Customer Reviews

Bloody Sundays: Inside the Rough-and-Tumble World of the NFL

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I bought this book hoping for a solid piece of investigative reporting regarding the most successful sports league in America, if not the world. Sadly, this book failed to live up to expectations. Parts of the book were interesting, but just about all of Freeman's pronouncements are now seriously out of date. Would anyone out there take John Gruden over Bill Belichick as coach of their football team? Freeman would. Does anyone consider the Browns to be in the top 5 of all teams in the league? Freeman also throws out serious pronouncements casually and then fails to explain. He does this with Wellington Mara, saying he is the best owner in the league. Only towards the very end of the book do we find out why.

The typographical and factual errors detract significantly from this work. As a reporter for the New York Times, how can he not possibly know where Fort Bragg is? Mike, I can tell you it ain't in Georgia. Care to guess again? Where were his editors and proofreaders? Additionally, parts of his introduction are repeated exactly word for word in other chapters, most notably the chapter on the gay player. All of this plus his atrocious grammar adds up to a book that exhibits some serious bush-league writing. It makes you wonder how this guy made it to such a prestigious newspaper such as the Times. This book leaves me scratching my head.

If that weren't enough, his last few chapters are absolutely horrendous. What was he thinking when he decided to compare football and baseball in such a juvenile way? And his list of changes he would make were he commissioner of the league are stunning in their profundity--he would welcome dogs into the press box but ban cats. Well, that is the mark of a truly great commissioner, let me tell you. His worst gaffe comes in his list of the greatest players by position. He tells you that Marshall Faulk is the best kick returner the league has ever seen. Only Faulk doesn't return kicks. But those kinds of trivialities do not matter to Freeman. Faulk is too good to be left out, so he had to include him somewhere. Such deft reasoning makes for a highly disappointing read.

The modern NFL faces many very important issues, which are rarely covered amid the fandom and sensationalism of the mainstream sports press. Here Mike Freeman digs up some much-needed dirt on the poor mental and physical health of workaholic coaches and banged-up veteran players, racial matters and discrimination in the league, and drug use and domestic violence among trouble-prone players. Freeman also offers plenty of coverage about why the NFL is so successful, from great team owners and general managers, brilliant business practices at the league level, and many mature and charitable players. These are all things that both the fans and critics of the NFL should know more about, and Freeman is providing a valuable service by giving us both the great and not-so-great of the NFL.

Unfortunately, Freeman's writing style doesn't always measure up to the challenge, resulting in a book that often seems more like a jumble of mashed-up sports-page columns rather than the strong reporting that these subjects require. Chapters and vignettes on important issues end abruptly with few authoritative conclusions. Freeman's command of language leaves something to be desired, with unfocused run-on sentences and unimaginative word choice. Early on he criticizes the modern sports press for hyper-analyzing every single move and miniscule statistic of NFL games, but then does the same thing at several spots in the book. And the end the book deteriorates into lists of Freeman's favorite players and silly reasons why he thinks football is better than baseball. These are fan-style opinions that can be found by the thousands in chat rooms and fantasy football sites, and sadly detract from the seriousness of the issues Freeman is trying to bring to light. [~doomsdayer520~]

An interesting subject matter, but I found the writing style to be a bit dull and redundant. I didn't like how the author profiled certain individuals, instead of taking a broader approach in discussion. I did find the "99 Reasons Why Football is Better than Baseball" chapter to be quite amusing. I have to conclude that I found Tim Green's NFL expose, "The Dark Side of the Game: My Life in the NFL" a much more entertaining and enjoyable read.

Freeman's reporting is solid in most of Bloody Sundays, and examines intriguing issues about the NFL that are not explored in daily media. He brings the reader inside the closed doors of coaches' and players' lives, and shows the reader that the everyday problems that dot the lives of most Americans also affect those in the NFL. The first four chapters on Jon Gruden, Emmitt Smith, Michael Strahan, and Steven Thompson are well reported and based seemingly on fact.

He holds up Gruden as the model of NFL coaching success, and trails the coach's move from Oakland to Tampa Bay. He reveres Smith as the standard by which athletes should be measured because of his durability at such a perilous position. Strahan is portrayed as a dominating defensive end who uses his intellect more than his team and the league would prefer. And Freeman's expose of the plight of gay players like Thompson (a pseudonym -the author agreed to a confidentiality deal with the player) is groundbreaking reporting that really is the backbone of the book.

There are other good parts of the book - his portrayal of Condoleeza Rice the football fan and the would-be commissioner is valuable and interesting. The explanation of the state of domestic abuse cases among players and the league's slow movement to curtail it is a credit to Freeman.

Too much of the second half of the book, however, devolves into irreverent musings and listings of his all-time favorites among categories of NFL players and franchises. There is nothing necessarily bad about this writing, but it did not gel with the solid reporting in the first half of the book. I was very impressed with the book through the first four chapters, and I was eager to read more. But I was disappointed to read through Freeman's lists of top five running backs, top five franchises (which laughably included Cleveland as a near-miss but excluded New England), and his unrealistic list of ways to improve the Bengals.

The chapters about the best players by position and the reasons why football is better than baseball are light reading. They are what they are - by that time I had realized that the book had lost its edge and I merely flipped through them. They would work fine as a Saturday sports column, but they did not belong in a book that could have enhanced the great reporting it laid out in its first half.

