"One of the most insightful books ever written about college football." — The New York TimesNow revised and updated by the author, MEAT MARKET proves that in college football, the game off the field is more brutal than the one on the field. In this shattering expose, Bruce Feldman goes into the war rooms to show who stands to profit when champions get built, and at what cost.A college football program can become a multi-million dollar industry for its school, but onl...

With unparalleled access to Heisman Trophy-winning phenom Johnny Manziel, Bruce Feldman has written a modern-day tale about the making of the next superstars in football's most important position: the quarterback.In the world of modern football, with NFL teams worth more than a billion dollars, no position defines a franchise like the quarterback. The QB is the story of a year in the making of those star players, and of the most significant year in QB deve...

In the world of modern football, no position defines a franchise like the quarterback. The QB is the story of a year in the making of those star players and of the most significant year in QB development in sports history. It is also the year five-foot ten-inch Russell Wilson wins the Super Bowl and, for the first time in over sixty years, a sub-six-foot QB, Johnny Manziel, gets drafted in the first round, forcing NFL power brokers to reexamine how they look at the position—and th...

When Kyle Shanahan became the NFL's youngest offensive coordinator in 2008, he had one prevailing rule: Tell me the why. If a colleague couldn't justify his position by providing the unassailable reasoning behind it, he was told to get the hell out of Shanahan's office. Shanahan and the members of his coaching tree—including Sean McVay, Mike McDaniel, Raheem Morris, and Matt LaFleur—came up in a sport where innovation was the exception, not the rule. There had been brilliant footb...

Professional football in the last half century has been a sport marked by relentless innovation. For fans determined to keep up with the changes that have transformed the game, close examination of the coachingfootage is a must. In The Games That Changed the Game, Ron Jaworski—pro football’s #1 game-tape guru—breaks down the film from seven of the most momentous contests of the last fifty years, giving readers a drive-by-drive, play-by-play guide to the evolutionary leaps that def...

Bill Belichick is one of the titans of today’s game of football. Now, sports commentator and bestselling author Michael Holley follows three NFL teams—the New England Patriots, Kansas City Chiefs, and Atlanta Falcons—from training camp 2010 through the Super Bowl and into the April draft, opening a new window into Belichick’s influence on the game. This one-of-a-kind exploration takes football fans behind the scenes of the most popular sport in America, with unprecedented insider access to...

A behind-the-scenes tour of the ups and downs of an NFL season focuses on the Baltimore Ravens and reveals the lesser-known aspects of the professional league, from the dangerous conditions under which athletes are expected to train to the unrelenting pressures faced by coaches and players.In the NFL there is only one certainty: that every day, someone will have to be the Next Man Up. Football is an unrelentingly punishing sport, played and practiced at undiminishe...

Drawing on his work with some of the top teams in professional sports, noted sport psychology consultant Gary Mack shares with you the same techniques and exercises he uses to help elite athletes build mental "muscle." These 40 accessible lessons and inspirational anecdotes will help you gain the "head edge" over the competition.

The absorbing, definitive account of CrossFit's origins, its explosive grassroots growth, and its emergence as a global phenomenon.One of the most illuminating books ever on a sports subculture, Learning to Breathe Fire combines vivid sports writing with a thoughtful meditation on what it means to be human. In the book, veteran journalist J.C. Herz explains the science of maximum effort, why the modern gym fails an obese society, and the psychic rewards of...

At the start of February, 1992, Newcastle United were facing relegation to the third tier of English football for the first time in their history. They were also facing bankruptcy. St James' Park had been neglected, the club's best players had been sold. In a daring move, Newcastle appointed Kevin Keegan as manager. Keegan, the two-time European Footballer of the Year, had played for the club between 1982 and 1984. He had been out of football since. His appointment as manager was as big a ...

"Never die easy. Why run out of bounds and die easy? Make that linebacker pay. It carries into all facets of your life. It's okay to lose, to die, but don't die without trying, without giving it your best."His legacy is towering. Walter Payton—the man they called Sweetness, for the way he ran—remains the most prolific running back in the history of the National Football League, the star of the Chicago Bears' only Super Bowl Championship, eleven times voted the most popular sports f...

"Fresh and funny… St. John has crafter a winner.” —Tony Horwitz, author of Confederates in the AtticIn the life of every sports fan, there comes a moment of reckoning. It may happen when your team wins on a last-second field goal and you suddenly find yourself clenched in a loving embrace with a large hairy man you’ve never met. . . . Or in the long, hormonally depleted days after a loss, when you’re felled by a sensation similar to the one you first exper...