Customer Reviews

Every Week a Season: A Journey Inside Big-Time College Football

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Curtis hits all the marks with this book. I was a little skeptical going in, wondering what I might learn, as I'm a pretty big college football fan. I was surprised because I didn't know most of what he reveals. He talks about the world off the field in a way that ESPN, SI, etc. never fully explore, in my experience.

Very well-written book, I definitely recommend it for casual or serious sports fans. It shows so much of the real game that you hardly ever see or hear about.

This book is a high tribute to the Great American Sport of Football. It is based on visits to nine of the top names in college football. The author, Brian Curtis, spent a week at each school. The result is a report, not of just the games, but of the essence of the teams. He reports on the practice, the personalities, the tone of the school and the team. The tone varies a good bit depending if the last game was a win or a loss. He reports on the 'intelligence' I guess you'd call it about what the team can expect in the game plan expected from their opponents next week. And on the ways to counter the oponnents expected game.

Coming through on each page is the fascination, the love that the author feels for the game and the teams. Delightful book.

My husband is a D-I FB official and I bought him this book as a gift. He thoroughly enjoyed this well-researched, behind-the-scenes look at big-time college football. The author captures the intensity and drama which unfold each week during the season.

If you love college football...you'll love this book. The writer spends a complete week with each of several major college football programs during the 2003 season. This gives a real insiders look at what goes on duting the whole week in preparation for the game on Saturday. I came away from this with a real respect for how much time the players and especially coaches put in.

This book reads like a journal. It's a good comparative look at how different coaches run their programs; however, it's basically the same 15 page story chapter after chapter. Based on the author's access to the programs and coaches, he does begin to explore some interesting stories regarding assistants, family, boosters, academincs, and recruiting but gives those ideas a paragraph or two and moves on to the next thing. Had those ideas been further explored the book could have delivered what I expected; however, I felt like I was reading the fragmented journal of an author trying to keep a book to a certain length.

This book provides an interesting view into the lives of college football coaches as they deal with the weekly challenges of analyzing last week's game, preparing for the next, recruiting high school players, and dealing with the media. All the teams feature accomplished coaches at big-name programs but there is a fair amount of variation into how they relate to their players, their general outlooks on life, even their spirituality. Each week covers a major game, and many fans of college football are likely to have watched at least one or two of them. If you want to get a feel for what happens behind the scenes in college football, this book is about as good as it gets.

This book was great. Curtis spent a week at 10 major college programs which included teams from the ACC, SEC, WAC, Big 10 & Big East, including the week leading up to LSU's Sugar Bowl victory over the Sooners in the Championship game. I found it a great read on two fronts: 1) You get a look at how each coach prepares for his game, some are completely hands on while others have great trust in their assistants and just overlook everything. 2) The part I enjoyed most about the book was how different schools/coaches look at their players. Some of the coaches it was win at all costs having no regard for classes or much else. Fortunately there were more coaches who went along the lines of caring about the student will promote winning. Alot of people think big time colleges are just football factories, but after reading this book you realize more schools care more about there students beinging students first and athletes second.

A must read for any college football fan!

This book does a good job of portraying college football, and for that matter college sports for what it is, a business designed to make money for the NCAA. This book however does not question any of the aspects of the college game and does a poor job and questioning if these actions are correct? We are lead to believe that college football is a perfect solution and something we should all emulate.

This book would have been much more successful if it did something other than paint each coach in the book as a legend. It seems the author was completely biased and enraptured by who he was portraying. Sadly there is nothing that makes this anything more than a plausibly interesting profile of college football.

In this work we are taken inside the lives of numerous college football coaches as they basically do their job which is no small thing.
We share with them as they analyze their games, recruit high school players, deal with the media and take care of the players in all areas. The author does an outstanding job of putting the reader right in the middle of the muddle, so to speak.
If you are a football fan and want to know more of the inside workings this book will be a treasure for you. A hard realistic look at the workings of college football and all it entails.

I am a huge college football fan and couldn't wait to read this book. I expected some really interesting insight, but all I got was the same generalized rendition over and over again.

The author rarely details anything besides practice schedules (how exciting!) and the quotes he uses are so lame you wonder why he included them at all. I don't think there is a simple interesting quote in the entire book. Often times the author will lead you down a path and then not deliver. The "feel-good" stories about each coach in the beginning of each chapter all sort of read alike and they don't relate very well to the behind-the-scenes angle that the author is trying to take.

I was extremely disappointed. If you want a great book on college football read "Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer" by Warren St. John. It's more about fans and culture, but it's a thousand times better (and funny).