America's Game: The Epic Story of How Pro Football Captured a Nation [Hardcover]

Michael MacCambridge (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 26, 2004

It’s difficult to imagine today–when the Super Bowl has virtually become a national holiday and the National Football League is the country’s dominant sports entity–but pro football was once a ramshackle afterthought on the margins of the American sports landscape. Yet in the span of a single generation in postwar America, the game charted an extraordinary rise in popularity, becoming a smartly managed, keenly marketed sports entertainment colossus whose action is ideally suited to television and whose sensibilities perfectly fit the modern age. Pro football’s ascent is an epic American story, and America’s Game does it full justice.

Beginning with the World War II years, when the NFL was fighting for its very existence, Michael MacCambridge traces the game’s grand transformation, with particular attention paid to six key franchises–the Rams, Browns, Colts, Cowboys, Chiefs, and Raiders–and how their fortunes reflected the larger growth of the game itself. Along the way we meet the sport’s legendary architects, men such as Pete Rozelle, George “Papa Bear” Halas, Bert Bell, Tex Schramm, and Lamar Hunt, as well as a wide range of its memorable characters–including Johnny Unitas, Paul Brown, Vince Lombardi, Jim Brown, Al Davis, Joe Namath, Bill Walsh, and Deion Sanders. In the process we witness the rivalries, the games themselves, and the passion that have made professional football the nation’s signature sport.

MacCambridge continues the story through the turbulent 1980s and 1990s, when labor disputes and off-field scandals shook the game to its core, and up to the sport’s present-day preeminence under Paul Tagliabue. The unique portrait of the modern game’s inner workings and relentless competitiveness sheds light on contemporary stars such as Ray Lewis and Peyton Manning, as well as on the men whose leadership skills are scrutinized and second-guessed by much of the country, celebrated coaches such as Bill Parcells, Dick Vermeil, Tony Dungy, and Brian Billick.

Magisterial and sweeping, definitive and unprecedented in scope, America’s Game is cultural history at its finest. A thoroughly entertaining account of the entire universe of professional football, from locker room to boardroom, from playing field to press box, it is a unique lens through which to view the past sixty years of American history.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

MacCambridge's sweeping history of pro football starts just before WWII, when the National Football League was still largely a regional organization, and ends with Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction at Super Bowl XXXVIII. Though there are plenty of vivid descriptions of remarkable games, what sets this chronicle apart from a slew of other recent football books is the depth and breadth of its stories about players, coaches and owners. The centerpiece of this personal approach is the extensive portrait of the career of Pete Rozelle, who became the NFL's commissioner at 33 and initiated many of the measures that ensured the sport's cultural ascendancy, including a television deal that distributed revenue equally among all teams. MacCambridge (The Franchise: A History of Sports Illustrated Magazine) zeroes in on two sideline projects that might have made the greatest difference in football's rise over baseball: NFL Properties, which brought a consistent standard of excellence to fan paraphernalia; and NFL Films, which solidified the myth of the game as an epic struggle through the instantly recognizable narration of John Facenda. MacCambridge also considers the sport's track record regarding race relations, noting that the NFL's first black players were on the field months before Jackie Robinson, while highlighting the roles played by great African-American athletes like Paul Younger and Jim Brown. Though some fans may be disappointed that their favorite teams and players aren't extensively covered, this magisterial history is a fitting acknowledgment of the sport's legacy.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Football is the professional sport of choice in America today, evidenced by the fact that its championship game, the Super Bowl, is an undeclared national holiday. MacCambridge, author of the extraordinarily informative and very entertaining The Franchise: A History of Sports Illustrated (1997), picks up the struggling National Football League immediately after World War II, when the team owners were a ragtag collection of squabbling entrepreneurs. The owners pulled together somewhat to squash a rival league and usurp its best team, the Cleveland Browns, but the NFL's ascendancy really began in the 1950s, coinciding with the growth of television. MacCambridge tracks the history in a thoroughly readable narrative, devoting plenty of space to the 1958 overtime championship game between the Baltimore Colts and the New York Giants--a game that mesmerized a national television audience and created the momentum that would carry the league--under the visionary leadership of commissioner Pete Rozelle--through the merger with another rival, the American Football League, and the start of the Super Bowl phenomenon. MacCambridge also offers revealing profiles of the front-office figures who played key roles in the growth of the league--Rozelle, Paul Brown, Al Davis, and Lamar Hunt--as well as gleaning the insights of former players and coaches such as Jim Brown, Bill Walsh, and John Madden. This is a classy, carefully researched, and very enlightening overview of a uniquely American sports enterprise. Wes Lukowsky
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 576 pages
• Publisher: Random House; First Edition edition (October 26, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375504540
• ISBN-13: 978-0375504549
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.3 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #287,806 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Michael MacCambridge has written about movies, music and popular culture, but he is best known as one of the nation's foremost authorities on pro and college football.

