The War on Football

The War on Football
Author: Daniel Flynn
Publisher: Regnery Publishing
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2013-08-19
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 1621571556

We've all been hearing rumors about sacking America's beloved game of football—and it's time someone spoke out against the witch hunt. In The War on Football: Saving America's Game, Dan Flynn debunks the haters and tells us why America needs football.

War Football

War Football
Author: Chris Serb
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 295
Release: 2019-06-26
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 1538124858

During World War I, American army camps, navy stations and marine barracks formed football's first true all-star teams, competing against each other and top colleges while raising millions of dollars for the war effort. More than fifty college football hall-of-famers, dozens of future generals, and two Medal of Honor winners would play for, coach, or promote military teams during the war, including Dwight Eisenhower, Walter Camp, and George Halas. In War Football: World War I and the Birth of the NFL, Chris Serb recounts a fascinating chapter of military and sports history. He details three of the best but long-forgotten seasons of American football, when college amateurs mixed with blue-collar pros on the field of play. These games showed investors a lucrative market for teams of post-collegiate stars and made players realize that their football careers didn’t have to end after college. Soon the barriers to professionalism began to fall, and within two years of the Armistice the National Football League was born. War Football explores for the first time this lost chapter of sports history and makes a direct connection between World War I and the founding of the NFL. Seven future Hall-of-Famers led the charge of more than 200 military veterans who played in, coached for, and shaped the character of the young league. Football fans, sports historians, and military historians alike will find this book a fascinating read.

The Soccer War

The Soccer War
Author: Ryszard Kapuscinski
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2013-08-21
Genre: History
ISBN: 0804151105

Part diary and part reportage, The Soccer War is a remarkable chronicle of war in the late twentieth century. Between 1958 and 1980, working primarily for the Polish Press Agency, Kapuscinski covered twenty-seven revolutions and coups in Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East. Here, with characteristic cogency and emotional immediacy, he recounts the stories behind his official press dispatches—searing firsthand accounts of the frightening, grotesque, and comically absurd aspects of life during war. The Soccer War is a singular work of journalism.

When Football Went to War

When Football Went to War
Author: Todd Anton
Publisher: Triumph Books
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2013-10-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1623683092

More than any other sport, professional football contributed fighting men to the battles of World War II, and the 22 or so players or former players that lost their lives are among the riveting stories told in this tribute to football's war heroes that spans many decades and military conflicts. The National Football League counts three Congressional Medal of Honor recipients among its honors, along with numerous Silver Stars, Distinguished Flying Crosses, and Purple Hearts. When Football Went to War offers a ground-breaking look at football—college and professional football alike—and many of the wartime heroes who came off the field of play to fight for their country. Detailed biographies of those who gave their lives are supplemented by many other stories of wartime heroism, from World War I through to Pat Tillman's tragic death in the Global War on Terrorism. Football has become the most popular sport in America and this heartfelt book honors the many sacrifices of NFL athletes over the years in service of their country.

War Game

War Game
Author: Michael Foreman
Publisher: Pavilion Children's
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2006-10-23
Genre: Young Adult Nonfiction
ISBN: 9781843650898

A special lavishly illustrated new edition of Michael Foreman's classic story. It's 1914 when everything changes for a group of bys growing up and playing football in the Suffolk countryside. Far away, in a place called Sarajevo, an Archduke has been killed and a web of global events results in a call for all British men to do their duty 'for King and Country' and join the army to fight the germans overseas. The boys sign up for what sounds like an adventure and a chance to see the world. After basic training the boys sail to France where they find themselves fighting on the front line. Living in the trenches in constant fear for their lives is nothing like they expected and only a bombed-out wasteland, no-man's-land, separates their trences from those of their German enemies. Then, on Christmas Day, something remarkable happens as the German and British armies stop fighting and meet in the middle of no-man's-land. The enemies talk, play football and become friends. But the war isn't over, the two sides resume fighting and the group of Suffolk lads are ordered to charge across no-man's-land...

European Football During the Second World War

European Football During the Second World War
Author: Verlag W. Kohlhammer GmbH
Publisher: Peter Lang Limited, International Academic Publishers
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2018
Genre: Soccer
ISBN: 9781788744744

In this edited volume, an international team of authors examines the development of football during the Second World War in a dozen European states. The volume concludes with essays on the representation of the topic in the arts and the media.

Scrimmage for War

Scrimmage for War
Author: Bill McWilliams
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 399
Release: 2019-09-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 0811768732

In late November 1941, two college football teams—Willamette University and San Jose State—set sail for Honolulu for a series of games with the University of Hawaii. Instead of a festive few weeks of football and fun, the players found themselves caught up in the first days of the United States’ war with Japan. For two weeks after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, the young men were recruited to dig and man trenches, string barbed wire, guard hotels, and join patrols as martial law took hold in Honolulu. They arrived home on Christmas Day after a dangerous journey back across the Pacific. Almost all of the players would go on to fight in the war. This is a different kind of war story, blending battle and gridiron—along with a strong dose of human interest, of college-aged young men unexpectedly caught up in the world war. This is a story of war and football, of Pearl Harbor and the first moments of the U.S. in World War II. It is a story of the very first days of World War II as experienced by a group of young men who witnessed it firsthand—and would soon be fighting it (indeed, who were already fighting it). This is a story of heroism, courage, self-sacrifice, and duty in the maelstrom of war.

