"The United States Football League--known fondly to millions of sports fans as the USFL--was the last football league to challenge the NFL while causing its owners and executives to collectively shudder. It spanned three seasons, from 1983 to 1985, secured multiple television deals, 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...

Examines the development of professional football in the United States through changes in equipment, stadiums, salaries, player positions, coaching, game strategies, the draft, the ways that fans experience the game, and other elements.

Native American Jim Thorpe became a super athlete and Olympic gold medalist. Indomitable coach Pop Warner was a football mastermind. In 1907 at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania, they forged one of the winningest teams in American football history. Called "the team that invented football," they took on the best opponents of their day, defeating much more privileged schools in a series of breathtakingly close calls, genius plays,...

"The National Football League is a towering, distinctly American colossus taking in $14 billion in annual revenue and provoking intense national debate over issues from player safety to political protest. Yet its current dominance obscures a surprising origin story. As it turns out, in the beginning most people found the very idea of professional football absurd. In The League, acclaimed author John Eisenberg reveals how the five men who built the...