Rose Bowl Dreams: A Memoir of Faith, Family, and Football [Hardcover]

Adam Jones (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 19, 2008

Advance Praise for Rose Bowl Dreams:

"No true football fan should miss Adam Jones' Rose Bowl Dreams. It's more than a football book; it's an inspiring commentary on life itself." 
--Winston Groom

"Adam Jones had the good sense to be born into the middle of four generations of a football-lovin' Texas family, and now that I think about it, that's probably redundant. Rose Bowl Dreams reads as if Jones just pulled up a chair, popped open a cold one and started telling stories. He's good company, and you don't have to be able to name the starting lineup of the 2006 Longhorns to enjoy him. Rose Bowl Dreams may not be for Aggies, but the rest of us could learn something about faith, family and football."
--Ivan Maisel, senior writer, ESPN.com, co-author of A War in Dixie

“The best football book since Frederick Exley’s classic A Fan’s Notes. Adam Jones’ Rose Bowl Dreams delves deeply into everything that made this country great—mother, God, football and drinking. Even if you can’t stand any of those things, Rose Bowl Dreams will almost certainly change your mind.” 
--Kinky Friedman, author of What Would Kinky Do?: How to Unscrew a Screwed-Up World

"Much like Adam Jones, my parents took me to my first football game at age six. As a result, I never stopped playing the game or writing about it. This is a remarkable story about football and family. It provides a wonderful message about how sports, if handled in the proper context, will forever keep humans together. Rose Bowl Dreams made my spine tingle.''
--Jim Dent, New York Times bestselling author of The Junction Boys and Twelve Mighty Orphans

"Rose Bowl Dreams reveals what lies at the heart of the hardcore college football fan better than any other book I've read.  This story of faith and faith rewarded will move all readers, even those who scarcely know the difference between a punt and a pass." 
--W. K. Stratton, author of Backyard Brawl: Inside the Blood Feud Between Texas and Texas A&M

God created college football as a grand gift to an imperfect world. I learned this as a very small boy living in the middle of the Texas Panhandle. In time I would come to believe that college football contained all of the joy, faith, pageantry, feeling, failure, and renewal that any person could hope for out of life. It taught me about patience and commitment, about enthusiasm and exasperation, about fatherhood and faith.

Like Norman Maclean’s classic, A River Runs Through It, Rose Bowl Dreams is a memoir that transcends the limits of the sports genre to contemplate faith, love, grief and the challenges of fatherhood.

Rose Bowl Dreams is the story of a family whose passion for college football begins at a small stadium in the remote Texas Panhandle and leads to college football’s most famous venue, the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. Rose Bowl Dreams develops parallel stories of a son and his mother, a crisis of faith, and three fraught football seasons that end in bittersweet triumph as the author follows the story of the University of Texas Longhorns between the time he discovers his mother has inoperable cancer and Texas triumphs in the National Championship Game over USC in what might well be the greatest college football game ever played.

Along the way Jones lays bare the heart and passionate soul of the college football fan. To millions, college football is the essence of life. It is, yes, religious in intensity. And its impact on families and its greater meaning possesses tremendous resonance. Rose Bowl Dreams reveals the growth and evolution of a college football fan with the humor and poignancy only personal experience could provide: kitchen table conversations with Panhandle football legend “Bulldog” Jones, good-byes to a mother who taught her son about unconditional love and unconditional fandom, the wise counsel of a psychiatrist father, the love of a beautiful woman, raising three boys, Mennonites singing, night games in Lubbock, a scrappy gamer of a quarterback, a man with a golden left arm, and finally, redemptively, a small boy from the south side of Houston named Vince.

He would change everything.

