Football for a Buck: The Crazy Rise and Crazier Demise of the USFL

Author: Pearlman, Jeff

Edition: Reprint

Number Of Pages: 400

Details:

From a multiple New York Times bestselling author, the rollicking, outrageous, you-can’t-make-this-up story of the USFL   The United States Football League—known fondly to millions of sports fans as the USFL—was the last football league to not merely challenge the NFL, but cause its owners and executives to collectively shudder. It spanned three seasons, 1983-85. It secured multiple television deals. It drew millions of fans and launched the careers of legends. But then it died beneath the weight of a particularly egotistical and bombastic owner—a New York businessman named Donald J. Trump. The league featured as many as 18 teams, and included such superstars as Steve Young, Jim Kelly, Herschel Walker, Reggie White, Doug Flutie and Mike Rozier.   In Football for a Buck, the dogged reporter and biographer Jeff Pearlman draws on more than four hundred interviews to unearth all the salty, untold stories of one of the craziest sports entities to have ever captivated America. From 1980s drug excess to airplane brawls and player-coach punch outs, to backroom business deals, to some of the most enthralling and revolutionary football ever seen, Pearlman transports readers back in time to this crazy, boozy, audacious, unforgettable era of the game. He shows how fortunes were made and lost on the backs of professional athletes and also how, thirty years ago, Trump was a scoundrel and a spoiler.   For fans of Terry Pluto’s Loose Balls or Jim Bouton’s Ball Four and of course Pearlman’s own stranger-than-fiction narratives, Football for a Buck is sports as high entertainment—and a cautionary tale of the dangers of ego and excess.

Reviews:

“Pearlman’s enthusiasm for his subject is infectious . . . He has channeled his youthful affection into a raucous, well-reported, supremely entertaining ripsaw of a story.”

— New York Times Book Review

“Endlessly fascinating . . . Pearlman proves to be the perfect person to write [the USFL’s] history . . .  Football for a Buck is a hilarious, engrossing roller coaster of a book.” —NPR.org

“Pro football is ripe for revolution. Luckily, Jeff Pearlman’s Football for a Buck offers a blueprint for change . . . The book will also please readers who sip bad ink about Donald Trump as if it were the finest wine.” 

— Wall Street Journal

“Engrossing, eerily relevant.” —Time.com

“Every bit as fantastic as you’d expect a Pearlman book to be, and you honestly don’t need to have spent time as a devoted USFL fan (as Jeff and I both were) to enjoy.”—Mike Vaccaro, New York Post

“A wonderful, thorough, insightful look at a deeply weird moment in American football history. And it’s also a primer of sorts for this current deeply weird moment in American political history.” —Yahoo! Sports

“Every bit as fantastic as you’d expect a Pearlman book to be, and you honestly don’t need to have spent time as a devoted USFL fan (as Jeff and I both were) to enjoy.”—Mike Vaccaro, New York Post

“Tells in delightful detail the story of a long-gone pro football league. To call it just a sports book, though, sells it way short. Football for a Buck far transcends other sports books, making it contemporary and fun for anybody to read . . . The book is nothing less than painstakingly thorough, with dozens of zany and colorful stories about players and executives in a renegade league that quickly made its mark, frightening the mighty NFL . . . It is a thorough, funny, fascinating, and entertaining sports book.”—Forbes.com

“As we’ve come to expect from Jeff Pearlman’s books, Football for a Buck is deeply reported, deftly told, smart, hilarious, sad, riveting

— and prescient. Through the stories of USFL businessmen, coaches, benchwarmers, and stars who later became household names — Steve Young, Jim Kelly, Herschel Walker, and yes, Donald Trump — Pearlman captures the troubled lavishness of mid-80s America and foreshadows so many of the issues that professional football — and the country —...

EAN: 9780358118114

Release Date: 10-09-2019

Languages: English

Item Note: Great shape- pages are unmarked and sharp.Has a remainder mark. Paperback Used - Like New Ships fast! 2019Reprint

Item Condition: UsedLikeNew

Binding:

Paperback