Art Briles

Baylor head coach Art Briles is one of the most highly regarded coaches in college football, and this biography delves far beyond his football success and acumen. It explains how, at the age of 20, Briles lost his parents in a tragic car accident as they were en route to one of his college games. The book relates how Briles, devastated by the loss of his role models, used the catastrophe as motivation to propel him toward the destination of his dreams. As the book elucidates in detail, Coach Briles has made a career of turning failing football programs around in both the high school and collegiate ranks. His latest accomplishments at Baylor University are also chronicled in this account of overcoming tragedy and turning personal loss into overwhelming success.

Beating Goliath is a memoir about overcoming loss and keeping faith by the innovative former head coach of the top ranked Baylor Bears college football team. Growing up in Rule, Texas, Art Briles learned at a young age the importance of hard work and faith from his parents. Soon that faith would be tested. On their way to see him play in a college football game, Briles' parents and aunt died in a car crash. This event shaped Briles into the man he is today. His father, Dennis, left him with a series of lessons. He taught his son that the world doesn't just hand you things, you have to earn them. And he taught him the influence that faith could have in his life. Briles put these lessons to work as a football coach, where he established his reputation for turning struggling teams into winners, from high school to the staff at Texas Tech to head coach at the University of Houston. Hired to coach Baylor in 2007, he was faced with a familiar task. Within three years, Briles led the Bears to their first bowl game in 15 years. Today, he instills those same lessons into his young players, helping them find a reason to excel. There are plenty of excuses for failure but Briles surrounds himself with people who are fearless when it comes to chasing success. That is one of the many lessons he imparts to his readers, with chapters that include: * God and the Teaching of Dennis Briles * Finding Your Passion * You Can Change Attitude, Not Talent * Passing in the Land of Earl Campbell * Everybody is a Captain Filled with dramatic football stories and lessons learned, this book will inspire and entertain.

In Texas, high school football is king. If pigskin passion is no less intense among college and professional fans, enthusiasm for the schoolboy sport is more democratically spread throughout towns and communities, small and large. Almost any young man can play if he's willing to pay the price, work hard, and bring a bit of local, regional, or statewide glory to his hometown. Stephenville High School is one among an elite group of Texas football schools that has achieved at the highest level. The traditional rivalry games against Dublin and Breckenridge in the 1920s through the 1940s have evolved into heavily attended matchups with seven-time state champion Brownwood and, most recently, three-time state champion Aledo. From Joe Brown and Jim Mobley's powerhouse teams of the 1930s to Mike Murphy's 1952 regional qualifying squad, the Yellow Jackets have contended with the best in Texas. With four state championships, Art Briles made the 1990s a "Decade of Dominance" for Stephenville High School. Yellow Jacket football fever remains alive and well, promising to remain so long into the indefinite future.

Written by ESPN investigative reporters VIOLATED narrates the sexual abuse by members of Baylor's football team and the university's attempt to silence the victims. A portion of the proceeds will be donated to RAINN to help fight sexual abuse. Throughout its history, Baylor University has presented itself as something special: As the world's largest Baptist university, it was unabashedly Christian. It condemned any sex outside of marriage, and drinking alcohol was grounds for dismissal. Students weren't even allowed to dance on campus until 1996. During the last several years, however, Baylor officials were hiding a dark secret: Female students were being sexually assaulted at an alarming rate. Baylor administrators did very little to help victims, and their assailants rarely faced discipline for their abhorrent behavior. Finally, after a pair of high-profile criminal cases involving football players, an independent examination of Baylor's handling of allegations of sexual assault led to sweeping changes, including the unprecedented ouster of its president, athletics director, and popular, highly successful football coach. For several years, campuses and sports teams across the country have been plagued with accusations of sexual violence, and they've been criticized for how they responded to the students involved. But Baylor stands out. A culture reigned in which people believed that any type of sex, especially violent non-consensual sex, simply "doesn't happen here." Yet it was happening. Many people within Baylor's leadership knew about it. And they chose not to act. Paula Lavigne and Mark Schlabach weave together the complex - and at times contradictory - narrative of how a university and football program ascending in national prominence came crashing down amidst the stories of woman after woman coming forward describing their assaults, and a university system they found indifferent to their pain.

