Review by Booklist Review
Jerry Rice is arguably the NFL's greatest receiver of all time. In 2015, he and Randy O. Williams coauthored 50 Years, 50 Moments, an entertaining history of the first 50 Super Bowls. This follow-up offers a cleverly organized overview of the NFL's first 100 years. It's broken down into four quarters, like an NFL game. Each 25-year period features profiles of the era's greatest players, coaches, and trends. There are also sidebars in which the authors focus on a particular trend. The first quarter also includes a chapter on the evolution of equipment, from leather helmets to more-solid headgear and face masks, allowing players to keep most of their teeth. There's a great chapter on the evolution of placekicking, from the days of the 16-man rosters, when somebody had to do it, to the introduction of the modern sidewinder, a variation of soccer's free kick. It's a daunting task to compress 100 years of history into just under 500 pages with any coherency, but Rice and Williams manage the task ably. It's a fun read and very informative, nicely augmented by black-and-white and color photos.--Wes Lukowsky Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Pro football superstar Rice and sportswriter Williams (coauthors, 50 Years, 50 Moments: The Most Unforgettable Plays in Super Bowl History) fumble with this poorly organized overview of NFL history. The objective is a worthy one--to provide an accessible look at a century of the NFL and introduce present-day fans to the origins of professional football and the significant players, coaches, and owners from its past. The authors divide their timeline into four quarters and insert sections on random topics throughout regardless of era: a history of quarterbacks, for instance, features Peyton Manning and Tom Brady in the second quarter (1945--1969). Topical issues--such as violence by players (an attack by Charlie Waters on fans who'd thrown a beer bottle at his teammate is treated as a joke) and concussions--are superficially covered. The authors claim Otto Graham to be the greatest quarterback in history, yet omit him from their choices for the roster of best of his time. Don Shula manages to be named best coach for both the third and fourth quarters of the NFL's history, despite his retirement from coaching the Miami Dolphins in 1995, just when that last quarter began, and during the trophy-laden career of the New England Patriots' Bill Belichick. This is a missed opportunity likely to disappoint both serious and casual fans. (Oct.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Hall of Fame wide receiver Rice and sportswriter Williams (co-authors: 50 Years, 50 Moments: The Most Unforgettable Plays in Super Bowl History, 2015) turn in a lively history of the NFL.A century ago, George Halas, the legendary Bears coach, "arguably the most influential figure in the history of professional football," caught a train to Ohio and created a league, the American Professional Football Association, made up of teams from Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and New York. Most of those teamsthe Muncie Flyers and Rochester Jeffersons, anyone?no longer exist, but the league itself evolved, and with it football became increasingly popular not just in pro stadiums, but also in high school and college. Early football wasn't pretty: It was a mud-spattered mess, made messier by the fact that the first players didn't have helmetsand many grew their hair long in the belief that "a thick shock of hair would help absorb the shock of collisions." The authors are comprehensive in their coverage, explaining the necessary partnership of quarterbacks and receiversyou can't have greats of either unless you have greats of bothand the machinations of the draft, with a roster of the best of all time. Rice and Williams serve up a rogues' gallery, taking in the great and the forgotten alike. The pace of the narrative is a little herky-jerky, switching from anecdote to stats and brief biographies that threaten to induce chronological whiplash; the book could benefit from both streamlining and a little more Ken Burns-like splashiness, given the occasion. But there are plenty of locker-room stories that are worth the price of admissione.g., Detroit Lions QB Bobby Layne's habit of sending rookies out to buy beer just ahead of curfew, which was sure to bring on a fine, since they "couldn't refuse the best, most influential player on the team," and Rice's own habit, maddening to equipment managers, of trying on every pair of pants in the place before a game: "Everything had to be spanking new."A treat for gridiron fans. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
