The King of Sports: Football's Impact on America Author: Gregg Easterbrook | Language: English | ISBN:
B00CVNNOGQ | Format: PDF
The King of Sports: Football's Impact on America Description
Gregg Easterbrook, author of the wildly popular ESPN.com column Tuesday Morning Quarterback takes on football's place in American society.
Gridiron football is the king of sports – it’s the biggest game in the strongest and richest country in the world. Of the twenty most-watched television broadcasts ever, both in the United States and internationally, all twenty were Super Bowls. In The King of Sports, Easterbrook tells the full story of how football became so deeply ingrained in American culture. Both good and bad, he examines its impact on American society at all levels of the game.
The King of Sports explores these and many other topics:
* The real harm done by concussions (it's not to NFL players).
* The real way in which college football players are exploited (it's not by not being paid).
* The way football helps American colleges (it's not bowl revenue) and American cities (it’s not Super Bowl wins).
* What happens to players who are used up and thrown away (it’s not pretty).
* The hidden scandal of the NFL (it’s worse than you think).
Using his year-long exclusive insider access to the Virginia Tech football program, where Frank Beamer has compiled the most victories of any active NFL or major-college head coach while also graduating players, Easterbrook shows how one big university “does football right.” Then he reports on what’s wrong with football at the youth, high school, college and professional levels. Easterbrook holds up examples of coaches and programs who put the athletes first and still win; he presents solutions to these issues and many more, showing a clear path forward for the sport as a whole. Rich with reporting details from interviews with current and former college and pro football players and coaches, The King of Sports promises to be the most provocative and best-read sports book of the year.
- File Size: 560 KB
- Print Length: 367 pages
- Page Numbers Source ISBN: 125001171X
- Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books (September 24, 2013)
- Sold by: Macmillan
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00CVNNOGQ
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #68,224 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #7
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Sports > Miscellaneous > Sociology of Sports - #30
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Sports > Football (American)
- #7
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Sports > Miscellaneous > Sociology of Sports - #30
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Sports > Football (American)
The King of Sports, Football's Impact on America is an attempt to point out the massive amounts of corruption and hypocrisy that daily receive a pass, because of America's obsession with football, at all levels of the game. This work investigates and describes, in heavy detail, the health and safety, financial malfeasance and corruption of mission that are undergone at the high school, college and professional level by America's favorite sport. The reader is frankly, overwhelmed with the data and description, in at times rambling and example heavy book.
The author, Gregg Easterbrook, who has written for years for publications like The Atlantic and ESPN.com is certainly a fan of the game, and loves how athletics, properly used, are tools for character development, self discipline, exposing especially the young to a wider world, and for being one of the few outlets commonly accepted today that brings a real sense of civic cohesion. He has been a youth coach and active participate in the college recruiting process as well. So he does have not only the observational skills of a journalist, but the ability to understand how the game works on the inside.
I am largely sympathetic with Easterbrook's main points: football has become an unhealthy obsession in the nation, and we are taking massive risks with health and safety of youth, twisting educational opportunities into corrupt incentives for school pride and aggrandizement and abusing civic pride in professional sports into an excuse to pump an increasingly corrupt organization like the NFL. His most convicting comments, again largely in agreement with his main points, are from Super Bowl winning coach, Tong Dungy and a Virginia Tech player.
Greg Easterbrook has written an expose of football in America that will not likely earn him many invitations to Pro Team sky boxes. In "The King Of Sports", subtitled Football's Impact On America, Easterbrook examines the role of football, professional, collegiate, and high school in America today and details historically how things got this way. It is a book heavy on the negative because there are a lot of negatives. To his credit, he does delineate his suggestions to overhaul the system and bring some semblance of safety and fairness to the modern sport.
Dedicated football fans and sports historians will find little new in this book beyond some of the amazing statistics Easterbrook has amassed to support his positions. Indeed, it reads as an amalgamation of ills and evils reflected in modern day football at all levels. But casual fans and outside observers may be shocked by these revelations that fall one after the other in "The King Of Sports". The avaricious team owners who use a clueless and willing Congress to further not only the direction of the game but also to secure tax-payer subsidies and outright "gifts" to build enormously expensive stadia wherein these same taxpayers can be charged onerous prices to attend while also subsidizing maintenance. The exploitation of college football players, particularly African Americans, while ignoring the true meaning of a college education. The devastating injuries and career ending concussions coupled with the fact that colleges provide no long term insurance support for injured players.
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