The Football Fan's Manifesto

The Football Fan's Manifesto PDF Author: Michael Tunison
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061933554
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
Popular football blogger Michael Tunison of KissingSuzyKolber.com offers the no-hold-barred rules and bylaws that every football fan should know in The Football Fan’s Manifesto. With humor and tough love, this It Books paperback original takes readers through the essential rules of fandom, such as picking a favorite team, and teaches them how to be true football fans.

The Football Fan's Manifesto

The Football Fan's Manifesto PDF Author: Michael Tunison
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061933554
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 340

Get Book

Book Description
Popular football blogger Michael Tunison of KissingSuzyKolber.com offers the no-hold-barred rules and bylaws that every football fan should know in The Football Fan’s Manifesto. With humor and tough love, this It Books paperback original takes readers through the essential rules of fandom, such as picking a favorite team, and teaches them how to be true football fans.

Against Football

Against Football PDF Author: Steve Almond
Publisher: Melville House
ISBN: 1612194168
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description
A New York Times Best Seller “Powerful...an important read." —Publishers Weekly New York Times bestselling author Steve Almond takes on America’s biggest sacred cow: football In Against Football, Steve Almond details why, after forty years as a fan, he can no longer watch the game he still loves. Using a synthesis of memoir, reportage, and cultural critique, Almond asks a series of provocative questions: • Does our addiction to football foster a tolerance for violence, greed, racism, and homophobia? • What does it mean that our society has transmuted the intuitive physical joys of childhood—run, leap, throw, tackle—into a billion-dollar industry? • How did a sport that causes brain damage become such an important emblem for our institutions of higher learning? There has never been a book that exposes the dark underside of America’s favorite game with such searing candor.

Fans of the World, Unite!

Fans of the World, Unite! PDF Author: Stephen F. Ross
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 080476977X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
Fans of baseball, football, basketball, and hockey have long been exploited and oppressed by the monopolistic practices of team owners. The time has come for a revolution in the organization of major U.S. sports! Fans of the World, Unite! is a clarion call to sports fans. Appealing to anyone who is in despair due to the greed and incompetence of team owners, this book proposes a significant restructuring of sports leagues. It sets out a rational program for a revolution that will serve the best interests of the fans and of the sport itself. But Stephen F. Ross and Stefan Szymanski are no Marxists: they show how a revolution in the organization of sports might even benefit the owners. By harnessing the power of markets, sports leagues can be made both more responsive to the needs of the fans, and more efficient. Ross and Szymanski have spent many years evaluating the ways in which leagues work across the globe. Drawing on their extensive study of leagues, the authors boil down their plan to two major reforms. Borrowing from NASCAR, they propose that team owners should not own sports leagues as well. Rather, league ownership should be separate. Their second proposal is drawn from soccer: introduce competition through a promotion and relegation system. In this type of system, the worst teams in the league are kicked out at the end of the season and replaced by the best performing teams in the next division down. This gives poor performing teams incentive to step up their game, and allows fresh blood to enter the leagues if the poor performers fail to do so. The main goal of these reforms is to align the financial interest of those who own the league with the best interests of the fans and the sport. Having laid out the problem and the solution, the authors skillfully address practical implications of introducing their scheme, suggesting how leagues might at least make some changes, if not all of those suggested. The time for change has come! Armed with this book, and with fairness on their side, fans can set forth to begin a revolution.