Ajax, the Dutch, the War

Ajax, the Dutch, the War
Author: Simon Kuper
Publisher: Hachette UK
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2012-09-11
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 1568587244

When most people think about the Netherlands, images of tulips and peaceful pot smoking residents spring to mind. Bring up soccer, and most will think of Johan Cruyuff, the Dutch player thought to rival Pele in preternatural skill, and Ajax, one of the most influential soccer clubs in the world whose academy system for young athletes has been replicated around the globe (and most notably by Barcelona and the 2010 world champions, Spain). But as international bestselling author Simon Kuper writes in Ajax, The Dutch, The War: Soccer in Europe During the Second World War, the story of soccer in Holland cannot be understood without investigating what really occurred in this country during WWII. For decades, the Dutch have enjoyed the reputation of having a "good war." The myth is even resonant in Israel where Ajax is celebrated. The fact is, the Jews suffered shocking persecution at the hands of Dutch collaborators. Holland had the second largest Nazi movement in Europe outside Germany, and in no other country except Poland was so high a percentage of Jews deported. Kuper challenges Holland's historical amnesia and uses soccer -- particularly the experience of Ajax, a club long supported by Amsterdam's Jews -- as a window on wartime Holland and Europe. Through interviews with Resistance fighters, survivors, wartime soccer players and more, Kuper uncovers this history that has been ignored, and also finds out why the Holocaust had a profound effect on soccer in the country. Ajax produced Cruyuff but was also built by members of the Dutch resistance and Holocaust survivors. It became a surrogate family for many who survived the war and its method for producing unparalleled talent became the envy of clubs around the world. In this passionate, haunting and moving work of forensic reporting, Kuper tells the breathtaking story of how Dutch Jews survived the unspeakable and came to play a strong role in the rise of the most exciting and revolutionary style of soccer -- "Total Football" -- the world had ever seen.

Point of Attack

Point of Attack
Author: Liam Shannon
Publisher:
Total Pages: 207
Release: 2021-04-18
Genre:
ISBN:

THE ULTIMATE STRATEGIES, THE GREATEST GAME. In 2002 Brazil national team coach Luiz Felipe Scolari actively used The Art of War for Brazil's successful World Cup campaign. Not only did Scolari read the book and apply its strategies, but on some occasions he actually slipped copies of the text underneath his players' doors during the night. Commenting on his use of The Art of War after the World Cup win, Scolari confirmed "sometimes a different approach like this can help." Quite the understatement. Composed in the late 5th century BCE, The Art of War by Chinese general Sun Tzu is the most well-known and well-respected work on military strategy and philosophy in history. Proving its timeless brilliance, the now 2400-year-old text is still used in teaching strategy and philosophy at the leading military academies today. The Art of War is used as instructional material at the US Military Academy at West Point and it is also recommended reading for Royal Officer cadets at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst. Business Insider magazine names The Art of War as one of the top 25 most influential books ever written, and highly respected astrophysicist and social commentator Neil deGrasse Tyson identifies Sun Tzu's work as one of the "seven books every intelligent person on the planet should read." The Art of War and Sun Tzu have been referenced and quoted in various movies and television shows, including "Wall Street," "The Rock," "The Family Man" "Bandits," and the James Bond movie "Die Another Day". In television, The Art of War has been referenced countless times, including in two of the most popular and most critically acclaimed shows of all time: "The Sopranos" (season 3, episode 9) and "Breaking Bad (season 2, episode 7). Most significantly for this project, The Art of War has been applied in sports, and not just by Scolari. NFL coach Bill Belichick, the coach with the most Super Bowl victories of all time, has stated on multiple occasions his admiration for The Art of War, with one specific headline reading "Belichick explains how advice from Sun Tzu's 'The Art of War' helped build the Patriots dynasty." The advocation for Sun Tzu's strategies in all walks of life, including sports, could hardly be higher.

The Association Game

The Association Game
Author: Matthew Taylor
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 529
Release: 2013-10-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 1317870085

The story of British football's journey from public school diversion to mass media entertainment is a remarkable one. The Association Game traces British football from the establishment of the earliest clubs in the nineteenth century to its place as one of the prominent and commercialised leisure industries at the beginning of the twenty first century. It covers supporters and fandom, status and culture, big business, the press and electronic media and development in playing styles, tactics and rules. This is the only up to date book on the history of British football, covering the twentieth century shift from amateur to professional and whole of the British Isles, not just England.