Customer Reviews

A Darker Shade Of Red

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This is a fascinating story of life on the bottom rung of college football's ladder, the redshirt squad of a mediocre team called the Cajun State Fightin' Crawdads. It is based on author Lloyd Pye's four years as a player at Tulane University. He has created a page-turner that seamlessly maintains an intense narrative flow from the start to last page. It was velcroed to my hands until I finished it.

The story is a fictionalized account, based on Pye's actual experience, of the ten days leading up to the season opening game between the Crawdads and the defending national champion Texas Longhorns. It is told from the perspective of the team's senior manager, Sage, an ex-lineman with a serious knee injury. It focuses primarily on the "redshirts," the players on any college team who are used and abused primarily as crash-test dummies. They run the opposing team's plays in practice, and any success they enjoy is viewed by their coaches as merely the result of varsity player mistakes and failures--a thankless assignment.

We meet these intensely pressurized young men at a dramatic point in their lives, and through their struggles we gain a view of a facet of the game that few fans are ever aware of. Everyone hears the term "redshirt" during every game on TV, but who knows what a redshirt's life is actually like? Who knows what they go through as thinking, feeling tackling dummies?

The novel begins with "Wake Up," "Breakfast" and "Morning Practice," as we are introduced in exciting ways to not only the characters, but the mechanics, ethics, motives, hazards and the world of college football. Threads are remarkably woven, and the action scenes and sequences are described superbly. Pye has an uncanny ability to describe the excitement of crowds and the effect of this on the players. It is, after all, a cult of the spectacle, and of a particularly war-like spectacle. And you come to understand what drives and sustains the people involved in it in a way that brings out the humanity of the characters, even of some of the least admirable.

The intensely human angle makes this a story for everyone, a tale of the human spirit under incredible stress at a very young age. Even if you've never previously taken an interest in the game of football, if you've never been involved in it at any level, this book can clearly show you why so many millions are hooked on it. This book is a winner on every level!

What can I say, I'm a big fan of Lloyd Pye's other books, so this one was a no brainer. Regardless of whether you are a football fan or not, most everyone will like, and probably love, this book.

The fact that it's a fact-based novel is just icing on the cake.

Highly recommended.

A Darker Shade Of Red
For anyone over the age of 55 that played either high school or college football during the 60's, the introduction alone is worth the price of the novel. It's insights into the tough mentality of the coaches is right on target. My high school coach played for Bear Bryant before he came to our small town and eventually went on to college where he is still a Dean of Men. (A tribute to the men he made on and off the field.)
I played against Lloyd Pye in the state semi-finals in '62 (we won and then won state) and again in '63 (he won and then won state) and then joined him as a freshman at Tulane University in '64. Although the characters are a combination of many personalities, as are the coaches and events, it is definitely a riveting fiction with an incredible insight to the true circumstances we endured. While most players entered as freshman, may have made it to the redshirt squad usually as a sophmore and then maybe to the varsity, I took a different personal path. I became a true sophmore starting tackle my second year and played against 4 true All-Americans, was hurt in junior pre-season and was redshirted, and then broke my neck during spring training and became a manager (or as Lloyd likes to call it I had a "Laundry Schlorship" for my senior year. I can honestly say that the emotions presented in this novel are raw, gripping and exceptionally truthful to our experiences.

I finished this book last night -- taking three nights to do it after putting our 4-year-old granddaughter to bed.

It was wonderful. It cannot help but appeal to sports fans, but I think it's interest is far beyond just those over 55 who played football. I'm about as uninvolved emotionally in high-school and college sports of all types as anyone, and I found it riveting!

You have given a psychological tour d'horizon of growing into adulthood as any author. As a rite-of-passage story, it would be of interest to all males and most women.