Touchdown: An American Obsession

American football is the most popular, and controversial, sport in the United States, and a massive industry. The NFL s revenues are over $13 billion annually. The Super Bowl is watched by half of US television households and is televised in over 150 countries. Touchdown: An American Obsession is the first comprehensive guide to the history and culture of the sport, covering US college football as well as professional football worldwide. The editors and authors are among the world s leading sports scholars. They cover race, ethnicity, religion, gender, social class, and globalization, as well as recent scandals and controversies, the importance of television, and the art and aesthetics of the game. Touchdown: An American Obsession is a readable, authoritative guide for Americans as well as an introduction for people around the world.

Gems and Pfister know enough about American football to realize that no single person could write a definitive history of the sport. They ve used their own vast knowledge of the field of sport history to recruit a score of talented experts who have produced what may well be that elusive definitive history. Awesome. --Allen Guttmann, Amherst College, author of Sports: The First Five Millennia and other books, recipient of the first President s Award for Sports Studies from the International Olympic Committee

Touchdown tells the story of the rise and importance of American football in the USA and beyond. Covering the game from youth to professional leagues, the role of gender, economics and globalization. The editors are world leading sport historians and Gems and Pfister have assembled an all-star cast to deliver a comprehensive analysis of the USA s most followed sport. Touchdown is essential reading for fans and scholars alike. --John Nauright, editor of SportsWorld: Global Markets and Impact of Sport

Two esteemed sports historians bring an academic perspective to the most popular of American sports. A multi-authored book, Touchdown is comprehensive, covering football in all it guises youth, high school, college, professional, and also examining all its warts social problems, concussions, economic problems. Particularly interesting is the last section of the book focusing on American football in other countries. Get this book you ll learn a lot. --Bill Mallon, MD, past-president and co-founder, International Society of Olympic Historians