No Medals for Trying: A Week in the Life of a Pro Football Team [Hardcover]

Jerry Izenberg (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1990

Last season, football's New York Giants invited sportswriter Izenberg (How Many Miles to Camelot, 1972) to observe a week of practices and team meetings. He made the most of the opportunity, coming up with this engrossing day-by-day account leading up to an important game. Coming off a bitter and disappointing Monday night loss to the San Francisco 49ers, the Giants, faced with a shortened workweek, waste no time in beginning preparations for Sunday's crucial matchup with the tough Philadelphia Eagles and their outstanding quarterback Randall Cunningham. As Izenberg makes clear, the most important members of the team during the week are trainer Ronnie Barnes and Dr. Russ Warren. Can they mend quarterback Phil Simms' bum ankle? More important, can they have inspirational linebacker Lawrence Taylor (with a painful, hobbling knee injury) ready by game time? Coach Bill Parcells downplays the possible loss of Simms by touting inexperienced backup Jeff Hostetler. Announcing that Taylor will not play, Parcells inserts reserve Johnie Cooks as outside linebacker--but no one, including Cooks, is under any illusion that Taylor is replaceable. As the week unfolds, Izenberg observes closed-door offensive and defensive strategy sessions in all their arcane intricacy. He provides a rare look at an evolving game plan contingent on something as basic as one man's ability to play with pain. By game time both Simms and Taylor are, somehow, ready to play. In an emotional, hard-fought game played in subzero temperatures at wind-swept Giants Stadium, the Eagles come away winners. The Giants will rebound, however, to capture the NFC East title. Izenberg succeeds in penetrating the complexity of the Xs and Os and in describing the essential role of basic human emotion in a game he calls ""a chess match with muscles.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Syndicated sports columnist Izenberg ( The Rivals ), who has covered the New York Giants for three decades, here reports on one week in the life of the team, November 27-December 3, 1989, when the players were recuperating from a loss to the San Francisco 49ers and preparing for a game with the Philadelphia Eagles, whom they had to beat in order to win their division. With both quarterback Phil Simms and linebacker Lawrence Taylor badly injured, everyone, from head coach Bill Parcells to the most untried rookie, felt the necessity of making an extra effort. Izenberg builds the suspense so masterfully that grid aficionados will be caught up in the story. The book's title, however, is ill-chosen, as it reveals the outcome of the game.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Izenberg, who has covered the New York Giants for some 30 years, reports on a week that he spent with the team. The week in question began on November 27, 1989, after the Giants lost to the San Francisco 49ers in the game where both Phil Simms and Lawrence Taylor were injured, and culminates on December 4, after a sloppy loss to the Philadelphia Eagles. Because of Taylor's injury, much of the book reads like a paean to the linebacker. Izenberg gives no real insights into the workings of a professional football team, and there's nothing here about the Giants that readers couldn't get from the New York Post. Izenberg does a fine job of introducing the players, coaches, trainers, and office personnel, but then he gets bogged down in team history and personal anecdotes and never really gets behind the scenes--unless all pros sit around between Sundays eating pizza and donuts, watching videos, etc. Most sports collections can skip.
- John Turner, New York
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 273 pages
• Publisher: Macmillan Pub Co; 3rd printing edition (September 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0025582151
• ISBN-13: 978-0025582156
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.7 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,516,036 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One Of The Best Football Books Ever Written!, November 26, 1999

By 

Eric Paddon (Morristown, NJ) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: No Medals for Trying: A Week in the Life of a Pro Football Team (Hardcover)

Just as he did in his wonderful book about Game of the 1986 NLCS between the Mets and the Astros, Jerry Izenberg of the Newark Star-Ledger takes the reader inside for an up close look at all the factors leading up to a single game. This time, the game is just the preparation for a regular season NFL game in 1989 between the New York Giants and Philadelphia Eagles, a game that the Giants didn't even win, but what makes this book so engrossing is that it is the only book written by a sportswriter up to this point that takes an in-depth look at the mind of Coach Bill Parcells during his Giants glory days, and what made the Giants of the late 1980s so special. The reader is given a front row seat to the life of a team in the week leading up to a game, and even though the game wasn't won, you come away understanding why Parcells was still able to win another Super Bowl one year later.

3.0 out of 5 stars Non-Fiction, May 5, 2008

By 

Blue Tyson "- Research Finished" (Legion clubhouse) - See all my reviews

This review is from: No Medals for Trying: A Week in the Life of a Pro Football Team (Hardcover)

An ordinary sportsbook that details a season with the New York Giants under Bill Parcells.

Absolutely an example of the garden variety ordinary sports book.

Of course, getting close to an NFL team and writing about them with any particular depth and getting to be allowed to do it wouldn't be easy, either.