T Was The Night Before Kickoff

On November 29, 1941, Army played Navy in front of 100,000 fans. Eight days later, the Japanese attacked and the young men who battled each other in that historic game were forced to fight a very different enemy. Author Lars Anderson follows four players-two from Annapolis and two from West Point-in this epic true story, The All Americans. Bill Busik. Growing up in Pasadena, California, Busik was best friends with a young black man named Jackie, who in 1947 would make Major League Baseball history. Busik would have a spectacular sports career himself at the Naval Academy, earning All-American honors as a tailback in 1941. He was serving aboard the U.S.S. Shaw when it was attacked by Japanese dive-bombers in 1943. Hal Kauffman. Together, Busik and Kauffman rode a train across the nation to Annapolis to enroll in the Naval Academy. A backup tailback at Navy, Kauffman would go on to serve aboard the U.S.S. Meredith, which was sunk in 1942. For five days Kauffman struggled to stay alive on a raft, fighting off hallucinations, dehydration, and-most terrifying of all-sharks. Dozens of his crewmates lost their minds; others were eaten by sharks. All the while Kauffman wondered if he'd ever see his friend and teammate again. Henry Romanek. Because he had relatives in Poland, Romanek heard firsthand accounts in 1939 of German aggression. Wanting to become an officer, Romanek attended West Point and played tackle for the Cadets. He spent months preparing for the D-day invasion and on June 6, 1944 - the day he would have graduated from West Point had his course load not been cut from four years to three-Romanek rode in a landing craft to storm Omaha Beach. In the first wave to hit the beach he would also become one of the first to take a bullet. Robin Olds. The son of a famous World War I fighter pilot, Olds decided to follow in his father's footsteps. At West Point he became best friends with Romanek and the two played side-by-side on Army's line. In 1942, a sportswriter Grantland Rice named Olds to his All-American team. Two years later Olds spent D-day flying a P-38 over Omaha Beach, anxiously scanning the battlefield for Romanek, hoping his friend would survive the slaughter. 20The tale of these four men is woven into a dramatic narrative of football and war that's unlike any other. Through extensive research and interviews with dozens of World War II veterans, Anderson has written one of the most compelling and original true stories in all of World War II literature. From fierce fighting, heroic rescues, tragic death, and awe-inspiring victory, all four men's suspenseful journeys are told in graphic detail. Along the way, Anderson brings World War II to life in a way that has never been done before.

Ever wonder what it’s like to interview famous athletes and coaches? For twenty years, sportscaster Jessie Garcia has done just that. In My Life with the Green & Gold she brings fans to the sidelines at Lambeau Field, inside the locker room, aboard the Packers bus, and into the host’s chair at The Mike McCarthy Show. A self-proclaimed “terrible athlete” born without sports in her blood, Garcia reported on Wisconsin’s beloved Green Bay Packers during the Holmgren, Rhodes, Sherman, and McCarthy years. She’s been a Packers sideline reporter for preseason games and covered the team during their Super Bowl showdowns against the Patriots, Broncos, and Steelers. She’s traveled with the team to Tokyo and the White House and to schools and retirement homes, where the gridiron heroes interacted with their fans. She’s visited the hometowns of players and coaches, she’s met their proud parents and their pets, she’s interviewed the team trainer about their strength exercises. My Life with the Green & Gold also features up-close and personal stories about other teams and athletes she’s covered, from the Badgers and Brewers to Wisconsin Olympians such as Bonnie Blair and Casey FitzRandolph. Garcia’s expertise is capturing behind-the-scenes, human-interest stories. In My Life with the Green & Gold, she shares a personal and humorous insider’s look at many Wisconsin sports heroes from the perspective of a female sports journalist who has ridden the adrenaline rush to be on the air at 5:00 a.m., 10:00 p.m., and any hour in between, while also juggling the many demands of family life. Not many parents can say they’ve changed their child’s diaper in the tunnel at Lambeau, but Jessie Garcia can.

The author recounts the memories of his rise to fame with the Dallas Cowboys, his five Super Bowl appearances, and his relationship with his teammates and Coach Tom Landry.

