Bloody Sundays: Inside The Dazzling, Rough-And-Tumble World of the NFL by Mike Freeman
Beginning with an introduction titled Condoleezza's Story, this book tries to talk about the parts of football that are less recognized. Condoleezza is
Condoleezza Rice, an avid football fan who is not at all your steriotypical fan.
Another unusual topic is gays in football. Freeman says he interviewed a gay player in the NFL. The player prefers to remain anonymous, and is referred to as Steven Thompson. Thompson's view on gays in the NFL is given even though Freeman disagrees with Thompson on how many gays there really are in the NFL. That chapter of the book is written in such a way that I suspect that Freeman is not altogether comfortable with the topic. Chapter 6 is The League: An Antiviolence Plan, which looks at the violence that some football players carry off the field. This chapter is also written as thought Freeman did not believe what he was writing. Also discussed in this book are the effects of playing in the NFL left on the players' bodies, how their lives are shortened and many end up crippled because of football.
But this book also discusses what you would expect from a football book; a chapter on offense, on defense, and one on coaching. And the last chapter is pure fun- lists of the greatests in football according to Mike Freeman, what Freeman would do were he czar of football, and 99 reasons why football is better than baseball.
This book reads like it was written by a sportswriter, which it was. The reading level, sentence structure, and grammar are consequently forced to take a beating. The book is divided into only seven chapters for 300 pages, and I really thought that the chapters could have stood to be divided into two each. The topics are not seperated very well; even thought they get their own chapters, each topic strays into the other chapters. Nonetheless, the topics are interesting, they are true(except the 99 reasons claiming football is better than baseball), and most importantly, they ar fun to read.
Happy reading.