The Matheny Manifesto

The Matheny Manifesto PDF Author: Mike Matheny
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 055344672X
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
St. Louis Cardinals manager Mike Matheny's New York Times bestselling manifesto about what parents, coaches, and athletes get wrong about sports; what we can do better; and how sports can teach eight keys to success in sports and life. Mike Matheny was just forty-one, without professional managerial experience and looking for a next step after a successful career as a Major League catcher, when he succeeded the legendary Tony La Russa as manager of the St. Louis Cardinals in 2012. While Matheny has enjoyed immediate success, leading the Cards to the postseason four times in his first four years−a Major League record−people have noticed something else about his life, something not measured in day-to-day results. Instead, it’s based on a frankly worded letter he wrote to the parents of a Little League team he coached, a cry for change that became an Internet sensation and eventually a “manifesto.” The tough-love philosophy Matheny expressed in the letter contained his throwback beliefs that authority should be respected, discipline and hard work rewarded, spiritual faith cultivated, family made a priority, and humility considered a virtue. In The Matheny Manifesto, he builds on his original letter by first diagnosing the problem at the heart of youth sports−it starts with parents and coaches−and then by offering a hopeful path forward. Along the way, he uses stories from his small-town childhood as well as his career as a player, coach, and manager to explore eight keys to success: leadership, confidence, teamwork, faith, class, character, toughness, and humility. From “The Coach Is Always Right, Even When He’s Wrong” to “Let Your Catcher Call the Game,” Matheny’s old-school advice might not always be popular or politically correct, but it works. His entertaining and deeply inspirational book will not only resonate with parents, coaches, and athletes, it will also be a powerful reminder, from one of the most successful new managers in the game, of what sports can teach us all about winning on the field and in life.

Manifesto

Manifesto PDF Author: Dale Vince
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1473579007
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 267

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Book Description
"Revealing, inspiring and funny. This book is a joy to romp through, which is good, because its final chapter is the important truth we all need to hear and understand if we are to survive this mess we've made" - Chris Packham "I found Manifesto enthralling, thought-provoking and I learnt so much from it. Nor had I any idea that we had our own Archimedes living in The Cotswolds." - Jilly Cooper How one maverick entrepreneur took on UK energy... and won. Dale Vince never intended to start a business. Driven by a passion for sustainability, he left school aged 15 and became a New Age traveller, living for free in a wind-powered double decker bus. But after building his first wind turbine, he realised that to change the world he needed to be on the grid, not off it. In 1996 he founded green energy company Ecotricity based on principles of social, financial and environmental sustainability, and changed the landscape of UK energy forever. Since then, Dale has been appointed a UN ambassador for climate issues, become the owner of the first ever vegan football club, and amassed a fortune of over £120 million built on sustainability. He has also been a vocal supporter of Extinction Rebellion which, like Ecotricity, is based in Stroud. In this book, he shares his single-minded and uniquely purpose-orientated approach to business, with lessons learned from experience that will speak to any fledgling entrepreneur. This is the story of a man whose unwavering mission to help save the environment has driven him all the way to the top, and a powerful manifesto for anyone who wants to change the world.

Mad Ducks and Bears

Mad Ducks and Bears PDF Author: George Plimpton
Publisher: Little, Brown
ISBN: 031632647X
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
George Plimpton's follow-up to Paper Lion, one of his personal favorites among his classic books -- repackaged and including a foreword from Steve Almond and never-before-seen content from the Plimpton archives. In Mad Ducks and Bears, George Plimpton's engaging companion to Paper Lion, Plimpton focuses on two of the most entertaining and roguish linemen and former teammates -- Alex Karras ("Mad Ducks") and John Gordy ("Bears"), both of whom went on to achieve brilliant post-football success. A more reflective, less madcap book than Plimpton's other work, Mad Ducks and Bears is no less truthful and searching. In this fond exploration of football's values and follies, Plimpton rejoins his two teammates to discuss their careers in this brutal but captivating game. The result is an astute exploration into the fascinating lives and motivations of the players at home, in the locker room, and on the field.

Tailgate to Heaven

Tailgate to Heaven PDF Author: Adam Goldstein
Publisher: Potomac Books, Inc.
ISBN: 159797692X
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
Despite a global recession, Englishman Adam Goldstein felt 2008 was the perfect time to invest in his lifelong passion. So he sold his flat and left his job and girlfriend in London for American football. Goldstein’s goal was to achieve what no other fan of American football has accomplished: to attend one live National Football League (NFL) game at every NFL stadium during the regular season, plus those played in London and Canada. He traveled over 65,000 miles to watch forty football games in eighteen weeks and to experience and understand the phenomenal appeal of that classic American pastime, the tailgate party. He drove from stadium to stadium, tailgate to tailgate, sometimes eight hundred miles a day, digesting everything that American football could serve up. He met players and extreme fans alike and was party to surreal pregame rituals while absorbing the rich cultural differences of each part of the country. During his football odyssey—a grueling yet rewarding quest—he compared sports traditions and fandom in the United Kingdom and the United States. In the process of football self-discovery, Goldstein often found himself embraced by NFL fans across the continent, as if he had the key that unlocked the very meaning of life. Tailgate to Heaven is a humorous, moving, and inspiring story about how nothing closes a culture gap like love of a sport—and the camaraderie that comes with it.

