Customer Reviews

The Proving Ground: A Season on the Fringe in NFL Europe

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3 star:		(1)
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As an avid football fan, I truly enjoyed this book. It gave great insight to what a team goes through during a season overseas in NFL Europe. It showed the highs and lows that players go through especially within the family (team). If you are interested in what goes on and what goes through a players mind I really suggest you read this book. Lars Anderson did a great job and my heart goes out to kicker Rob Hart... YOU WILL GET A CHANCE TO MAKE IT UP! (read the book to find out what that refers to!)

I was looking for an engaging description of what life in NFL Europe was like, and this book chronicles the experience of the Scottish Claymores very well.

Between these covers, I learned the makeup of an NFL-E coach in Jim Criner. I think his life was portrayed very well here, so that even his off-time fishing and shopping was interesting.

I got to learn a lot about the allocation process, how a coach like Jim Criner networked to ask NFL teams to recommend players from training camp and practice squads to go to Europe and develop.

It was fun learning what coaching staffs thought of personnel in the secondary in NFL-E, and how they interpreted how that kind of coverage developed quarterbacks.

Details about the living conditions in Glasgow, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, and Barcelona was enlightening. It was fun learning what different living conditions did to team morale, and how locations impacted recruiting players.

I liked learning about the Claymores, but I also appreciated hearing about the familiar names like Kurt Warner, Danny Wuerffel, and Lawrence Phillips.

What surprised me was the tone about NFL-E being such a backwater. I recall games being aired on FOX, F/X, and FOX Sports Net, but there's hardly a reference to FOX at all, as if they were completely disengaged from their own sports entertainment product. It's even implied games were rarely televised, and one is left with the impression that the Claymores were only showcased twice (maybe true) in the 2000 season.

One thing unexpectedly intriguing in this book is the sham feuds concocted by the NFL itself to hype interest (shades of the XFL a year early). Details about this, and how the NFL used it's own website to promote invented rivalries and controversies is priceless, as is Criner's responses to these things.

I'm grateful to have found this hidden gem. I wish there had been more stories about the wider league, as there aren't any other books about it, but I had a pleasant time reading about the Claymores.

Interesting in that my first NFL('AAA')E

book was also about the Scotland Clay-

mores (now Cologne Centurians). Jack

Criner, childhood friend of both John

Robinson and big John Madden gets the

short shrift in this one somewhat though.

Could have left some of the controversial

stuff out and made it more of a guys book

on Footie, in my Opine. I still liked it

and much about my current CFL mate Marcus

Crandell. - R.A.S, Montreal's AM 990, The

Team, "This Week in Arenaball" host.

This is one of the best books I have read. It might be the best book about football ever. It gives a detailed account of what NFL Europe is really all about. As a fan of the league since 1991, I thought I knew almost everything about the league, but after reading this book, I learned things about it I never knew. The only flaw I saw in the book was that Mr. Anderson said that the World League became NFL Europe in 1996, but in fact it did not actually become NFL Europe until the 1998 season. Other then that it was a great book. A must for all football fans, especially fans of NFL Europe!!