His 2004 book 'America's Game: The Epic Story of How Pro Football Captured A Nation' was published by Random House, and named by The Washington Post as one of the most distinguished works of non-fiction in 2004. The book also won the Nelson Ross Award given by the Professional Football Researchers Association, for outstanding achievement in pro football research and history. The paperback version was published by Anchor Vintage in 2005.

His first book was 'The Franchise: A History of Sports Illustrated Magazine,' which was named as a New York Times Noteworthy Book, and described by the Boston Globe as "one of the great sports-book reads of all time." In 1999, he was the editor and a contributing writer for the New York Times bestseller 'ESPN SportsCentury,' a retrospective of sports in the 20th Century that included original essays by David Halberstam, Joyce Carol Oates, Roy Blount, Jr., Gerald Early, and others.

In 2005, MacCambridge edited the critically-acclaimed 'ESPN College Football Encyclopedia,' hailed by Sports Illustrated as "the Bible" of the sport.

In 2009, MacCambridge co-authored 'More Than A Game: The Glorious Present and Uncertain Future of the NFL,' with Brian Billick, the Super Bowl-winning former head coach of the Baltimore Raves. Also in 2009, MacCambridge was one of the contributing essayists to 'A New Literary History of America,' by Greil Marcus and Werner Sollors.

MacCambridge's freelance work has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Sports Illustrated, GQ, and many other publications. From 1988-95, he was a columnist and critic at the Austin American-Statesman, writing about movies, music and popular culture. He earned a Master's degree from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University in 1986. A year earlier, he received his B.A. from Creighton University in Omaha.

Since 1997, he has been an adjunct professor at Washington University in St. Louis, and performed a wide range of public speaking and editorial consulting work. The father of two children, Miles and Ella, he lives in St. Louis.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Finally, a comprehensive history of our most popular sport., February 8, 2005

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Craig (Ohio) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: America's Game: The Epic Story of How Pro Football Captured a Nation (Hardcover)

Considering the popularity of pro football in this country, the historical literature on the game has really been lacking, especially when compared to the thousands of works on baseball. Finally, McCambridge has crafted what should prove as the definitive history of the game, one that any fan of football should enjoy.

Although it's a 500-page book, the author's style makes this a pretty brisk read. While full of details, the book isn't overwhelmed by them, always giving the reader an excellent view of the big picture, and of the role that each person and event plays. It's clear that the author admires many of the people he talks about, but he still manages to present both praise and criticism, never letting his work become hagiographic. His treatment of the AFL-NFL relationship during the years before their merger is the best I've seen.

This is truly a book that's just been waiting to be written. Thankfully, McCambridge has done great justice to a subject ripe for examination. I think this should be necessary reading for anyone who considers themselves a serious fan.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars No Instant Replay; Thoughtful Research and Analysis Instead, July 4, 2005

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Thomas J. Burns (Apopka, Florida USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: America's Game: The Epic Story of How Pro Football Captured a Nation (Hardcover)

Michael MacCambridge has produced a volume of research and analysis worthy of any historical bookshelf. Let the reader beware: the author is nothing but faithful to his title. This is not a nostalgic romp with the Decatur Staleys, nor a highlight reel in words. Rather, MacCambridge traces and assesses how the corporate NFL has managed itself from its humble pre-World War II status to a position today of sports preeminence.

For starters, the author does not think much of pro football before 1945. Pro football was a confederation of teams, all of which were north and east of a line between Chicago and Washington. The owners were a club unto themselves, mostly Catholic and educated by nuns. Their greatest gifts to the game, in MacCambridge's view, are that they did not muck it up too much and they elected Bert Bell to serve as commissioner after the war. Bell was not the brightest bulb in the chandelier--his selection smacks of cronyism as much as anything--but in his humble, gracious way, Bell served the game as well as the owners. He was the first commissioner who sensed an obligation to protect the game itself.

He was challenged quickly enough by another major figure in this work, Paul Brown, and a new league taking shape, the All America Football Conference. The AAFC enjoyed a brief flare of success in the late 1940's, with franchises in glamour cities such as Los Angeles and San Francisco. On the field, however, the premiere team was Cleveland, where Brown invented the model of modern coaching management. Cleveland and its imitators in the AAFC were simply too good to go away. Bell decided to pick the franchises he wanted and add them to the NFL fraternity. By 1950 the NFL was coast to coast and the enemy had been destroyed.

