"One of the most insightful books ever written about college football." — The New York TimesNow revised and updated by the author, MEAT MARKET proves that in college football, the game off the field is more brutal than the one on the field. In this shattering expose, Bruce Feldman goes into the war rooms to show who stands to profit when champions get built, and at what cost.A college football program can become a multi-million dollar industry for its school, but onl...

With unparalleled access to Heisman Trophy-winning phenom Johnny Manziel, Bruce Feldman has written a modern-day tale about the making of the next superstars in football's most important position: the quarterback.In the world of modern football, with NFL teams worth more than a billion dollars, no position defines a franchise like the quarterback. The QB is the story of a year in the making of those star players, and of the most significant year in QB deve...

A behind-the-scenes tour of the ups and downs of an NFL season focuses on the Baltimore Ravens and reveals the lesser-known aspects of the professional league, from the dangerous conditions under which athletes are expected to train to the unrelenting pressures faced by coaches and players.In the NFL there is only one certainty: that every day, someone will have to be the Next Man Up. Football is an unrelentingly punishing sport, played and practiced at undiminishe...

One man's odyssey into the brutal hive of the National Football LeagueAs an unsigned free agent who rose through the practice squad to the starting lineup of the Denver Broncos, Nate Jackson took the path of thousands of unknowns before him to carve out a professional football career twice as long as the average player. Through his story recounted here—from scouting combines to preseason cuts to byzantine film studies to glorious touchdown catches—even knowledgeable football fans w...

A behind-the-scenes look at the high-pressure lives of NFL head coachesCoaching Confidential chronicles a year in the life of an NFL head coach. But not just one head coach. A composite portrait is drawn through interviews with at least 20 current and former head coaches (including Super Bowl winners such as Bill Parcells, Tom Coughlin, Jimmy Johnson, Tony Dungy, Sean Payton, Mike Shanahan, Dick Vermeil, Mike Holmgren, Brian Billick, and Joe Gibbs), taking...

Bill Belichick is one of the titans of today’s game of football. Now, sports commentator and bestselling author Michael Holley follows three NFL teams—the New England Patriots, Kansas City Chiefs, and Atlanta Falcons—from training camp 2010 through the Super Bowl and into the April draft, opening a new window into Belichick’s influence on the game. This one-of-a-kind exploration takes football fans behind the scenes of the most popular sport in America, with unprecedented insider access to...

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the acclaimed bestselling author comes a riveting journey through the world of minor-league baseball“Terrific…Reading this book will make you fall in love with baseball all over again.”—The Denver PostMinor league baseball is quintessentially American: small towns, small stadiums, $5 tickets, $2 hot dogs, the never-ending possibility of making it big. But looming above it all is always the real deal: Majo...

Professional football in the last half century has been a sport marked by relentless innovation. For fans determined to keep up with the changes that have transformed the game, close examination of the coachingfootage is a must. In The Games That Changed the Game, Ron Jaworski—pro football’s #1 game-tape guru—breaks down the film from seven of the most momentous contests of the last fifty years, giving readers a drive-by-drive, play-by-play guide to the evolutionary leaps that def...

Pitchers are the heart of baseball, and John Feinstein tells the story of the game today through one season and two great pitchers working in the crucible of the New York media market. Tom Glavine and Mike Mussina have seen it all in the Major Leagues and both entered 2007 in search of individual milestones and one more shot at The World Series-Glavine with the Mets, Mussina five miles away with the Yankees. The two veterans experience very different seasons -- one on a team dealing with t...

A Shelf Awareness Best Book of the YearNCAA football is big business. Every Saturday millions of people file into massive stadiums or tune in on television as "athlete-students" give everything they've got to make their team a success. Billions of dollars now flow into the game. But what is the true cost? The players have no share in the oceans of money. And once the lights go down, the glitter doesn't shine so brightly. Filled with mind-blowing details of major NCAA football scand...

The New York Times bestselling author of Sweetness delivers the first all-encompassing account of the 1980s Los Angeles Lakers, one of professional sports’ most-revered—and dominant—dynasties.The Los Angeles Lakers of the 1980s personified the flamboyance and excess of the decade over which they reigned. Beginning with the arrival of Earvin “Magic” Johnson as the number-one overall pick of the 1979 draft, the Lake...

Over 500,000 hockey fans follow Bob McKenzie on Twitter and millions more on TSN—no one has the access or breadth and depth of experience when it comes to the hockey.Now in his very first book on the NHL, Bob goes behind the scenes, covering the inside stories, the lesser-known personalities and the events that shape Canada’s game. He talks to Bobby Orr about Connor McDavid (touted as “the next Crosby”), reveals the actual stats that NHL coaches and scouts use, and explores what it...