Rose Bowl Dreams is an artfully rendered portrait of a Texas family bound by a game, and an inspiring account of how redemption flows through the contests on the field and into the lives of its fans. It’s a portrait of divine will realized on the college football gridiron. A narrative that is like no football book you’ve ever read, Rose Bowl Dreams reminds us all that the good life moves ever forward.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this enjoyably quirky narrative, Jones creates a fun tale out of little more than memories of his family, his quite-chatty relationship with God and a deep love of college football. Jones, who runs a college football Web site and works for the Texas Education Agency, grew up in the Texas Panhandle, where the women knew as much or more about football as the men did. Already obsessed with the Texas Longhorns, Jones attended the University of Texas in comparatively swinging Austin and imparts warm memories of those late, music-filled nights before getting down to football talk. The narrative bops from family to football history, particularly the wonders of Ricky Williams or the deadly rivalry with the Oklahoma Sooners (seen by Austin types as the Redneck Apocalypse). Every so often, the religious Jones interrupts the narrative just long enough so he can have a talk with God (who doesn't seem to be doing enough to help his team win), but never comes off as even remotely holier-than-thou. (Aug.)
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From Booklist

First, the author isn’t the notorious Adam “Pacman” Jones, the poster child for bad NFL behavior. This Adam Jones is the author of the popular blog The Truth about College Football since 1995. Here, much as he does on his blog, he intertwines his personal history, his faith, and his love of college football into a narrative to which any serious sports fan should be able to relate. Jones grew up a fan of the West Texas State Buffalos, a rarely successful mid-major college program. But when he went off to college in Austin, he became a fan of the Texas Longhorns, the epitome of a big-time program. Of course, the climax of his adult life as a fan, recounted dramtically here, was the Longhorns’ come-from-behind national championship win versus highly favored USC in the 2006 Rose Bowl. Jones relives numerous big games—both victories and defeats—in his account of a lifetime of college-football fanaticism, but within each game account, he weaves a bit of his own life and connects it to the on-field action. An enjoyable read, especially for knowledgeable college football fans. --Wes Lukowsky

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books; First Edition edition (August 19, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312373694
• ISBN-13: 978-0312373696
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,380,555 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The subtitle says it all., August 19, 2008

By 

Steven R. Collins (Buda, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Rose Bowl Dreams: A Memoir of Faith, Family, and Football (Hardcover)

Although football is a thread in this story, it's really somewhat of a prop for a much bigger story about faith and family. Even though I am a card-carrying member of the orangeblood "Cult of '69," what moved me in Rose Bowl Dreams and kept me reading are the stories of grandparents, parents, children, and the perfect spouse bound up in a tale about a growing faith.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Can I get an Amen?, August 21, 2008

By 

Wendy Nather (Austin, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Rose Bowl Dreams: A Memoir of Faith, Family, and Football (Hardcover)

Where else can you mix Shakespeare and football, Bloody Caesars and longnecks, playbooks and hymnals? Adam Jones weaves a lyrical tapestry out of what is essentially many large men fighting over a pigskin, and you don't even notice when the action moves from the kitchen to the stadium to the church and back again. That God is a pretty funny guy, too.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Rose Bowl Dreams It's Great Writing and Even Better Reading, August 19, 2008

By 

J. Wynn - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Rose Bowl Dreams: A Memoir of Faith, Family, and Football (Hardcover)

Whether or not you come from a family of fans steeped in the often curious traditions of Texas (the state not the Team) football, which I don't, or whether or not you love college football with a passion that passes all understanding, which I don't, or whether or not you've buried your mother, which I haven't, or whether or not you can explain, must less interpret the actions of any number of college football coaches, which I can't, you need to READ THIS BOOK. Because, simply put, if you like great writing, which I do, and if you love books that are a joy to read because reading brings you joy, which I do because it does, then this book is for you. By way of full disclosure, Adam Jones is a friend, a great guy to break bread with, a hell of a lot of fun to swap stories with, and he's also managed to marry pretty well and produce some great kids. That's real nice and all, but this book goes way beyond nice. How many authors can write, and not offend "he fit in like a Hasidic Jew at a Southern Baptist Convention"? Jones pulls that one off, and many, many more. If you love football or you love to read, you need to read Rose Bowl Dreams.