With Bell's sudden death in 1959, the NFL owners closeted for eleven days, and when the white smoke poured from football's Sistine Chapel, there on the balcony stood the longest of long shots, the Rams General Manager Pete Rozelle, 33. If there is a hero in this book it is Rozelle. He, too, was tested from the start, by a number of millionaires from across the country, in particular the south, clamoring for league expansion and new franchises.

In truth, the old guard did not want expansion, but unlike baseball with its antitrust exemption, the NFL under Rozelle was indeed vulnerable to a charge of cabalistic behavior. Rozelle could not play dumb as Bell had. There were too many suitors now, at least a dozen. As these prospective new owners gravitated toward a new American League, Rozelle tried to slow the momentum by the early 1960's addition of Dallas, Minnesota, and Atlanta franchises to the NFL. In hindsight, Rozelle might have done better to appease Lamar Hunt, the driving force behind the new AFL.

The titanic battle of the two leagues ended in 1966, with secret negotiations between Rozelle and Hunt [and not Al Davis, the actual AFL commissioner, who would get his pound of flesh from Rozelle] prompted by bidding wars for top draft choices and then established league stars. MacCambridge observes that negotiating conference alignments was as difficult as selling merger itself. Who of the old guard would go to the AFC?

What made this entire enterprise workable, in the final analysis, was Roselle's management of television. Beginning in the 1960's Rozelle negotiated a series of network contracts that ensured many healthy benefits: national coverage [to feed enthusiasm of local fans], the much beloved "double-header game" at 4 PM, and most importantly, equal division of TV revenue among all teams. In addition, MacCambridge gives considerable attention to Rozelle's cultivation of Ed and Steve Sabol's NFL films production as an invaluable marketing tool of the league.

MacCambridge is the first author of my experience to explain the significance of the USFL's suit against the NFL and its potential to destroy the league. The USFL, a pleasant little league that enjoyed its workable niche in the springtime sports world, decided to go head to head with the NFL in the fall, and filed its now-famous antitrust suit. Rozelle's first instinct was to settle, but he and the owners were dissuaded by the brilliant attorney Paul Tagliabue. Tagliabue understood that a non-defense by the NFL would make the league vulnerable to suits from any sandlot league claiming to be shut out of the national TV market and demanding admission to the NFL.

The USFL trial completely exhausted Rozelle, who resigned after a three decade tenure. His replacement in 1989, the steely Tagliabue, would find his tenure filled with home-grown problems. Player conduct, an absence of minority executives and coaches, unforeseen difficulties with the new league salary cap, and even a bare breasted Janet Jackson Superbowl fiasco would occupy his first fifteen years. But his biggest challenge came from the owners themselves over an issue considered anathema forty years before: franchise jumping. Los Angeles to Oakland, Los Angeles to St. Louis, Cleveland to Baltimore, and Houston's melancholic relocation to Vanderbilt University--this was a trend that would alienate the heart of the league's success, fan identification, not to mention a repudiation of the founding credo, "the good of the league." Clearly, Tagliabue did not enjoy the power of a 1970 Rozelle, but the author notes that the commissioner was not Bud Selig, either. His compromise of restoring expansion franchises to Cleveland and Houston was better than nothing. And Tagliabue may have gotten help from an unexpected source: wholesale taxpayer opposition to publicly funded football stadiums, which would of necessity put a damper on owner enthusiasms.

In the final analysis, MacCambridge believes that the NFL is still the healthiest of all professional sports in the United States in terms of fan base and business practices. This work contains an exhaustive bibliography that will probably send the reader off in several directions--at least till the season starts.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent History of NFL, August 17, 2005

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Ronald Brown "rboffp" (Florham Park, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: America's Game: The Epic Story of How Pro Football Captured a Nation (Hardcover)

I found this history of the NFL very interesting. Many who follow the NFL know the importance of the '58 championship game. The Author sets up the background leading up to that game, including the original NFL clubs and the upstart AAFC (all-american football conference - original home of Browns and 49ers). There are scores of fascinating personalities - commissioners, owners and players. The author makes it clear how important the three commissioners, Tagliube, Rozelle and Bell were. He looks at a lot of different factors that lead to the ascension of the NFL to the top of the American sports heap, including the revenue sharing decisions, TV, Monday Night Football, and the desire for "parity". If you are at all interested in the history of the leaque, I highly recommend this book.