Doug Pederson is the very definition of an underdog. He was an undrafted rookie free agent who would go on to play fourteen years in the NFL as a backup quarterback. He was cut five times, yet kept getting back up and into the fray. He would win one Super Bowl, with the Green Bay Packers. When he retired, he decided to coach, but not at the pro level. Instead, he was head coach of Calvary Baptist Academy in Shreveport, Louisiana. After a successful four-year stint there, he returned to the NFL as an assistant coach under Andy Reid with the Eagles and the Kansas City Chiefs, where he was instrumental in the development of quarterback Alex Smith and his string of 3,000-plus-yard seasons of passing. When he was offered the job as head coach of the Eagles, he jumped at it, though few thought he would succeed. In the first season, a year of rebuilding, they finished 7-9. Some doubted his abilities, and before the 2017 season, one "expert" called Pederson the least qualified coach in thirty years. Plagued by the sidelining of seasoned players and devastated by quarterback Carson Wentz's season-ending knee injury, the Eagles managed a 13-3 record and home-field advantage in the playoffs. Yet they were still the underdogs in every single game, including the Super Bowl, against the New England Patriots, one of the greatest dynasties in the history of the NFL. It wasn't until they stunned the Patriots that people finally believed in Pederson and his team. In Fearless, Pederson reveals the principles that guided him through the ups and downs and tough times of his career, and what it took to become a champion. Through it all, Pederson sustained himself with his faith and the support of his family. He shares the defining stories of his life and career, growing up with his disciplinarian Air Force dad and his tender-hearted mom, developing friendships with Dan Marino and Brett Favre, and learning from mentors, such as Don Shula, Mike Holmgren, and Andy Reid, who helped mold him into the man and coach he is today. Fearless captures Pederson's coaching and leadership philosophies and reveals the brilliant mind and indomitable spirit of a man who has entered the pantheon of great coaches.

    The University of Michigan's football legend Bo Schembechler recalls his career, from his early years at Michigan to his retirement and position with the Detroit Tigers, along with his views on football scandals.

    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.

    He is regarded by many as the greatest manager ever, building three brilliant sides with players such as Charlton, Edwards, Law & Best. Originally written just two years before Busby's death, this book is now available with a new introduction.

    The Art of Smart Football is an eye-opening, fascinating and accessible contribution to our understanding of America’s favorite sport. The Art of Smart Football features analysis of football's top strategists and schemes, including: Pete Carroll's aggressive defense Chip Kelly's spread offense and new-school methods The roots of Bill Belichick's defensive genius Gus Malzahn's up-tempo offense The strategies Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, and Aaron Rodgers use to shred defenses Art Briles and Baylor's wide open attack Nick Saban's defensive evolution The book also includes explorations of the newest trends in football, including "packaged plays" that combine runs and passes into one play, "pattern match" defenses that blend man-to-man and zone pass coverages, how defenses are responding to the spread offense, and much more. Praise for The Art of Smart Football: "The Art of Smart Football made me a smarter football writer . . . Football, as presented by these coaches and by Brown, is such an imaginative game. It’s a great read: Go buy it." -- Peter King, The MMQB/Sports Illustrated"A must read if you are a football junkie." -- Trent Dilfer, ESPN/13-year NFL Veteran Quarterback"The best analysis in the game today."-- Rolling Stone"Awesome stuff. I recommend The Art of Smart Football to any coach or fan." -- Matt Bowen, ESPN Columnist/NFL Veteran"When Chris B. Brown releases a book, you should buy it."-- Bill Barnwell, Grantland/ESPN"A deep dive into football. Highly recommended."-- Field Yates, ESPN"The Art of Smart Football is a perfect read for anyone looking to take their knowledge of the game up a notch."-- ElevenWarriors.com

    They fought scores of pitched battles with rival 'firms' until they were arrested by the police in the most successful undercover operation of its kind.

