About Three Bricks Shy-- and the Load Filled Up

About Three Bricks Shy-- and the Load Filled Up PDF Author: Roy Blount
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780822958345
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 349

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Book Description
This is the thirtieth-anniversary edition of a book long considered a classic and one of Sports Illustrated's Top 100 Sports Books of All Time. The story of the 1973 Pittsburgh Steelers--a team that was super, but missed the bowl.

About Three Bricks Shy-- and the Load Filled Up

About Three Bricks Shy-- and the Load Filled Up PDF Author: Roy Blount
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780822958345
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 349

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Book Description
This is the thirtieth-anniversary edition of a book long considered a classic and one of Sports Illustrated's Top 100 Sports Books of All Time. The story of the 1973 Pittsburgh Steelers--a team that was super, but missed the bowl.

About Three Bricks Shy of a Load

About Three Bricks Shy of a Load PDF Author: Roy Blount
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1480457760
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 474

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Book Description
Now celebrating its fortieth anniversary, Roy Blount Jr.’s classic account of the 1973 Pittsburgh Steelers—a team on the cusp of once-in-a-generation greatness The Pittsburgh Steelers of the 1970s are mentioned in any conversation about the greatest dynasties in NFL history. A year before Pittsburgh’s first Super Bowl victory launched a decade of domination, Roy Blount Jr. spent a season traveling with the team, recording the ups and downs, both large and small, in the lives of men who would soon reach the pinnacle of success in their sport. He covers everything from the birth of the “Steel Curtain” defense to the unique connection the people of Pittsburgh had with their hard-nosed team. Interspersed with vivid depictions of players like Terry Bradshaw, “Mean” Joe Greene, and Ernie “Fats” Holmes, as well as the team owners, the Rooney clan, About Three Bricks Shy of a Load harks back to a bygone era when offensive linemen could weigh about the same as the backs they blocked for, when the highest-paying team’s highest-paid player—Bradshaw—made $400,000, and when one team was able to win four Super Bowls in six years—a feat that remains unrivaled today. Uproariously funny and brilliantly written, About Three Bricks Shy of a Load was named one of the Top 100 Sports Books of All Time by Sports Illustrated.

About Three Bricks Shy...And the Load Filled Up

About Three Bricks Shy...And the Load Filled Up PDF Author: Roy Blount, Jr.
Publisher: Ballantine Books
ISBN: 0307829928
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 580

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Book Description
Any number of writers could spend an entire season with an NFL team, from the first day of training camp until the last pick of the draft, and come up with an interesting book. But only Roy Blount Jr. could capture the pain, the joy, the fears, the humor—in short, the heart—of a championship team. In 1973, the Pittsburgh Steelers were super, but missed the bowl. Blount’s portrait of a team poised to dominate the NFL for more than a decade recounts the gridiron accomplishments and off-the-field lives of players, coaches, wives, fans, and owners.

Their Life's Work

Their Life's Work PDF Author: Gary M. Pomerantz
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1451691629
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 480

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Book Description
Drawn from personal interviews with the players themselves, a chronicle of the 1970s Pittsburgh Steelers, who won an unprecedented and unmatched four Super Bowls in six years.

Alphabetter Juice, or The Joy of Text

Alphabetter Juice, or The Joy of Text PDF Author: Roy Blount
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1429922788
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
Fresh-squeezed Lexicology, with Twists No man of letters savors the ABC's, or serves them up, like language-loving humorist Roy Blount Jr. His glossary, from adhominy to zizz, is hearty, full bodied, and out to please discriminating palates coarse and fine. In 2008, he celebrated the gists, tangs, and energies of letters and their combinations in Alphabet Juice, to wide acclaim. Now, Alphabetter Juice. Which is better. This book is for anyone—novice wordsmith, sensuous reader, or career grammarian—who loves to get physical with words. What is the universal sign of disgust, ew, doing in beautiful and cutie? Why is toadless, but not frogless, in the Oxford English Dictionary? How can the U. S. Supreme Court find relevance in gollywoddles? Might there be scientific evidence for the sonicky value of hunch? And why would someone not bother to spell correctly the very word he is trying to define on Urbandictionary.com? Digging into how locutions evolve, and work, or fail, Blount draws upon everything from The Tempest to The Wire. He takes us to Iceland, for salmon-watching with a "girl gillie," and to Georgian England, where a distinguished etymologist bites off more of a "giantess" than he can chew. Jimmy Stewart appears, in connection with kludge and the bombing of Switzerland. Litigation over supercalifragilisticexpialidocious leads to a vintage werewolf movie; news of possum-tossing, to metanarrative. As Michael Dirda wrote in The Washington Post Book World, "The immensely likeable Blount clearly possesses what was called in the Italian Renaissance ‘sprezzatura,' that rare and enviable ability to do even the most difficult things without breaking a sweat." Alphabetter Juice is brimming with sprezzatura. Have a taste.

