Customer Reviews

Glory for Sale: Fans, Dollars and the New NFL

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If you have any interest in sports, you have to read Glory for Sale. Jon Morgan has written a fascinating and carefully crafted book about the inner workings of professional sports. Few of us have ever been privy to the secret meetings, the betrayal, the calculated lies, and the greed at work whenever a professional sports franchise tears free from a city. This book is more than the tale of Art Modell's apostasy, it is the frightening blueprint for a society whose religion sports is founded on a single commandment: Thou shalt win. -- Tim Green, author of The Dark Side of the Game and sports commentator for ABC's "Good Morning America," "NFL on Fox," and NPR's "Morning Edition

Glory for Sale is a fascinating read. Morgan manages to penetrate the personalities and structures of the NFL in a lucid and compelling fashion while providing a probing and critical analysis of city stadium subsidies, franchise movements and the business of football. -- Andrew Zimbalist, author of Baseball & Billions: A Probing Look Inside the Big Business of Our National Pastime and co-author of Sports Jobs and Tax: Economic Impact of Sports Teams and Facilities

. . . a detailed, engrossing and fast-paced account of am increasingly volatile aspect of sports. -- Bortz & Co., Sports and Media Consultants

Team relocation is a controversial and complex issue that hotly divides avid sports fans. Jon Morgan's Glory for Sale insightfully lays out the importance of stadium economics in building a competitive team, and it clearly, easily explains why teams move. It is one of the best analyses I've read. --Paul J. Much, Houlihan Lokey Howard & Zukin (financial advisor on sports economics to teams, leagues, stadiums, and governmental agencies)

Thoroughly enjoyed this book, the first time and am re-reading it again, now. Seems to be a very thorough, researched and un-biased account of what happened to two of the most storied franchises in the NFL, the Cleveland Browns and the Baltimore Colts. Politics, greed, money and moronic owners who used the passions of both cities NFL fan bases to coerce their way into a new stadium and big money, despite the thousands of lives affected by the moves. The NFL is no longer a friend of the fans, it's a venue for egos.

Morgan goes through excruciating detail as to how the cities of Cleveland and Baltimore will now be forever conjoined. The book gives the reader a true perspective of the shenanigans by owners who are looking for the "easy money" of professional sports and how they will stoop to breaking the hearts of thousands of loyal fans just to fatten their wallets. Not only does it cut to the quick about the move of the Cleveland Browns to Baltimore; it also touches off on that fateful winter's night when Bob Irsay packed the beloved Colts onto the Mayflower trucks and stole away the heart of a city. A great read for Clevelanders and Baltimoreans alike; both of which can take small consolation that the heartbreaks of '84 and '95 will finally be resolved when the Browns return next August.

"Glory for Sale" is full of the sort of detail most football fans only dream of accessing...the book enables readers to become part of the franchise process, to feel as though they were actually there. Jon Morgan's style is fluid and literary, and the book, however intricate, reads as easily as a novel. This is a must-read for anyone interested in the world of sports, and for anyone with a solid appreciation for plain old good writing.

Why do elected officials at the state and city level continue to prostrate themselves before professional sports teams? Jon Morgan uses one of the most controversial team transfers of all time to examine a serious public policy issue with bright, jargon-free writing that cuts to the heart of these issues. If you're a taxpayer who's ever wondered about whether sports teams really goose the local economy, you need to read Glory for Sale.

A good historical look at how the city of Baltimore lost the Colts to Indianapolis, setting the stage for the eventual move of the Browns from Cleveland more than a decade later. Any NFL fan should read this book before putting his or her heart behind a team that may move when there is huge money to be made by an owner seeking more favorable "Stadium Economics." Also good for any citizen who wants to know how sports teams rake in huge subsidies for their stadiums -- the only businesses in the country that have their "factories" built at taxpayer expense. Browns fans won't find any real "smoking guns" here -- the politicians erred by not moving fast enough on a new stadium, and Art Modell erred by not telling the fans that he needed a new stadium, and quickly, to be competitive, as the fans surely would have pressured the politicians to move quickly. There are enough villains to go around here. It's a cautionary tale for any sports fan in today's world where money is the true motivator and loyalty to your team means little to cash-hungry owners.

MY SON COULDN'T PUT IT DOWN AFTER HE OPENED IT UP XMAS MORNING. I'LL GET HIS REVIEW.

Since the Colts left Baltimore in 1984 I had pretty much forgotten about football. I had paid little attention to the trials the city had gone through to obtain a replacement for the Colts, and even less attention to any other city's NFL problems. Until I read this book.

By the time Baltimore convinced Cleveland Brown's owner Art Modell to abandon the city he had made into a football dynasty in favor of a more lucrative deal, they had already spent hundreds of millions of dollars to build the Orioles a new stadium. The author details a highly entertaining story of how it all happened, complete with backroom details and public embarassments.

Jon Morgan does a magnificent job of relating seemingly unrelated events. He somehow ties together team owner's greed, urban decay, baseball football rivalry, Baltimore's loss, Baltimore's theft, fan loyalty and stadium economics into a fascinating well-told tale. And best of all - it's all true!