     Two good feet. Stamina. Decent in the air. He could run, shoot, pass, dribble, read the game, track back, tackle and score goals, brilliant goals, and one – a bicycle kick at Grimsby Town in 2002 – still rated as Leicester City’s greatest-ever goal. A half-English/half-Turkish kid from London’s East End, Izzet learned his trade the hard way; in kids’ leagues, playing against youngsters two or three years older, then as a young pro at Chelsea, kicked all over the Southern Counties League. When it looked like he couldn’t get a break, he contemplated jacking in the only thing he could do – the only thing he wanted to do – to go roofing with his old man. Enter Martin O’Neill and Leicester City… Inspired by the Northern Irishman’s unique motivational methods, Muzzy flourished in a side littered with big characters who worked hard and played hard, established names like Steve Walsh and Garry Parker who helped new faces like Neil Lennon, Robbie Savage and Emile Heskey. This is more than just a football book. It’s about what happened in the changing room, in the bar, being banned from La Manga – not once, but twice – and what happened when O’Neill’s side was dismantled, the club was relegated and, later, fell into administration. Muzzy was there for it all – the good times, the bad, the bits in between. Then there was Turkey. The dressing room rite of passage that spared no blushes and the secret drama behind the World Cup semi-final… Funny, unflinching and occasionally heartbreaking, Muzzy: My Story lifts the lid on 1990s football and a Leicester City legend, remembered fondly by all those who saw him.

    Flavored with wild (and often ribald) anecdotes, inside stories, interviews, and never-before-told material, Going Long brings the incredible story of the maverick American Football League to life through the words of those who lived it.

     As seen on ESPN's Cold Pizza Fantasy football -- one of America's most popular, and profitable, virtual pastimes -- became a way of life for sports humorist and author Mark St. Amant. Utterly fed up with never having won his league championship, St. Amant abandoned a successful advertising career to make fantasy football his full-time job, embarking on a sprawling reconnaissance mission to discover what really makes this game, and its 20 million players, tick. Committed is the result of St. Amant's ranting, relentless, and strategic pursuit of his own obsession. In this wickedly funny and deeply informative work, St. Amant offers readers an all-access sideline pass to his wild, unprecedented fantasy football season, and to the hobby itself. From its humble beginnings in a New York hotel in 1962 to a multibillion-dollar business today, from local and online leagues to high-stakes, cutthroat Las Vegas competitions, St. Amant lays bare the facts, figures, and fanaticism of fantasy football in all its multidimensional glory.

    What does the offense’s formation tell you about the play that’s about to be run? When a quarterback throws a pass toward the sideline and the wide receiver cuts inside, which player is to blame? Why does a defensive end look like a Hall of Famer one week and a candidate for the practice squad the next? These questions and more are addressed in Take Your Eye Off the Ball 2.0, a book that takes readers deep inside the perpetual chess match between offense and defense. This book provides clear and simple explanations to the intricacies and nuances that affect the outcomes of every NFL game. This updated edition contains recent innovations from the 2015 NFL season.

