A rollicking memoir from the linebacker at the heart of the most famous Alabama football play of all time
 
No university has won more football championships than Alabama, and Barry Krauss played a key role in one of them. The linebacker’s fourth down stop of Penn State’s Mike Guman in the Sugar Bowl on January 1, 1979, was recently named by ESPN as one of the ten most important plays of the 20th century.
 
The Goal Line Stand, as the play became known, immortalized Krauss among legions of fans. More than twenty-five years later, people still tell him exactly what they were doing and how they felt when he collided in mid-air with Guman that New Year’s Day—and almost never mention his twelve-year career in the NFL.
 
In this entertaining and well-illustrated memoir, Krauss tells of scrimmaging on front lawns with friends as a kid in Pompano Beach, Florida, and of his childhood dream to play for Don Shula. He acknowledges how Coach Bear Bryant tamed his free spirit and shaped him into the football player—and the man—he became. In addition, he emphasizes the importance of team, weaving together the personal stories of his Alabama teammates on the field during the Goal Line Stand, and acknowledges their significant roles in winning the game and the championship.
 
Ain’t Nothin’ But a Winner offers an insider’s look at how a team is built, tested, and becomes a national champion—and how that process sometimes calls upon an individual to rise to the challenge presented by his own personal gut check.
 

Bobby Bowden is considered one of the greatest football coaches in NCAA history with 377 wins, the second among Division I coaches. In his 44 seasons as a head coach, Bowden engineered 40 winning seasons, with an astonishing 33 consecutive winning seasons as head coach of the Florida State Seminoles (1976–2009). However, before his time in Tallahassee, Bowden served as head coach of the West Virginia Mountaineers for six seasons (preceded by four years as offensive coordinator). Although he logged five winning seasons in Morgantown and had an overall record of 42–26, Bowden’s tenure was still controversial, and he was subject to very hostile treatment from some sports fans that was prompted by embarrassing losses to archrivals like Pitt. Bowden’s time coaching the Mountaineers was one of growth and development for him rather than the unchallenged dominance he would go on to display with Florida State.

Sports journalist John Antonik covers Bowden’s entire WVU tenure from 1966–75 and the circumstances, issues, difficulties, and obstacles that he had to overcome that were unique to this period in Mountaineer sports history. Additionally, Almost Heaven examines what transpired on WVU’s campus and in its athletic programs as well as nationally during the Vietnam War, campus protests, desegregation, and the complexities of the shifting NCAA landscape. Antonik paints a vivid picture of how Bowden’s time at WVU enriched him personally and professionally while putting athletics on a path toward the much greater successes that it enjoyed in the 1980s when Don Nehlen arrived. By the time he left Morgantown in the winter of 1976, following the Mountaineers’ 13–10 Peach Bowl victory over North Carolina State, which culminated in an outstanding 9–3 season, he was a far wiser and much better-prepared football coach. Those difficult lessons that Bowden learned at West Virginia led him down a path to greatness at Florida State.

Almost Heaven draws from an impressive array of primary sources, including newspaper articles; football team rosters; internal documents on recruiting; and interviews with former players, assistants, staffers, sports reporters, Bowden’s sons Tommy and Terry, and Bowden himself, prior to his passing in 2021. The year 2025 represents the 50th anniversary of his final season coaching the Mountaineers, and many of his players are now entering their golden years, making this the optimal time to tell this story.

Many legendary men have been associated with University of Texas football, but for most fans one man will always be "Coach"—Darrell K Royal. One of the most successful coaches in college football, Royal led the Longhorns to three national championships and eleven Southwest Conference titles during his twenty years (1956-1976) as UT's head coach. He coached some of the Horns' best players, including future Heisman Trophy winner Earl Campbell, and was named NCAA Coach of the Year three times. In 1969, an ABC-TV poll of sportswriters called Royal the Coach of the Decade. In 1996 UT recognized his unrivalled contribution to Longhorn football when it designated Memorial Stadium the Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium in his honor.

Now, for the first time, Darrell Royal tells his life story in his own words. He remembers growing up poor in Hollis, Oklahoma, during the Great Depression, and describes playing college football for the University of Oklahoma and then coaching a succession of college teams and one pro team before settling in at UT for the rest of his career. He gives a fascinating, behind-the-scenes look at Longhorn football during his time-recruiting strategies, coaching techniques, the famous wishbone offense, unforgettable wins and losses, and his impressions of rival teams and coaches, including Bear Bryant of Texas A&M and Alabama and Frank Broyles of Arkansas.

Proving that he's still the same straight shooter as always, Darrell Royal even discusses some of the controversies he's dealt with, including early charges of racism in the UT football program, the impact of Title IX on college athletics, his association with Jim Bob Moffett and the Freeport-MacMoRan Corporation, his longtime friendship with Willie Nelson, and his decision to retire from coaching. But whether he's describing the tough times he's faced professionally and personally or the rewards of being UT's most beloved coach and goodwill ambassador, Royal maintains the same plainspoken honesty and sense of honor that—as much as the winning seasons—have made him a legend to so many people.

Nevada Wolf Pack football coach Chris Ault is unlike any other college football coach in history. He spent his entire coaching career, from 1976 to 2012, at the University of Nevada, Reno, where he elevated a football program with very little notoriety onto the national stage, winning 234 games and earning a place in the College Football Hall of Fame. Ault’s innovative “Pistol” offense, established in the 2004–2005 season, revolutionized college football and ushered in its modern high-scoring offensive style. 

Yet perhaps beyond the offensive genius Ault brought to the college game, he was also a masterful showman. He built interest in a previously moribund program with publicity stunts like inviting military tanks into Mackay Stadium and having them blast non-live rounds into the sky whenever the Wolf Pack scored a touchdown. He wrote victory songs for the Wolf Pack to sing in the locker room following every win. His teams marched through downtown Reno in military formation while wearing full game uniforms. He delivered stirring halftime speeches that led to improbable comebacks, including the single greatest football comeback in NCAA history. He found common personal ground with young Wolf Pack athletes and developed talent like Colin Kaepernick, who developed into one of the greatest college quarterbacks the sport had ever seen. 

Through his unconventional coaching methods, his fervent belief that the University of Nevada, Reno, was the finest institution of higher learning in the land, and his innate, creative, and intuitive understanding of how a winning football program can unite people, Ault brought the people of Northern Nevada together in a way that no one has replicated since. Chris Ault was the rare college football coach who came to campus as a starting quarterback, stayed throughout his career as a coach, and left a mark that will never be equaled.

Walter Camp made the development of football—indeed, its very creation—his lifelong mission. From his days as a college athlete, Camp's love of the game and dedication to its future put it on the course that would allow it to seize the passions of the nation.

Roger R. Tamte tells the engrossing but forgotten life story of Walter Camp, the man contemporaries called "the father of American football." He charts Camp's leadership as American players moved away from rugby and for the first time tells the story behind the remarkably inventive rule change that, in Camp's own words, was "more important than all the rest of the legislation combined." Trials also emerged, as when disputes over forward passing, the ten-yard first down, and other rules became so public that President Theodore Roosevelt took sides. The resulting political process produced losses for Camp as well as successes, but soon a consensus grew that football needed no new major changes. American football was on its way, but as time passed, Camp's name and defining influence became lost to history.

Entertaining and exhaustively researched, Walter Camp and the Creation of American Football weaves the life story of an important sports pioneer with a long-overdue history of the dramatic events that produced the nation's most popular game.