Customer Reviews

Offsides! : Fred Wyant's Provocative Look Inside the National Football League

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If you think coaches, players and fans have been upset in recent years over controversial calls by experienced NFL officials, how will they respond to 140 rookies? In "Offisdes!", which is available in hardcover and paperback, Fred Wyant says it takes at least 5 years to become a good NFL official. He notes that from 1991-1997 there was a turnover of 52% of the most senior and experienced officials who were not there to mentor the new recruits. Since an official is challenged with more than 1,600 decisions in a game, how is a rookie, with no mentor, going to respond? Also, ask Amazon to display Wally McNamee's award-winning photograph on the cover of Vince Lombardi expressing his feelings to Wyant. This was the White House News Press Photographers "Best of the Year."

This book contains great information about NFL officiating and Wyant takes you inside to some of the political manueverings in the NFL officiating office.

However, this book was poorly written. There were many grammar and surface errors.

This book is for hardcore NFL Official fans only, and be prepared for an adventure in proofreading misses.

While the book provides some insight into the inner workings of not only pro-football, but of NFL officiating (the section on the actual duties of each of the 7 man teams is very interesting), whatever value the contents may offer is compromised by very poor writing (occasional awkward and disconnected sentences and paragraphs), a glaring lack of editing (an inordinate number of typo and spelling errors) and a format that is interruptive (relevant and not so relevant quotations are sprinkled throughout the text). The book is only marginally worth the time and cost.