Athletics Books

Tom Keegan has assembled an outstanding book. With one daughter currently playing women's college hockey at St Lawrence University, and another who wants to attend either Boston College or Yale, and continue her hockey career, I found this book to be a great source of information. The chapter on "Coaches Surveys" gives all female hockey players a true picture of the "well-rounded" player that coaches look for, emphasizing the importance of academic strength along with hockey skills. Tom presents a lot of information, in plain english, and in one resource, that makes this book a great value. Each daughter has a copy, and I've bought three more copies to give to their friends who want to continue hockey at the college level.

This man was one of the great track & field coaches of his time. His book provides good information for the beginning athlete, communicated in a simple, easily understood manner. The book is brief, however it touches on the full spectrum of basic techniques and considerations for a track & field athlete. It is particularly useful for high school level runners. As one of his athletes during his last years as a coach at Oregon State University, I treasure the copy of this book that I purchased years ago.

This is the best book for helping your soccer fanatic daughter to find the college that will best suit her. I'm really glad someone on her team pointed me to this book. I recommend it highly

This book is a terrific resource for anyone who works with gradeschool children and would like to incorporate fun fitness. Book has lesson plans for daily program already set up or you can use information, games and exercises in other formats. Book also has lessons on health and fitness subjects. The pages in my book are looking worn.

Through the media, we frequently hear about problems associated with athletes, such as drug abuse, illiteracy and low graduation rates. This book is written for the young athlete to help him or her avoid such pitfalls. It addresses issues such as steroid abuse, alcohol abuse and date rape. It also discusses NCAA requirements and athletic scholarships. In addition, it offers great tips on networking, budgeting, studying for exams effectively and maintaining self-discipline. With all of the pressures that young people face today, it is great to read a book whose purpose is to steer young people in a positive direction. I highly recommend it.

This is the best in-depth instruction geared toward youth basketball that I have read. It gives parents and coaches step by step instructions for teaching the fundamentals of basketball to young players.

Having been both a player, coach and referee for many years, I found Dr. Brown's work to be a complete text on coaching youth soccer. This handbook takes the reader through the basics of developing a new soccer club, working with parents and the players and provides a comprehensive understanding the roles and responsibilities of the the coach, players and parents. Included are indepth descriptions (with diagrams and photographs) starting with basic soccer movements and going through complex team drills. If one had to pick only a single book on the game of soccer, this handbook would be it.

This series Zanbanger, Zanballer and Zanboomer are about a girl named Suzanne who is constantly told she can't play sports that are supposed to be "boy sports". If you like stories about determination, hard work, and winners this is the series for you! - I also read this back 20 years ago and even still have my copies. Fantastic BOOK!

You always hear about the vast amounts of money that are spent in the world of baseball, but are teams getting their money's worth? Conventional wisdom would have us believe that teams that spend the most money get the best results. However, in the world of baseball this is not the case. This book focuses on the Oakland Athletics, one of the best performing teams in major league baseball, and also one of the lowest paid teams. How do they do it?

According to this book, this is possible through exploiting inefficiencies in the market. Baseball, through its years of tradition, has built up a way of evaluating players that doesn't really address how they actually perform. This leads to undervaluing talent and skills that actually lead to success. The trick is to be objective and look at things as they really are. There are many things that people take for granted in every field, and this leads to market inefficiencies.

This is more of a baseball book than a business book. It is not presented as a road map to success, but rather as a story of a baseball team fighting against the odds. If you're a fan of baseball, you'll be able to enjoy the story and learn a few things that you might be able to apply to your own business. However, if you don't like baseball, you many not find this to your liking.

I've never followed baseball much, but have always been fascinated by the obsession with statistics in the game. The curious disconnect, which Lewis addresses in fascinating detail, is how it's taken so long for those managing the teams to put all of this raw data to use.

So much of the spirit of baseball is romance, intuition and emotion. But these days the stakes are too high with many millions invested in a team to compete without every edge available at your disposal. Billy Beane and the A's have forever changed the game of baseball, and it's great to read about when and how the revolution started.

A true investigator, Lewis also recognizes the weaknesses of Beane's breakthrough approach to baseball and how, even though it may greatly increase the odds for a winning season, the strategy comes somewhat unraveled at playoff time.

Lewis somehow manages to make a book about statistics and payrolls interesting by turning it into a character piece. Makes me wish Billy Beane was the GM of my favorite team. My only criticism is that the book applauds the Oakland A's for signing players who overperform, but in hindsight, we know half the Bay Area was juicing during the period the book was written.

I agree with the reviewer who said this is a good baseball book for the casual baseball fan. This book gives the best, least complicated explanation of sabermetrics that I've read. I take this book with me on plane rides, because I find the first two-thirds engaging and relaxing. (The last third fawns over Beane and his team of undervalued players -- the part about how Ken Williams is hesitant to take Billy Beane's phone calls, for fear of what sneaky trade the wily Billy Beane is going to trick Williams into taking -- a bit annoying, especially to a Sox fan, so I never read that part.)

This was just a terrific book, putting an incredibly human face on a game and a financial analysis of success.

This book is good, but not great. Listening to the rants and raves of Bissinger's politics is painful, but it can be battled through if you're patient.

