Former Dallas Cowboy Peter Gent poses in 1974 with copies of “North Dallas Forty,” his bestselling book about playing in the NFL. Gent wrote of hard-living, hard-hitting pro football players, but he wrote with style: “It was late afternoon. In a last gasp the sun had burned away the gray sky and had disappeared into the Panhandle. The air had warmed some and the best part of the day remained. Being in Texas is a skin feeling, strongest this time of day.... I love Texas, but she drives her people crazy. I’ve wondered whether it’s the heat, or the money, or maybe both. A republic of outlaws loosely allied with the United States, Texas survives, and survives quite well by breaking the rules.” (Associated Press)
A finalist for the 2012 National Book Award, Ben Fountain’s novel “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk” puts a group of American soldiers from the Iraq war at a Dallas Cowboys game. “The men of Bravo are not cold,” it begins. “It’s a chilly and windwhipped Thanksgiving Day with sleet and freezing rain forecast for late afternoon, but Bravo is nicely blazed on Jack and Cokes thanks to the epic crawl of game-day traffic and the limo’s minibar.” (Ecco)
“Where Men Win Glory” by Jon Krakauer revealed the circumstances of the death of Army Ranger Pat Tillman -- being honored by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in the photo above -- and also his life as a young man whose football skills took him to the NFL. In our review, Dan Neil wrote, “Pat Tillman, unlikely football hero and unlikelier warrior, went to Afghanistan and got accidentally wasted by the men in his own Ranger platoon. It happens .... But the story here isn’t Tillman’s unexceptional death, or exceptional life for that matter, but what Krakauer sees as a political crime committed by the Bush administration’s propaganda machine as it tried to make Tillman a martyr in the global war on terror. Tillman saw it coming. In a moment of foreboding, he said to a friend: ‘I don’t want them to parade me through the streets.’ And yet that’s exactly what happened.” (Michael Chow / Arizona Republic)
Rocky Bleier was drafted by the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1968 -- and then immediately drafted by the Army to fight in Vietnam. His legs were severely injured, but he went on to become an accomplished running back for the Steelers. This is his story. (Dr. Bookman / AbeBooks.com)
The television series ended its run in 2011, but the original book by H.G. Bissinger was published in 1991 -- and was based on the year he spent with the Odessa, Texas, high school team the Permian Panthers back in 1988. (De Capo Press)
In his second novel, “End Zone,” Don DeLillo, above, focuses his literary attentions on football. “ ‘End Zone’ is the kind of novel Evelyn Waugh would have written had be been 6-foot-2, weighed 196 without shoulder padding and had already fumbled football scholarships at Syracuse, Miami, Pennsylvania, East Lansing,” wrote Los Angeles Times reviewer Nelson Algren. “DeLillo’s wit is so surgical you don’t even know an artery has been severed. You don’t laugh until you see you’re bleeding.” (Jean Christian Bourcart / Getty Images)
Published in 1968, Fred Exley’s “A Fan’s Notes” was described, at its 1988 reissue, as “a minor classic” by the L.A. Times. “Confessional, anguished, autobiographical, it is perhaps the best account we have of a contemporary writer’s life -- that lonely and gloomy existence,” that writer, divorced an drinking too much, takes solace in watching the New York Giants. (Sawtooth Books / AbeBooks.com)
Sportswriter Dan Jenkins published “Semi-Tough,” which some consider the most hilarious football novel ever written, in 1972. In it, the Giants and the Jets come to, of all places, Los Angeles, to square off in the Super Bowl. (Da Capo / Barnes & Noble)
The novel “Everbody’s All-American” is sportswriter Frank Deford’s classic story of the rise and denoument of a star football player. (Da Capo / Barnes & Noble)
George Plimpton was most famous for his bestseller “Paper Lion,” in which Plimpton trained with and played quarterback (very briefly) for the Detroit Lions. In thephoto above, Plimpton was practicing with the Colts for a 1971 television special. In literary circles, Plimpton is known as a blue-blood founder of the Paris Review. (Associated Press)
