NFL Unplugged: The Brutal, Brilliant World of Professional Football
Blood, guts, and glory—the NFL you never see on TV\ Behind every glittering NFL game on television is a world of happy pain for a hundred men. NFL Unplugged lets you see that world through the eyes of the pros who live and sweat in it—including firsthand accounts of more than thirty players and coaches from teams across the NFL, including Mark Schlereth, Bill Romanowski, Kevin Long, Kyle Turley, Jon Gruden, Hugh Douglas, Jon Runyan, and Michael Strahan. Here are the places the cameras and...
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As thrilling as watching a football game on television or in person can be, you're only witness to a fraction of what's really happening. You can't hear the amazing variety of fart jokes that are standard issue in huddles or feel the searing burn of an opponent's viselike pinch on the back of your leg in a pile-up. Cameras won't show you players vomiting in agony and exhaustion on the sidelines. As for what happens in the locker room and outside the stadium, both before and during the season, you don't know the half of it—until now.NFL Unplugged takes you behind the scenes and beyond the glitz and pageantry of professional football to discover the pros as you will never see them on TV. Author and sports broadcaster Anthony Gargano reveals the sometimes shocking, sometimes inspiring, and often hilarious truth behind such well-worn terms as playing hurt, mental toughness, and the two most dreaded words in the NFL: Training Camp.Gargano draws on interviews with dozens of current and former players and coaches from across the NFL to give you a gut-level understanding of just what it means and takes to play pro football. You'll hear from stars such as Mark Schlereth, Bill Romanowski, Kevin Long, Kyle Turley, Jon Gruden, Hugh Douglas, Junior Seau, and Michael Strahan—all speaking frankly about the game, the pain, and the glory. You'll also hear from lesser-known players and some who prefer to remain anonymous. Their compelling stories include one from a huge lineman who played the final eight games of one season in excruciating pain from a fractured tailbone. Unable to sit in a car, on a plane, or even in his favorite easy chair, he couldn't sleep at night, and the pregame treatments given by his trainers first intensified the pain, then numbed his glutes and slowed him down. And what does he feel now that those months of torture are over? Pride and relief that he didn't miss a single game.From running a condition test called "the gasser" under a blistering summer sun at temperatures often over 100 degrees on the first day of training camp to playing with injuries that would leave most of us bedridden to earning vast amounts of money but often ending up broke and in debt after their all-too-brief careers, professional football players live lives that are, to say the least, outside the norm. Read NFL Unplugged and find out just how much blood, pain, and iron determination it takes to make it in America's most popular sport. Library Journal Gargano, of Philadelphia sports radio, displays the Hobbesian view of pro football: "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short." For NFL players, only delete "poor." Gargano examines the camaraderie of the NFL's "grunts" and their world of constant pain, focusing mainly on former linemen with a Philly connection. This warts-and-all perspective goes behind the scenes at training camp, in the film room, the locker room, the huddle, and even down to the bottom of a pileup on the field—a place where no one wants to be. Gargano also covers the verbal abuse, emotional manipulation, and preening machismo NFL players endure to add a mental counter to the physical challenges. The perspective here of both tacklers and blockers and the tackled and blocked comes across with humor, appreciation, and honesty. A fun read for football fans wanting to understand the game at its most intense level.
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Acknowledgments ixPrologue 11 Pregame 112 Training Camp 633 The Blessed Day 1204 Slobberknockers, Misdeeds, and Regrets of Men and Monsters 1535 The Long Wait for Sunday 1936 The Pain, the Price, the Glory, and the End Days 205Index 263
\ Library JournalGargano, of Philadelphia sports radio, displays the Hobbesian view of pro football: "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short." For NFL players, only delete "poor." Gargano examines the camaraderie of the NFL's "grunts" and their world of constant pain, focusing mainly on former linemen with a Philly connection. This warts-and-all perspective goes behind the scenes at training camp, in the film room, the locker room, the huddle, and even down to the bottom of a pileup on the field—a place where no one wants to be. Gargano also covers the verbal abuse, emotional manipulation, and preening machismo NFL players endure to add a mental counter to the physical challenges. The perspective here of both tacklers and blockers and the tackled and blocked comes across with humor, appreciation, and honesty. A fun read for football fans wanting to understand the game at its most intense level.\ \