I was excited to read this book, to learn about the lives and the environment of football in a completely different context than the rest of us can witness. The excitement quickly dwindled as the author lost track of the actual story, and puts his own "journalistic" spin on the entire story. In the epilogue Bissinger claims that he had to report what he saw, as he had to be the responsible journalist, and from his writing it is clear that he is a typical, one side of the story journalist. Normally, I wouldn't let his clear bias affect the quality of the football story, but it became impossible to ignore, after chapter after chapter of clearly one-sided views of western Texas.

He openly mocks the fervor that the Odessa area has for George H. Bush page after page, who was running for President during this time. He makes fun of the lack of Democrats, the Texas religious beliefs, and the conservative values as if it's a complete crime that Texas supports one of its own. He doesn't even mention that Bush lived in Midland until halfway through the book, after chapters of mockery.

His view on the oil industry is completely laughable. Again, he mocks western Texas for being so foolish as to support Ronald Regan, who acted as a villain to western Texas by - ready for this - lowering oil prices. Bissinger thinks that lowering oil prices is a travesty that deserves the harshest of penalty, and that Texans are gullible for believing in the free market. If George Bush acted this way, would he be treated the same today? I wonder what Bissenger's attitude toward lowering oil prices would be now?

The football aspect is done well, with the lives of the football players, how much Permian football means to them, and the troubled and sometimes tragic life in Odessa, Texas.

Bissinger, the author, came to Odessa to follow the Permian Panthers thru their entire 1988 season, attending practices as well as games, spending time with several of the key players and their families, reading the newspapers, interviewing the movers and shakers in the desolate, tapped-out landscape in the middle of Nowhere, Texas.

Most of us have heard that Texans regard their high school football with the reverence of a born-again religion--remember the story about the mother of a cheerleader who sought to have her daughter's rival on the cheerleading squad wasted? As a one-time resident and frequent soul mate, I can vouch for its high-school football mania, in East Texas as well as in West.

...

For my complete review of this book and for other book and movie
reviews, please visit my site [...]

Brian Wright
Copyright 2008

First, let me say I've enjoyed "Friday Night Lights." Mr. Bissinger is a talented writer, and this is a very interesting take on football at a large Texas high school (although there's a lot of sociological analyses of the city and people of Odessa). I do recommend it.

This is a good read that shows the effects of overblown boosterism towards high school sports. I'm not sure the case of the Permian Panthers is entirely realistic because they are an extreme case used to illustrate Mr. Bissinger's overall point (this is not some backwoods small school prep team as in "Eagle Blue" or "Counting Coups," which I consider better books), but there's enough reality that you'll recognize the athletes, cheerleaders, coaches and boosters from your own high school days.

Mr. Bissinger is not shy about putting his personal politics on center stage at various points, so be prepared for your share of conservative bashing. This is not to say I disagree with all his points, but I don't need simplistic knee-jerk reactions from either Democrats or Republicans to complex social problems that require more than a one-sided approach, including books about prep sports. Just be aware of its presence.

I can understand why so many people in Odessa had such a virulent reaction to "Friday Night Lights," but there's truth to what Bissinger wrote about turning teenagers into throwaway heroes. It makes no sense to blame the mirror for what is reflected.

I liked the book. The author has a great writing style. The author lived in Odessa for a year during the 1988 season, and spent his time with town folks and Permian Panther players and coaches. He really had a first-hand account of what was happening. It's amazing how seriously the Permian supporters and players valued their team and the game of football. It reached an almost religious level! The author delved into the topic and showed how other things that are more important than football, such as academics, took a backseat to the game they loved. The town put a lot of pressure on these high school kids to perform, as did the coaches and the players themselves. In a small town like Odessa, football was what brought the community together. The Permian Panthers were their pride and joy!

My only criticism is that at times, the author would focus too deeply on certain characters that really didn't have that much bearing or importance to the story...too deeply to the point of being too much irrelevant information.

Friday Night Lights
A Town, A Team, and A Dream
By H.G. Bissinger

By Cael Kiess

H.G. Bissinger spent over a year getting to know the people of Odessa, Texas. During that year he spoke with Permian football players, their families, and Odessa citizens in his attempt to write a book that told the story of how one team of teenage kids could inspire an entire town. Bissinger, an American journalist, has won the Pulitzer Prize, the Livingston Award, the National Headliner Award, and the American Bar Association's Silver gavel for his reporting. He is also the author of A Prayer for the City, and is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. Bissinger did a great job accomplishing his goal of reliving the wild journey of the 1988 Permian football season and the struggles off the field. He vividly portrays the racism through schools in Odessa County, the oil booms, typical school days of Permian football players, the Mojo Fanatics, and Friday Nights in late August. One chapter, "The Watermelon Feed," really describes the passion and devotion of Permian football fans and Mojo Fanatics. Bissinger writes, "The faithful sat on little stools of orange and blue under the lights of the high school cafeteria, but the setting didn't bother them a bit. Had the Watermelon Feed been held inside a county jail, or on a sinking ship, or on the side of a craggy mountain, they would still have flocked to attend and support their team." This description allows me to feel like I'm actually there and helps me sense the amount of pride and dedication given to Permian football by the fans. He also gives a second look farther into the town of Odessa, off the football field, enhancing a better view of what was occurring in the town of Odessa and its neighboring towns. There were many highlights and struggles happening in the streets and classrooms that one would not be able to find out in just the movie. One weakness of the book is the possible effect of losing the reader through the ongoing descriptions and passages of events, people, and struggles in Odessa. There is not as much of the actual football games incorporated into the book as one would think from watching the movie. In the book, Bissinger does a marvelous job describing the life and events of the 1988 Permian football players and the Mojo fans.