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 undiminished intensity, and it devours its players. Confronting injuries, trades, and the grim reality of competition, every NFL team prepares constantly for the likelihood -- the certainty -- that even franchise players can go down at any time. And someone new must be ready, trained, and primed to step in at the highest level. Bestselling sportswriter John Feinstein persuaded one NFL team to lift the extraordinary secrecy that shrouds the sport and let him see how a team operates at the closest level. One team let him join every practice, every coaches' meeting, every players' gathering, every strategy debate. From the give-and-take of draft day, into the grinder of summer training camps, and from 100-degree practice games to the last game in frigid conditions, Feinstein reveals how a football team works -- or fails to work -- as no writer has done before. Next Man Up unveils rituals (what a coach tells a player at the moment he cuts him); rules (the inanities of league-appointed "uniform Nazis"); conflicts (the scouts vs. the coaches, the general managers vs. the agents, the offense vs. the defense, the special teams coaches vs. everybody); money (how much a journeyman makes, and how his life differs from the multi-million-dollar-a-year star players)-every nuance of a team's life, from the owner's goals to the coach's day-to-day travails to the feeling of the sleet-soaked ball in the hands of a receiver on artificial turf. The access John Feinstein enjoyed allows him to discuss with equal understanding the owner's management strategy, the coaches' and coordinators' plans for each new game, and how it all affects the players themselves. Anyone who loves football -- any team, in any era -- will savor the thousands of details revealed here for the first time, and the extraordinary drama that goes into following week after week, the most sensational sport in America.

In Game of My Life Tennessee Volunteers, several prominent Tennessee players of the past share their fondest single-game experience and memories, largely in their own words. In each case, it is the player who singles out the game, that moment in time which to him is the most defining of his Volunteer career. They each talk about the cherished memories when they walked the campus as heroes of Tennessee football. More than a retelling of play-by-play action is involved in Game of My Life Tennessee Volunteers. Players reveal their emotions, their opinions, and their experiences in a unique way. Game of My Life Tennessee Volunteers spans the decades that together weave the story of Volunteer history and tradition. They are the finest moments of the men who have carried the orange and white torch in heroic fashion.

The unofficial life stories of University of Florida's mascots Albert and Alberta in rhyme.

Telling the story of LSU football through coverage of each of the Tigers' 50 bowl games--from 1907 through 2019--this book provides summaries of the team's regular season, and their opponents' season, along with quarter-by-quarter game highlights, important stats, and quotes from players and coaches. Bowl games are presented in a number of notable contexts, including games against Hall of Fame coaches (1936-1938 Sugar Bowls, 2010 Capital One Bowl), games that featured Heisman Trophy winners (1959-1960 Sugar Bowls, 2019 Peach Bowl), LSU's first games against black players (1965 Sugar Bowl, 1972 Bluebonnet Bowl), and the first game played by a U.S. football team in a foreign country (1907 Bacardi Bowl).

At the beginning of the Roaring Twenties the NFL was just a footnote within the landscape of American sports. The early pro game was played on dirt fields by vagabond athletes who would beat up or punch out their opponent for fifty dollars a game. But one team was different than the rest: the Oorang Indians. Comprised entirely of Native Americans and led by star athlete Jim Thorpe, the Oorang Indians were an instant hit in almost every city they visited. In Walter Lingo, Jim Thorpe, and the Oorang Indians: How a Dog Kennel Owner Created the NFL's Most Famous Traveling Team, NFL historian Chris Willis tells the story of this unique and fascinating part of professional football history. In 1922 Walter Lingo, a dog kennel owner from tiny La Rue, Ohio, joined forces with Jim Thorpe, the country’s greatest athlete, to create the Oorang Indians. Willis recounts how Lingo used the football team, the star attraction of player-coach Thorpe, and the all Native-American squad to help advertise his kennel and sell dogs, putting the small town of La Rue on the map. With the complete cooperation of the Lingo family and unlimited access to family photos and archives, Walter Lingo, Jim Thorpe, and the Oorang Indians provides an up-close and behind-the-scenes view into the making of this little-known team. It is a remarkable story that will be enjoyed by football fans and historians alike.