Customer Reviews

Total Football II: The Official Encyclopedia of the National Football League

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I recently purchased this book (unfortunately, not through amazon.com - I'd have saved $ 18!), and it is amazing. Everything I ever wanted to know about NFL, AFL, and AAFC players - from the hall of famers to the obscure - was easily found and easily read.

The only drawback? Virtually no statistical information on the "other" leagues (WFL, USFL, and the 1930's versions of the AFL). But as it is, Total Football II is a phenomenal resource.

This book is a must have for all serious football fans. It is the most complete one volume source of information about professional football.

My favorite sections include:

History of the game: The introductory essays on the history of pro football and the complete histories of each team is fascinating and an important context for many of the conventions and the culture of today's game.

History of players: Not only is there a complete roster of every player who has ever played in the National Football
League and it's antecedents, there are more detailed biographies of the "500 greatest players" as determined by the panel of writers responsible for this encyclopedia.

Complete game summaries of and statistics for all the playoffs, Super Bowls, and most important games in league history: I personally found this the most nostalgic reading, as I could remember where I was and who I was watching the playoffs and Super Bowls with.

And much, much more -- some more mundane (essays on player equipment) and some more interesting (history of defunct leagues like the United States Football League (USFL)).

I do have two complaints about the encyclopedia -- one minor and one a glaring omission.

My minor complaint is that they need a better copy editor. I found many typos, especially the detailed information about playoffs and Super Bowls.

My major complaint is that is has a woefully incomplete section detailing the individual records (most rushing yards in a game, etc.) which is a terrible omission. I can find a more complete listing of individual and team records in a sports almanac. A book purporting to be TOTAL FOOTBALL shouldn't need a companion book to round it out and have all the facts one might want at hand. I strongly recommend they improve on this in the next volume.

Don't expect to find a football book you can use exclusively from the rest. This is a good supplement to books like "The Pro Football Encyclopedia" (by Maher/Gill). If you're into statistics this is one of the best to have. Whereas "Pro Football Encyclopedia" has players longest gains, which this book doesn't, this book gives you kickoff and punt return stats for all players, the encyclopedia doesn't. This book is mainly about the NFL. I bought it for the statistics. It's also a good book to use if you want to find out more about a specific player (statistically speaking). Chapters like "The 25 Most Memorable Regular Season Games" and "The 300 Greatest Players" etc.. are not what I got this book for. I would prefer a book that leaves out author's opinions. I've seen games I'll never forget that I knew wouldn't make the list and also players. Although these chapters are somewhat interesting along with others I could live without half this book easily but like I said, it's a good season by season individual stat book that has information other books don't. It mainly depends on what you're buying this book for. There are statistics here excluded from other books but there are stats left out that ARE in other books, like blocked punts for instance, which may not seem to matter to most, but it all depends on what you're buying it for. It has stats other books don't, that's what I bought it for.

This is, as you might expect, an interesting book if you want to settle an argument about which round the 1952 Chicago Bears drafted Tennessee's Andy Kozar in or who was named to the Associated Press All-NFL team in 1985. There aren't that many books around which do that kind of thing, and for that alone, we should be grateful.

The non-reference sections, though, leave a lot to be desired, as you might expect from something which purports to be "The Official Encyclopedia of the NFL". It's all very facile and a little too toadying. The USFL, for instance, is written off as "the short-lived spring league with the expensive stars"; the section title "The NFL on TV" is similarly sycophantic (e.g., "If the price for NFL games is high, their appeal as entertainment programming is unmistakable"), and it reveals little more than the names of the original Monday Night Football commentary team (you mean there are people who buy this kind of book that don't know that kind of thing?) and how much each successive TV package was worth.

There are also rather superfluous sections on footballers in the movies and Super Bowl television commercials, of all things. In a reference book?

I was hoping for season-by-season reviews of each team, and more information about individual regular-season games than just the score. I'd like to know which players were on each team's roster at the start of each season, and which were replacements due to injury, cuts, and so on. Instead I got pages and pages of stuff like "The Best 100 games" and "Top 300 players" sections which weren't at all inspiring - the former because it seems so biased toward the modern (i.e., television) age, and the latter because it seems to serve little purpose other than to invite criticism.

Okay, maybe I'm being a little hard on these guys. Upon reflection, though, I'd have preferred an Unofficial Encyclopedia of the NFL. And if Pro Football Weekly really did claim this was "The Best Football Book Ever," then surely they don't have much of a library.

Being an avid Football fan, Total Football is a dream come true. It gives me fast reference to players and their statistics, positions, high schools, and even hometowns. However, there is one glitch that keeps popping up. After referencing through the book many times, i finally realized that a player must have played in a game in order to have been given credit for being involved in football that year. Therefore, a player could have been not played in a game, or sat out the season on injured reserve, and the book does not give him credit for playing at all. If a player was on a team's roster, but missed the year because of an injury, that should be noted. With the way Total Football is, I wouldn't know if a player was injured for the year, on the roster but didn't see action, or just sat out the year. To me, that's a big deal.

Any facts which is not listed in Total Football 2, is not worth to know! Here you have it all, all managers, all players, all probowlers and so on. You even get every score of every NFL game ever! The only thing that is not in the book is every pre-season result! But if I shall say a word that describes this book, it would be: Touchdown!

For those of you who are looking for every NFL player - even those who never played a game - I suggest rubbing a magic bottle and hoping for a genie, because that'll be the only way you'll find that information. It simply doesn't exist.

While some bellyache that the statistical information isn't organized and re-printed 30 different times in every discernable way, they don't understand that this book is almost 2000 pages long. Repeating all of that information AGAIN would involve hundreds, if not thousands, of additional pages.

Total Football II is by far and away the most complete statistical reference there ever was. No, there are no indexes of high schools or longest punt returns or pre-season, third-stringer touchdown records, but please! This book contains every important stat available.

The articles are written by people with centuries of cumulative years of experience covering and writing about the NFL. Even though your favorite game may not be listed, I can assure you that you probably haven't seen as many as the great writers who created this book did. Keep that in mind before you criticize them for not including Billie Joe Tolliver in their 300 greatest players segment.

This is a reference book, and a darn good one, but they could have trimmed a couple of hundred pages of heft by leaving out the a lot of the subjective content. For example their list of the best 300 players of all time is pure opinion, albiet educated opinion. The section on strategy was outdated almost as soon as it was printed.

That's a minor complaint, though. I use it extensively in research for the book I'm writing. Its guide to the stadiums that teams have used over the years is by far the best, most complete out there (although, another small criticism, they could have summarized the info in a table for quicker reference)

Clearly not for the casual fan, but a great arguement settler for the serious football fan.

By far the best of the "encyclopedia" type sports publications. All players in the history of the league are listed with career stats and info on each. Year by year team records are included. The best reference for fans who play sports simulation games and are interested in the statistics of the players who performed in the pre-merger era. The football edition, to my knowledge, is the only one with the year and career stats of all of the players in league history. The "Who's Who" of football. I can't praise this book enough, excellent.

Total Football is one big mess. Take a look at the Player Register - how do do find anyone?! You have to know that Joe Smith's first name is William - so he ends up between Walt and Wilson Smith! Then those stats - could they possibly be in a worst looking, jumbled format?1

Good info - horrible format. I think I'll check out The Pro Football Encyclopedia.