--and how they got busted. In 1985, it seemed the league was poised to implement a drug testing policy for the players. Obviously, that didn't happen, and because of this inaction, the steroid era came along--and with it all of the broken records that transformed the sport. That's what makes this story so relevant today.

    The school’s football team was the pride of the university and the city. Before the late 1970s, however, the relatively small school had trouble recruiting and struggled to keep up with the big-time football universities that were often more than double its size. Under pressure to compete, the SMU football program engaged in ethics, rules, and recruiting violations for years. When the corruption came to light, the NCAA handed out its most serious punishment in the history of college sports—the “death penalty”—which cancelled the team’s entire 1987 schedule.In A Payroll to Meet, author David Whitford details the Mustangs’ descent into corruption and the fallout when it was discovered. Most egregiously, the football program ran a huge slush fund that was used to pay players from the mid-1970s through 1986. Bill Clements, chairman of the SMU board and soon to be reelected governor of Texas, knew all about the slush fund before the NCAA did. He opted, however, to phase out the payments rather than stop them immediately, for fear that angry players might go public and create still more problems for SMU. Clements and the athletic director Bob Hitch decided that the football program had “a payroll to meet.”

    As one of the greatest NHL players of all time, he reflects on his 2005-06 rookie season with the Pittsburgh Penguins. From a Canadian phenom dubbed "the next Gretzky" to an 18-year-old carrying the burden of a struggling franchise, he talks candidly about the intense pressure he was under, the surreal experience of lacing up alongside his childhood idol Mario Lemieux and the truth about his rivalry with Alex Ovechkin. Sidney Crosby, with the help of his family, coaches and former teammates, gives listeners an all-access pass to one of the most scrutinized and tumultuous rookie seasons in the history of professional hockey. Hosted by Pittsburgh native and Penguins fan Joe Manganiello.

    And the moments are part of college basketball lore: the Sweater Game, Villanova Beats Georgetown, and Six Overtimes. But this is the story of the Big East Conference that you haven't heard before--of how the Northeast, once an afterthought, became the epicenter of college basketball.Before the league's founding, East Coast basketball had crowned just three national champions in forty years, and none since 1954. But in the Big East's first ten years, five of its teams played for a national championship. The league didn't merely inherit good teams; it created them. But how did this unlikely group of schools come to dominate college basketball so quickly and completely?Including interviews with more than sixty of the key figures in the conference's history, The Big East charts the league's daring beginnings and its incredible rise. It transports fans inside packed arenas to epic wars fought between transcendent players, and behind locker-room doors where combustible coaches battled even more fiercely for a leg up.Started on a handshake and a prayer, the Big East carved an improbable arc in sports history, an ensemble of Catholic schools banding together to not only improve their own stations but rewrite the geographic boundaries of basketball. As former UConn coach Jim Calhoun eloquently put it, "It was Camelot. Camelot with bad language."

     The ship was called “magnificent”, consuming as much as one hundred forty tons of coal every day even if it just stands still on the dock, and standing seven stories tall from dock to bridge. She was considered by engineers and shipbuilders as one of the finest examples of man’s ingenuity and creativity. In addition, out of all the ships that were converted for use in the war, the Lusitania was the only one that was exempted and continued on as a cruise ship. However, its job of carrying passengers across the Atlantic Ocean was not the thing that made her famous today. Read more.... Download your copy today! for a limited time discount of only $2.99! Available on PC, Mac, smart phone, tablet or Kindle device. © 2015 All Rights Reserved by Unlimited Press Works, LLC

    At five feet ten inches tall, running back Walter Peyton was not the largest player in the NFL, but he developed a larger-than-life reputation for his strength, speed, and grit. Nicknamed "Sweetness" during his college football days, he became the NFL's all-time leader in rushing and all-purpose yards, capturing the hearts of fans in his adopted Chicago.Crafted from interviews with more than 700 sources, acclaimed sportswriter Jeff Pearlman has produced the first definitive biography of Payton. Sweetness at last brings fans a detailed, scrupulously researched, all-encompassing account of the legend's rise to greatness. From Payton's childhood in segregated Mississippi, where he ended a racial war by becoming the star of his integrated high school's football team, to his college years and his twelve-year NFL career, Sweetness brims with stories of all-American heroism, and covers Payton's life off the field as well. Set against the backdrop of the tragic illness that cut his life short at just forty- six years of age, this is a stirring tribute to a singular icon and the lasting legacy he made.