The book was enjoyable, and I do recommend it. The first six chapters (before Freeman begins his lists of favorites) are worthwhile and deserve reading by those who are serious fans of the NFL or those interested in what NFL life is like. The remaining chapters do not sink the book.

Freeman obviously has great experience covering the NFL, and must be a good reporter if he received access to numerous subjects he portrays in the story. I hope he follows up this book with one that is devoted entirely to a through reporting of issues that the daily NFL news media cannot explore.

As a budding NFL fan I really enjoyed Freeman's take on the game. Granted, the book does read a little like a combination of articles thrown together and there chapters that feel too short for the topic, but those topics, such as gay players in the NFL and the physical and mental toll of the game, are ones that could easily fill a separate book. For someone newly into the game of football, Freeman offers a view of some key issues without going so deep as to confuse newbies or casual viewers. I got a good chuckle out of the last two chapters in the book regarding 99 reasons why football is better than baseball and what Freeman would do if he ruled the football world. Is it a little bit of a fluffy way to end an otherwise serious book? Sure it is, but I liked that. After reading about the fear and mistreatment gay players suffer, and the tragic lives of some football legends whose physical injuries left them vegetables, I needed something light. Is it a book for the fan who has watched football for 20+ years? Probably not. But I would recommend it to a newcomer of the game, as a simple, straightforward read.

Now that ESPN has bowed to the pressure of the NFL and cancelled the show "Playmakers," it's left to Freeman's book to look inside the NFL and show it warts and all. A lot of attention has been given to the author's chapters on 'Steven Thompson' the pseudonym for a closeted gay football player. That chapter simply confirms what everyone already knows - that gay men are in football but they are not out nor are they likely to come out in the near future. The rest of the time Freeman draws upon his contacts and years as a reporter to analyze the people he spotlights both in an historical sense, as well as through direct access to the people and those around them. He paints pictures of people who may get the shaft in their professional lives, but who came to the game and keep going despite hardships because they truly love football. You can debate his picks for the best of all time in various positions, but you have to give Freeman the slack to express his opinions after spending time reporting on his topic, and he tries to reason out his choices. The person who does not know the NFL won't really be served by using this as an introduction, but readers familiar with the game and the players (not necessarily fanatics) will find the peek behind closed doors interesting.

At first I started reading this book and I was impressed.

I was quickly dissenchanted.

The guy spends forever talking on each individual topic, and for each topic he talks only about one player. He spends time talking about defense, but instead of actually talking about schemes, strategies, etc., he only talks about Mike Strahan. He spends about fifty pages on Mike Strahan. He also spends sixty-five pages talking about John Gruden. Because of all this, this book is already outdated. I don't really recommend it.

This book is overall a good look inside some of the most well-known issues of the NFL, and some less well-known issues, but it has a couple of shortcomings.

For example, there is not much info on the inner workings of the NFL at the owner and commissioner level. There is also no information about the commercial, financial, marketing and broadcasting aspects of the sport. I believe these two aspects are very much important for the NFl but they are barely covered.

The chapters on coaches, players' health and social problems, best run and worst run franchises are very interesting. There is a lot of info on coaches lifestyle, the players health hazards (I did not know the extent to which football can destroy humans). The chapter on the Eagles and Bengals was very good, I would have liked to see more of that about other franchises.

The last two chapters are mostly disappointing. It seems the author was running out of material and decided to devote a full chapter about the greatest players of the sport, past and current; and the other chapter is simply a summary of 100 short, smack talk reasons why football is superior to baseball. These 2 chapters were shallow, and you get the impression the author was trying to simply reach a predetermined page count for the book.

Still, there is not that many books about the NFL. This one is worth the read.

This is one of those books that gives you a "wow" feeling afterward, you can hardly believe what you just read. The author knows a lot of people and goes behind the scenes and undercover, he shows how the teams actually spy on their players! And how a player is actually drafted.

It's tough reading because you see how mean and unforgiving the game and the team is to a player. You see how ruthless a game football can be. You respect the football players a lot more, because you see how much pain they always have to suffer in their job, and how much they damage their bodies. The author talks a lot about history and individual stories here, which makes his book familiar and very interesting.

I was browsing the shelves at my local bookstore for a good book about the NFL and decided to pick up a copy of Bloody Sundays. I just finished reading it, and felt compelled to write a review for others thinking about buying it. So for the casual NFL fans this would probably be a great start because it provides insight into the lifestyle of an NFL coach, the day in the life of a player (Mike Strahan), and a brief glimpse into the mind of an NFL owner. For a diehard fan like myself, please don't waste your time. Most of the material is out-dated in my opinion. How does one put the Cleveland Browns into the category as "Top Franchises" really??? Also, Freemans infatuation with Gruden is ridiculous, and he continues to praise the guy like he's won 5 Superbowls. I wanted to see more of the nitty gritty dark side of the NFL. Yeah, the "gay player" chapter was about as solid as the book got, but nothing really shocked me at all, I was hoping to read some juicy details about what happens inside the trenches of an NFL game, or what goes on in the locker room, players indiscretions etc. Nice try Freeman, but I am waiting for something that will grab my attention