Since the first annual state football champion was crowned in 1920, Texas has never been the same. Today, millions of Texans gather in stadiums across the Lone Star State, eagerly awaiting that magical mid- to late-December moment when the season comes to its dramatic conclusion. Of the 391 high schools reaching the championship matchup, only a handful--26--have won the title four times or more, laying claim to the coveted moniker "dynasty." From Waco High School's fourth title win in 1927 to Stamford's fourth official win in 2012, writer and lifelong football enthusiast Rick Sherrod traces the "best of the best" in this pigskin empire across ninety-three action-packed seasons.

Anywhere football is played, Texas is the force to reckon with. Its powerhouse programs produce the best football players in America. In The Republic of Football, Chad S. Conine vividly captures Texas’s impact on the game with action-filled stories about legendary high school players, coaches, and teams from around the state and across seven decades. Drawing on dozens of interviews, Conine offers rare glimpses of the early days of some of football’s biggest stars. He reveals that some players took time to achieve greatness—LaDainian Tomlinson wasn’t even the featured running back on his high school team until a breakthrough game in his senior season vaulted him to the highest level of the sport—while others, like Colt McCoy, showed their first flashes of brilliance in middle school. In telling these and many other stories of players and coaches, including Hayden Fry, Spike Dykes, Bob McQueen, Lovie Smith, Art Briles, Lawrence Elkins, Warren McVea, Ray Rhodes, Dat Nguyen, Zach Thomas, Drew Brees, and Adrian Peterson, Conine spotlights the decisive moments when players caught fire and teams such as Celina, Southlake Carroll, and Converse Judson turned into Texas dynasties. Packed with never-before-told anecdotes, as well as fresh takes on the games everyone remembers, The Republic of Football is a must-read for all fans of Friday night lights.

He’s been called many things—Heisman Trophy winner, MVP, the savior of the Washington Redskins—but to his millions of fans, Robert Griffin III is known simply as RG3. Robert Griffin III was a preternaturally gifted athlete from a young age, but in those early days he played nearly every sport except football. He seemed pointed toward stardom, but would it be in basketball or maybe in track, where he qualified for the 2008 U.S. Olympic Trials as a hurdler? As for playing football, Griffin first had to overcome his mother’s objections to the violence and danger by making a “Pinkie Promise” with her that no one would catch him. Eventually, he began to realize that all of his remarkable talents—unrivaled speed, pinpoint accuracy, exceptional intelligence, single-minded drive—combined into a potent force that few quarterbacks could rival. What followed seemed almost destined: a football scholarship to Baylor University, three exceptional seasons capped by winning the Heisman Trophy, and the 2012 draft—where Griffin, as the second overall pick, became the franchise quarterback for one of the oldest and most storied football teams in the country. In RG3: The Promise, award-winning Washington Post reporter Dave Sheinin provides an in-depth, behind-the-scenes account of Griffin’s phenomenal rookie year—and offers a unique and intimate look inside the transformation one of the NFL’s brightest young stars.

A searing exposé of how the multibillion dollar college sports empire fails universities, students, and athletes. With little public debate or introspection, our institutions of higher learning have become hostages to the rapacious, smash-mouth entertainment conglomerate known, quaintly, as intercollegiate athletics. In Champions Way, New York Times investigative reporter Mike McIntire chronicles the rise of this growing scandal through the experience of the Florida State Seminoles, one of the most successful teams in NCAA history. A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for his Times investigation of college sports, McIntire breaks new ground here, uncovering the workings of a system that enables athletes to violate academic standards and avoid criminal prosecution for actions ranging from shoplifting to drunk driving. At the heart of Champions Way is the untold story of a whistle-blower, Christie Suggs, and her wrenching struggle to hold a corrupt system to account. Together with shocking new details about prominent sports figures, including NFL quarterback Jameis Winston and former FSU coach Bobby Bowden, Champions Way shines a light on the ethical, moral, and legal compromises inherent in the making of a championship sports program. Beyond the story of Florida State, McIntire takes readers on a journey through the history of college football, from its origins as a roughneck pastime coached by nineteenth-century professors to its current incarnation as a gold-plated behemoth that long ago outgrew its scholastic environs. Illuminated in rich and disturbing detail is the hidden financial ecosystem that nourishes hundred-million-dollar teams, from the hustlers who recruit players for schools and the athletic departments controlled by rich boosters to the universities whose academic mission and moral authority have been undermined. More than pointing out flaws, McIntire examines their causes and offers hope to those who would reform college sports.