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Sports Illustrated: Great Football Writing

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There once was a time - it seems like a century ago - when SI really meant something in chronicling sports. But the magazine has sunk over the years to lazily give readers too many book excerpts and not enough good reporting. Is a lead article bashing A-Rod, that includes quotes by cowards who don't want to be named, really good journalism?

This outstanding collection of essays over the many years of the publication shows how sports writing can be equal parts art and history. In the first 50 or so pages, a reader learns about the first sports agent in the game, how a NFL franchise owner parlayed purchasing a team for a buck into stock worth almost $2 million, how the draw-play was invented, the grand history and sordid collapse of the Southwest Conference and the mystique of Lambeau Field.

The writers are a venerable who's who in American letters; David Halberstam, Jack Kerouac and George Plimpton. The sleeper in the bunch is Myron Cope, who was an outstanding sports writer before becoming the Super Fan-character on Pittsburgh Steelers radio broadcasts. Though not included in the collection, Cope's SI interview of Howard Cosell was the best feature I ever read on the man who "Told It Like It Is" well before Monday Night Football.

Great Football Writing is essential reading for people who enjoy the great mechanics of being told a story. And though the writers make the craft seem as easy as drawing up a last-second bomb to win the street-game, it takes a champion to professionally cover a champion. The collection is a classic.

Edited by Sports Illustrated magazine's executive editor Rob Fleder, and with an introduction by popular football writer Peter King, Sports Illustrated: Great Football Writing compiles classic stories about football and football players from the pages of the venerable magazine, from the modern day to the 1950's. From "The Nightmare of Steroids" to "Where Have You Gone, Joe Namath?" to "All the Way with O.J." - an article about Simpson's stellar football performance from long before his arrest and trial for murder - the articles cover the both the highlights and the low points of America's long love affair with football. An excellent compendium or giftbook especially for thoughtful football fans, who enjoy pondering at length how the sport and its telling has gradually evolved with the decades.