    New York City newspapers reported his death on their front pages. ("Crimson Tears," read the headline in the New York Post, "Nation weeps over death of legendary Bear Bryant, 69.") Three days later, America watched in awe as an estimated quarter of a million mourners lined the fifty-five mile stretch from Tuscaloosa to a Birmingham cemetery to pay their respects as his three-mile long funeral cortege drove by.President Reagan and the three former American presidents sent flowers, as did people as diverse as Bob Hope, ABC's Roone Arledge, advice columnist Ann Landers and the Reverend Billy Graham. Scores of Bryant's former players, including Joe Namath, Lee Roy Jordan, Ken Stabler and Ozzie Newsome, were in attendance. So were Bryant's most distinguished colleagues, the greatest living football coaches, including Southern Cal's John McKay, who said, "It was like a presidential funeral procession. No coach in America could have gotten that. No coach but him. But then, he wasn't just a coach. He was the coach."Bryant's passing was noted with the kind of reverence our country reserved for statesmen or military leaders, though Paul "Bear" Bryant had insisted for much of his life that he was "just a football coach." For millions he was much more, he was the greatest coach the game ever saw, the heir to the tradition established by Knute Rockne. He took his Alabama Crimson Tide teams to an unmatched six national championships. But to the players, journalists and fans whose lives he touched in his more than half a century as a player and coach, he was the last symbol of values that transcended football—courage, discipline, loyalty, and hard work.To his critics, Bryant represented the dark side of big-time college football—brutality, fanaticism and blind adherence to authority. The real Bear Bryant was far more complex than either his admirers or detractors knew. While maintaining a public friendship with Alabama governor George Wallace, he continually sought ways to undermine the governor's segregationist policies, finally forcing a legendary football game in Birmingham with the University of Southern California that opened the floodgates to the integration of football at the University of Alabama, including its coaching staff. Old fashioned in his politics, he was nonetheless an admirer of Robert Kennedy, whom he planning to vote for in 1968.Allen Barra's The Last Coach traces Paul Bryant's rise from a family of truck farmers to recognition as the most successful and influential coach in the game's history. The eleventh of thirteen children, Bryant was born in tiny Moro Bottom, Arkansas in 1913 and grew up in nearby Fordyce—where his legend was born when he wrestled a live bear on the stage of a local theater. Paul was raised by his mother, who barely managed to keep him out of trouble and on the Fordyce High School Redbugs long enough to get a football scholarship at Alabama, where he would meet and marry the love of his life, campus beauty queen Mary Harmon Black.At the height of the Depression, football took Bryant to the Rose Bowl with Alabama's 1934 national champions and on to a career as an assistant and, finally, a head football coach, where he matched wit and grit with the greatest coaches of two generations, men like Tennessee's General Robert Neyland, Oklahoma's Bud Wilkinson, Notre Dame's Ara Parseghian, Ohio State's Woody Hayes, and Penn State's Joe Paterno. Along the way, he stirred controversy with his infamous "Junction Boys" training camp in 1954, during which almost two-thirds of the Texas A football team quit; his legal battle with The Saturday Evening Post over the accusation that he had conspired to fix a college football game, a trial which rocked the sports world; and his pursuit of Amos Alonzo Stagg's all-time record for college coaching victories.Through it all, Bryant's influence has not only endured but prevailed as his former players and assistants continue to define the best in not only college but professional football. A USA Today and Washington Post Best Sports Book.

    But what he has in spades is a genuine love for The Beautiful Game that few of his peers can match. One of the last graduates from football's old school, Jimmy actually worked in the real world - including as a painter and decorator - before turning pro. Maybe that's why he played football with a smile on his face, always says what's on his mind, and is no stranger to a spot of mischief.Having played under the likes of Barry Fry, Harry Redknapp and Phil Brown, appeared alongside names as diverse as Neil Ruddock and Paolo di Canio, and as long as Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink, Jimmy has racked up an amazing collection of tales and pranks both on and off the football front-line. Told with candour, Bend It Like Bullard is the extraordinary story of his journey from cable TV fitter to cult hero. It will make you smile, chuckle and, occasionally, ROFL.

    In fact, he was a great coach because he was a master teacher. What Wooden has learned from others in the classroom and perfected on the practice court are fundamental principles of effective teaching, which are conveyed in the book. Co-author Swen Nater, one of Wooden's former players at UCLA, provides insightful first-hand accounts on the many life lessons he learned from Wooden that he has applied to his life since becoming a teacher himself. These principles have a timeless and universal quality, applicable to all teaching situations: the classroom, the home, the workplace, and everywhere that a person has the responsibility for helping others learn and excel.

    Published to coincide with the 50-year anniversary of Bill Shankly's arrival at Liverpool in 1959 This is the book Liverpool tried to ban, as it was originally published just after Shankly left the club and contains information that they wished to suppress.

    The Coach is Patrick Mouratoglou's hugely motivational and inspirational story. As a child, he was full of suffering, enduring anxiety attacks at night. In his own words "puny and very timid, paralysed by the shame of not being able to do better". Now, as one of the world's leading tennis coaches he is responsible for transforming the career of Serena Williams and helping her become the greatest of all times. His story is a great example of trial over adversity.