front cover of NFL Football
NFL Football
A History of America's New National Pastime
Richard C. Crepeau
University of Illinois Press, 2020
The new NFL Centennial Edition

A multi-billion-dollar entertainment empire, the National Football League is a coast-to-coast obsession that borders on religion and dominates our sports-mad culture. But today's NFL also provides a stage for playing out important issues roiling American society.
 
The updated and expanded edition of NFL Football observes the league's centennial by following the NFL into the twenty-first century, where off-the-field concerns compete with touchdowns and goal line stands for headlines. Richard Crepeau delves into the history of the league and breaks down the new era with an in-depth look at the controversies and dramas swirling around pro football today:
  • Tensions between players and Commissioner Roger Goodell over collusion, drug policies, and revenue;
  • The firestorm surrounding Colin Kaepernick and protests of police violence and inequality;
  • Andrew Luck and others choosing early retirement over the threat to their long-term health;
  • Paul Tagliabue's role in covering up information on concussions;
  • The Super Bowl's evolution into a national holiday.
 Authoritative and up to the minute, NFL Football continues the epic American success story.
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front cover of NFL Football
NFL Football
A History of America's New National Pastime
Richard C. Crepeau
University of Illinois Press, 2014
This wide-ranging history synthesizes scholarship and media sources to give the reader an inside view of the television contracts, labor issues, and other off-the-field forces that shaped the National Football League. Historian Richard Crepeau shows how Commissioner Pete Rozelle's steady leadership guided the league's explosive growth during the era of Monday Night Football and the Super Bowl's transformation into a mid-winter spectacle. Crepeau also delves into the league's masterful exploitation of media from radio to the internet, its ability to get taxpayers to subsidize team stadiums, and its success in delivering an outlet for experiencing vicarious violence to a public uneasy over the changing rules of masculinity.
 
Probing and learned, NFL Football tells an epic American success story peopled by larger-than-life figures and driven by ambition, money, sweat, and dizzying social and technological changes.
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