About this item
From an award-winning writer, journalist, and college football expert: an entertaining cultural history that highlights the key moments, games, personalities, and scandals of the popular and controversial American pastime.Every Saturday in the fall, countless college students, alumni, and sports fans wake up filled with a particular kind of hope and excitement, ready for their team's game. Half of them finish the day in joyous celebration, and the other half in abject depression, but all of them are ever ready to do it over again the next weekend. College football is one of the unifying cornerstones of American culture. Since the first game in 1869, football has grown from a stratified offshoot of rugby to a ubiquitous part of our national identity. Today, as college conferences fracture and grow, amateur athlete status is called into question, and a playoff system threatens to replace big-money bowl games, we're in the midst of the most dramatic transitional period in the history of the sport.
About the Author
Michael Weinreb is the author of four books, including Season of Saturdays: A History of College Football in 14 Games, which was named one of the best books of 2014 by Newsweek and Quartz.com. He is also the author of The Kings of New York (paperback title: Game of Kings) , which won the Quill Award as the Best Sports Book of 2007, was named one of the best books of the year by Publishers Weekly, Amazon.com and The Christian Science Monitor, and was a New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice; Bigger Than the Game: Bo, Boz, the Punky QB, And How the '80s Created the Modern Athlete; and Girl Boy Etc., a short-story collection. He has been a regular contributor to a number of newspapers, magazines, and websites, including The New York Times, ESPN, GQ, Grantland, Vice, Rolling Stone, The Atlantic, and The Ringer. His work has also been anthologized in the Best American Sports Writing collection. He currently lives in Portland, Oregon.