NFL Confidential

NFL Confidential PDF Author: Johnny Anonymous
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062422421
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
Meet Johnny Anonymous. No, that’s not his real name. But he is a real, honest-to-goodness pro football player. A member of the League. A slave, if you will, to the NFL. For the millions of you out there who wouldn’t know what to do on Sundays if there wasn’t football, who can’t imagine life without the crunch of helmets ringing in your ears, or who look forward to the Super Bowl more than your birthday, Johnny Anonymous decided to tell his story. Written during the 2014–2015 season, this is a year in the life of the National Football League. This is a year in the life of a player—not a marquee name, but a guy on the roster—gutting it out through training camp up to the end of the season, wondering every minute if he’s going to get playing time or get cut. Do you want to know how players destroy their bodies and their colons to make weight? Do you wonder what kind of class and racial divides really exist in NFL locker rooms? Do you want to know what NFL players and teams really think about gay athletes or how the League is really dealing with crime and violence against women by its own players? Do you wonder about the psychological warfare between players and coaches on and off the field? About how much time players spend on Tinder or sexting when not on the field? About how star players degrade or humiliate second- and third-string players? What players do about the headaches and memory loss that appear after every single game? This book will tell you all of this and so much more. Johnny Anonymous holds nothing back in this whip-smart commentary that only an insider, and a current player, could bring. Part truth-telling personal narrative, part darkly funny exposé, NFL Confidential gives football fans a look into a world they’d give anything to see, and nonfans a wild ride through the strange, quirky, and sometimes disturbing realities of America’s favorite game. Here is a truly unaffiliated look at the business, guts, and glory of the game, all from the perspective of an underdog who surprises everyone—especially himself. JOHNNY ANONYMOUS is a four-year offensive lineman for the NFL. Under another pseudonym, he’s also a contributor for the comedy powerhouse Funny Or Die. You can pretty much break NFL players down into three categories. Twenty percent do it because they’re true believers. They’re smart enough to do something else if they wanted, and the money is nice and all, but really they just love football. They love it, they live it, they believe in it, it’s their creed. They would be nothing without it. Hell, they’d probably pay the League to play if they had to! These guys are obviously psychotic. Thirty percent of them do it just for the money. So they could do something else—sales, desk jockey, accountant, whatever—but they play football because the money is just so damn good. And it is good. And last of all, 49.99 percent play football because, frankly, it’s the only thing they know how to do. Even if they wanted to do something “normal,” they couldn’t. All they’ve ever done in their lives is play football—it was their way out, either of the hood or the deep woods country. They need football. If football didn’t exist, they’d be homeless, in a gang, or maybe in prison. Then there’s me. I’m part of my own little weird minority, that final 0.01 percent. We’re such a minority, we don’t even count as a category. We’re the professional football players who flat-out hate professional football.

Chuck Noll

Chuck Noll PDF Author: Michael MacCambridge
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN: 0822982803
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 451