Things That Make White People Uncomfortable (Adapted for Young Adults)

Things That Make White People Uncomfortable (Adapted for Young Adults) PDF Author: Michael Bennett
Publisher: Haymarket Books
ISBN: 1642590797
Category : Young Adult Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 158

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Book Description
Michael Bennett is a Super Bowl Champion, a three-time Pro Bowl defensive end, a fearless activist, a feminist, an organizer, and a change maker. He's also one of the most humorous athletes on the planet, and he wants to make you uncomfortable. Bennett adds his voice to discussions of racism and police violence, Black athletes and their relationship to powerful institutions like the NCAA and the NFL, the role of protest in history, and the responsibilities of athletes as role models to speak out against injustice. Following in the footsteps of activist-athletes from Muhammad Ali to Colin Kaepernick, Bennett demonstrates his outspoken leadership both on and off the field. Written with award-winning sportswriter and author Dave Zirin, Sitting Down to Stand Up is a sports book for young people who want to make a difference, a memoir, and a book as hilarious and engaging as it is illuminating.

Why Football Matters

Why Football Matters PDF Author: Mark Edmundson
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 110163572X
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 166

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Book Description
Acclaimed essayist Mark Edmundson reflects on his own rite of passage as a high school football player to get to larger truths about the ways America's Game shapes its men Football teaches young men self-discipline and teamwork. But football celebrates violence. Football is a showcase for athletic beauty and physical excellence. But football damages young bodies and minds, sometimes permanently. Football inspires confidence and direction. But football instills cockiness, a false sense of superiority. The athlete is a noble figure with a proud lineage. The jock is America at its worst. When Mark Edmundson’s son began to play organized football, and proved to be very good at it, Edmundson had to come to terms with just what he thought about the game. Doing so took him back to his own childhood, when as a shy, soft boy growing up in a blue-collar Boston suburb in the sixties, he went out for the high school football team. Why Football Matters is the story of what happened to Edmundson when he tried to make himself into a football player. What does it mean to be a football player? At first Edmundson was hapless on the field. He was an inept player and a bad teammate. But over time, he got over his fears and he got tougher. He learned to be a better player and came to feel a part of the team, during games but also on all sorts of escapades, not all of them savory. By playing football, Edmundson became what he and his father hoped he’d be, a tougher, stronger young man, better prepared for life. But is football-instilled toughness always a good thing? Do the character, courage, and loyalty football instills have a dark side? Football, Edmundson found, can be full of bounties. But it can also lead you into brutality and thoughtlessness. So how do you get what’s best from the game and leave the worst behind? Why Football Matters is moving, funny, vivid, and filled with the authentic anxiety and exhilaration of youth. Edmundson doesn’t regret playing football for a minute, and cherishes the experience. His triumph is to be able to see it in full, as something to celebrate, but also something to handle with care. For anyone who has ever played on a football team, is the parent of a player, or simply is reflective about its outsized influence on America, Why Football Matters is both a mirror and a lamp.

Football Fans, Activism and Social Change

Football Fans, Activism and Social Change PDF Author: Dino Numerato
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317432711
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
The study of football fandom is a fast-growing area of research in the sociology of sport. The first work of its kind, this book explores football fan activism and its impact on contemporary football culture in England, Italy and the Czech Republic. Presenting a comparative study of fan activism in national and transnational contexts, it explores the characteristics of each country’s football fan culture as well as the varying and at times volatile dynamics between fans, authorities and the mass media. Its chapters address key themes and issues including: fans’ reactions to policing and security measures in football stadiums; the socio-cultural significance of symbols and rituals for fans at football games; and fans’ critical engagement with football club ownership and management. Offering original insights into the power of fan activism to influence social change, this book has wider implications for understanding social movements in other cultural and political spheres beyond Europe. Football Fans, Activism and Social Change is fascinating reading for all students, scholars and football fans with an interest in sport studies, fan culture, politics and society.