Customer Reviews

Leatherheads of the North: The True Story of Ernie Nevers & the Duluth Eskimos

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Although he's a Packers fan, author Frederick gives this Minnesota team its due. Anyone who likes football will enjoy this story about athletes who played with less protective gear and for even less money. The story flows naturally from the pen of an author whose love for the game shows through. I would have liked more photographs from the era.;

The Duluth Eskimos competed in the NFL from 1923 to 1927, the formative years of the league. The passage of 80 years has relegated the team to a footnote in the leagues history, but Chuck Frederick's "Leatherheads of the North" seeks to reintroduce this forgotten team to NFL fans.

The Eskimos featured three future Hall of Famers and, throughout their short history, rounded out their roster with a group of players who gained their initial football experience on local sandlots and high school fields. In competing with other league teams, most of the time they found themselves outnumbered and less experienced. In addition, few NFL teams wanted to play in Duluth, so the Eskimos found themselves traveling for most of their games - at the mercy of local referees and the rigors of the road. Yet the pioneers of the NFL, such as George Halas, remembered them fondly to be a courageous bunch of tough players who could keep up with most teams on skill and fortitude.

Frederick's book attempts to bring the story of the Eskimos to our modern times, and does this quite well. Stories, play-by-play documentation and records were sketchy back then, but Frederick does his best with the information that he has. The book is short - only 150 pages in the main section - and one wishes that the book could be more in depth: longer. Kind of like we wish the Eskimos could have played longer.

Being an early Vikings fan of the Bud Grant era, this is quintessential trivia and historical knowledge that is throughly enjoyable. I did not know this history of the early NFL.

Leatherheads of the North presents the story of the Duluth Eskimos, a football team that many have credited with saving the NFL during its early days. The Eskimos were loosely the basis for the recent George Clooney comedy, "Leatherheads."

This book has some positives. It includes many good photos of the various Duluth teams, and it contains a fairly succinct history of the early days of the NFL. It offers many intriguing facts about what was undoubtedly one of the most interesting teams ever in the NFL.

Overall, however, this book is a painfully difficult read despite its short length. At points, it literally reads like small town newspaper descriptions of high school football games. The author takes great pains to relate how individuals on the team were related to the town of Duluth, often including facts about the high school they attended or to whom they were related. If you are looking for a good sports book in the vein of John Feinstein or Michael MacCambridge, this book is not for you. If you enjoy lots of facts without great story telling or competent interpretation, then you will love it.

Pristine condition. Fast, easy delivery. An excellent history of the early years of the NFL from the perspective of a little known team. Great story.

This is one of those books that I really didn't think I would like when I first picked it up. After all, how interesting can football in the 1920s really get??

Oh was I wrong! While the football game summaries get a bit confusing (the game was played dramatically different then), there is a lot of intrigue into the life of Ole Haugsrud, a man who deserves to be in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, Ernie Nevers and the rest of this vagabond team.

If you are interested in the early days of the NFL, this is a good starting place.

"Leatherheads of the North" is the true story of the Kelley-Duluth Eskimos, one of the NFL's first teams, and their star player, Ernie Nevers. Fredericks presents the little known facts behind the team's attempts to survive the nascent days of the infant league, with its trials and tribulations. The author's a Minnesota Viking and Green Bay Packer fan who lets readers in on the truth about how the game was played around the Great Lakes region in the mid-1920s by characters like Nevers and Johnny Blood, the "vagabond halfback." A really good book that'll leave you shaking your head and chuckling at the antics on and off the field. Bravo!

As an aficianado of early pro and college football literature, I enjoyed "Leatherheads of the North" much more than the hackneyed George Clooney vehicle--posing as a movie. As a native Minnesotan who watched the Vikings play their last three home games in three different stadiums and two different cities, it was a blast to ride with one of the great barnstorming teams of all time--the Duluth Eskimos. I recommend this tome to anyone who is a fan of pro football.

I would have liked more info on the squad members and maybe some more of the opponents. When I was young my Dad had a Duluth Eskimo Jersey. His name was Art Crone.