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Book Description
Chuck Noll won four Super Bowls and presided over one of the greatest football dynasties in history, the Pittsburgh Steelers of the '70s. Later inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, his achievements as a competitor and a coach are the stuff of legend. But Noll always remained an intensely private and introspective man, never revealing much of himself as a person or as a coach, not even to the players and fans who revered him. Chuck Noll did not need a dramatic public profile to be the catalyst for one of the greatest transformations in sports history. In the nearly four decades before he was hired, the Pittsburgh Steelers were the least successful team in professional football, never winning so much as a division title. After Noll's arrival, his quiet but steely leadership quickly remolded the team into the most accomplished in the history of professional football. And what he built endured well beyond his time with the Steelers—who have remained one of America's great NFL teams, accumulating a total of six Super Bowls, eight AFC championships, and dozens of division titles and playoff berths. In this penetrating biography, based on deep research and hundreds of interviews, Michael MacCambridge takes the measure of the man, painting an intimate portrait of one of the most important figures in American football history. He traces Noll's journey from a Depression-era childhood in Cleveland, where he first played the game in a fully integrated neighborhood league led by an African-American coach and then seriously pursued the sport through high school and college. Eventually, Noll played both defensive and offensive positions professionally for the Browns, before discovering that his true calling was coaching. MacCambridge reveals that Noll secretly struggled with and overcame epilepsy to build the career that earned him his place as "the Emperor" of Pittsburgh during the Steelers' dynastic run in the 1970s, while in his final years, he battled Alzheimer's in the shelter of his caring and protective family. Noll's impact went well beyond one football team. When he arrived, the city of steel was facing a deep crisis, as the dramatic decline of Pittsburgh's lifeblood industry traumatized an entire generation. "Losing," Noll said on his first day on the job, "has nothing to do with geography." Through his calm, confident leadership of the Steelers and the success they achieved, the people of Pittsburgh came to believe that winning was possible, and their recovery of confidence owed a lot to the Steeler's new coach. The famous urban renaissance that followed can only be understood by grasping what Noll and his team meant to the people of the city. The man Pittsburghers could never fully know helped them see themselves better. Chuck Noll: His Life's Work tells the story of a private man in a very public job. It explores the family ties that built his character, the challenges that defined his course, and the love story that shaped his life. By understanding the man himself, we can at last clearly see Noll's profound influence on the city, players, coaches, and game he loved. They are all, in a real sense, heirs to the football team Chuck Noll built.

Parcells

Parcells PDF Author: Bill Parcells
Publisher: Crown Archetype
ISBN: 0385346360
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 714

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Book Description
Bill Parcells may be the most iconic football coach of our time. During his decades-long tenure as an NFL coach, he turned failing franchises into contenders. He led the ailing New York Giants to two Super Bowl victories, turned the New England Patriots into an NFL powerhouse, reinvigorated the New York Jets, brought the Dallas Cowboys back to life, and was most recently enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Taking readers behind the scenes with one of the most influential and fascinating coaches the NFL has ever known, PARCELLS will take a look back at this coach’s long, storied and influential career, offer a nuanced portrayal of the complex man behind the coach, and examine the inner workings of the NFL.

Be Sweet

Be Sweet PDF Author: Roy Blount (Jr.)
Publisher: Mariner Books
ISBN: 9780156006828
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
The famed humorist tackles motherhood, family ties, and the nature of being Southern and funny in this bittersweet memoir unlike any other.

The Incomplete Book of Running

The Incomplete Book of Running PDF Author: Peter Sagal
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
ISBN: 1451696256
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
Peter Sagal, the host of NPR’s Wait Wait...Don’t Tell Me! and a popular columnist for Runner’s World, shares “commentary and reflection about running with a deeply felt personal story, this book is winning, smart, honest, and affecting. Whether you are a runner or not, it will move you” (Susan Orlean). On the verge of turning forty, Peter Sagal—brainiac Harvard grad, short bald Jew with a disposition towards heft, and a sedentary star of public radio—started running seriously. And much to his own surprise, he kept going, faster and further, running fourteen marathons and logging tens of thousands of miles on roads, sidewalks, paths, and trails all over the United States and the world, including the 2013 Boston Marathon, where he crossed the finish line moments before the bombings. In The Incomplete Book of Running, Sagal reflects on the trails, tracks, and routes he’s traveled, from the humorous absurdity of running charity races in his underwear—in St. Louis, in February—or attempting to “quiet his colon” on runs around his neighborhood—to the experience of running as a guide to visually impaired runners, and the triumphant post-bombing running of the Boston Marathon in 2014. With humor and humanity, Sagal also writes about the emotional experience of running, body image, the similarities between endurance sports and sadomasochism, the legacy of running as passed down from parent to child, and the odd but extraordinary bonds created between strangers and friends. The result is “a brilliant book about running…What Peter runs toward is strength, understanding, endurance, acceptance, faith, hope, and charity” (P.J. O’Rourke).