For the Glory of Their Game: Stories of Life in the NFL by the Men Who Lived It - Hardcover

Whittingham, Richard

9781572436077: For the Glory of Their Game: Stories of Life in the NFL by the Men Who Lived It

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1572436077 ISBN 13: 9781572436077

Publisher: Triumph Books, 2005

Stitching together first-person accounts from players who span the spectrum of playing days, For the Glory of Their Game takes fans not only inside the sport, not only inside specific games, but inside the mind of the men making the action happen. For decades, Richard Whittingham covered professional football as a reporter and researcher and this book stands as the product of all that work, with anecdotes and accounts gathered from such football icons as: Jim Brown, Roger Staubach, Jim McMahon, Bo Jackson, Frank Gifford, Joe Namath, Tony Dorsett, Mike Ditka, and Terry Bradshaw. No other book this fall captures the scope and detail across the decades, from team to team, that For the Glory of Their Game offers casual and diehard fans.

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From the Publisher:

Jim Brown on Technique I would always look for the least amount of resistance. . . . If I had a choice of running around you or over you, I’d go around you. I wanted the yards, not to prove my manhood. Now, if I couldn’t run around you, then we’d have to deal. Then I wanted to hit you as hard as you hit me. No, I wanted to hit you harder. I wanted your nose stinging; bleeding was OK, too. I wanted you flinching and demoralized. The next time you saw me coming, I wanted you to say, "Oh, shit." Bart Starr on the Glamour of the Pro Game At the time, the Packers held their preseason training in Stevens Point, Wisconsin. . . . Meals were provided directly across the street at the YMCA cafeteria. We worked out at nearby East High School, which was also where the Packers played during the regular season. I was shocked when I saw the Packers locker room—33 lockers jammed together in an area no larger than Dad’s garage in Montgomery, [Alabama]. The Packer offices were . . . so small that the coaches had to enter their offices through a side door. Our gear was issued to us from a shed near the practice field. The condition of the equipment was far below what I had expected. Gary Knafelc, a wide receiver, recalled, "I had better stuff than that in high school." In fact . . . Gary had his dad send him the pads he used in the College All-Star Game. He wore them the entire season. Mike Ditka on Negotiating with George Halas One of my favorite stories is about Ed O’Bradovich negotiating with him. Ed made up his mind that he had to have a certain amount of money. He said he was worth a raise of $4,000. The old man told him how bad he’d played and how much money the Bears were losing. Ed lowered it to $3,000. Then Halas would accuse Ed of whoring around and hanging around with the wrong crowd and not doing his calisthenics properly. Ed lowered it to $2,000. Halas would go on and get it down in Ed’s mind to $1,000. By the time they were through, Ed stood up and said, "Hey, Coach, let me give you a check for $500."

From the Inside Flap:

"Pro football is like nuclear warfare. There are no winners—only survivors." —Frank Gifford

Professional football in the new millennium is still basically the same game that Red Grange, Sammy Baugh, Otto Graham, Dick Butkus, and Roger Staubach played. And yet it isn’t. Exploding salaries, increasing specialization, rules changes, and myriad other factors have conspired to change football permanently in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. For the Glory of Their Game harkens back to the era before these changes, celebrating the glorious postwar years through the early eighties, when, as Mike Ditka so succinctly and perceptively put it, "We played for the love of the game." Through the compelling words of many of the greatest players and coaches from that era, this book recreates in dramatic and intriguing fashion what football was like in the fifties, sixties, seventies, and early eighties. Read what Alex Karras says about Big Daddy Lipscomb, what would-be tacklers thought about the dazzle of Gale Sayers, and what running backs had to say about the painful encounters with Dick Butkus and Jack Lambert. These personal stories reveal players’ views on Bobby Layne, the bravado of Joe Namath, and the out-and-out meanness of Conrad Dobler. Included are the sad tale of the ill-fated Brian Piccolo, the hilarious reminiscences of Art Donovan, and the outrageous observations of Hollywood Henderson. Football in this era was raw. The players were a raucous group, as uninhibited off the field as they were savage on it. They loved the game, no doubt about it; they loved the fellowship and the camaraderie of playing on a team with others whose goals were the same as theirs. It was intense, but it was, above all, fun. The stories, anecdotes, and behind-the-scenes insights that make up For the Glory of Their Game reveal just how much fun they had.

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