The stressful world of the NFL explored in Collision Low Crossers

From The Week of January 6th, 2014

Most of us strive for balanced lives, existences in which the joys and burdens of work and family, obligation and friendship, are distributed in such a way that we anticipate, rather than dread, the dawn. It is generally accepted that this is healthy, a sensible approach to grappling with the complexities of modern society and our place within it. And yet, some among us, even while being aware that this is true, wholly reject such balance, eschewing it in the pursuit of glorious victories both personal and organizational. These individuals want nothing of our mundanity. They do not want to find their place in the whole. They want to invest themselves in the dream of achieving something rare, a moment of purest triumph in which they rise above their competitors to be acknowledged as champions. This perfect moment, this gestalt of planning and purpose, is worth any sacrifice, no matter how consequential. Rarely has this drive been detailed with such clarity than in Nicholas Dawidoff's excellent examination.

American football is a tumultuous sport, an autumnal ritual of codified violence in which teams of exquisitely trained and highly paid athletes repeatedly careen into one another in the pursuit of victory. This theatre of pain and glory has become the United States' most popular spectacle, a pastime taken in by tens of millions each weekend not just because of its gladiatorial ruthlessness, but because of its esoteric intricacies. Each Sunday, teams execute the most complex of plays, drilled into them by endless practice, oftentimes to spectacular effect, leaving onlookers as awed at the result as they are mystified by the process. It is the sport whose strategies and plays are least understood by its fans, precisely because of a complexity that demands that its coaches and its players devote sometimes hundreds of hours to gameplans that play out over a single afternoon.

One of the 32 teams that compete at this sport's highest level, the New York Jets have been a largely moribund franchise. Burdened by a history of failure punctuated by a few legendary successes, and overshadowed by the more celebrated giants with whom they share a city, they are the team only its fans could love and admire. However, in 2009, its status as one of the NFL's also-rands is overturned when, after hiring a flamboyant and innovative head coach and drafting a celebrated and talented quarterback, they begin an era of winning, one built on a powerful defense characterized by "organized chaos" designed to fool opposing quarterbacks into consequential mistakes. This new, creative approach to a game that so often hails traditional modes of play elevates the Jets, over the next three years, to the brink of ultimate success which, nonetheless, remains frustratingly elusive.

The tale of a singular season during this era of Jets success, and a biography of the men who shaped and characterized it, Collision Low Crossers is an exceptional piece of sports journalism. Mr. Dawidoff, an author who has written for numerous sports and news publications, was given unprecedented access, during the 2011 NFL season, to the New York Jets: their facility, their players, their coaches, and their games. From these countless hours of observation and camaraderie emerges a fascinating portrait of men, of all ages and from all walks of life, coming together to chase the white whale of ultimate success. From the office dramas of bickering coaches to the complicated motivations of team mates in conflict, we watch as the hope of a promising season is sidetracked by errors and injuries, by immaturity and ill fortune. And yet, these failures seem less the result of poor coaching, or organizational control, than they are the inevitable outcome of a highly stressed and obsessive workplace. And yet, these misfortunes are overshadowed by the vivid depiction of the bonds forged by common purpose and shared sacrifice that smacks more of the military than of football.

However much Collision Low Crossers concerns itself with the vicissitudes of football, it is ultimately a study of the men who have given their lives to it. From the the creativity and brashness of Rex Ryan to the quiet intensity of Mike Pettine, we are given a glimpse of human beings who have completely turned their backs on conventional existence. Health and family, anniversaries and holidays, all the high points in our lives, seem secondary to men lost in the dream of the perfect play, perfect execution, perfect success. For the players, the rewards for their devotion, and their sacrifice, are obvious, access to exorbitant wealth that can set them up for life. For the coaches, however, the motivation is murkier, rooted more in their relationships with their fathers, with their backgrounds and with the need to get it right. In this, their obsessiveness is no different than that which seizes any professional seeking to master his craft. And yet, at least they have the reasonable expectation of reward. Here, the sacrifices are made not only without the guarantee of success, but while knowing the odds are against it.

Collision Low Crossers could have been more thorough. For instance, the author doesn't appear to have spoken to even one of the partners these men have effectively widowed. Nor does he give any real context to the long-term physical toll the sport takes on its participants. However, much like his subjects, Mr. Dawidoff never promised balance. This is an expose of the life of a practitioner of football, of men worshipping at the altar of glory while knowing that, to be glorious, they must count on the contributions of men with whom they might have nothing in common. And in this, it is a its own kind of triumph, one that does honor to the tradition of imbedded sportswriting from which it descends. Spellbinding work... (5/5 Stars)

The intersection of genetics and will in the fascinating The Sports Gene

From The Week of November 25th, 2013

Even if human civilization wasn't already driven by the desire for commercial success, the answer to the question of what makes certain people successful would transfix humanity. We are all, to varying degrees, creatures of gifts and opportunities, ideas and pivotal moments. So why do some of us rise to the top while others of equal talent and ability slump into obscurity? Fortune surely plays a key role here; after all, the chaotic clashing of wills that defines the modern, competitive environment, is bound to spit out some who triumph as a result of being in the right place, at the right time, to gather up the pieces left behind by their bested betters. And yet, there are too many examples of successful individuals who have honed their bodies, and trained their minds, to achieve the improbable that lady luck's beneficence, be it circumstantial or genetic, cannot be the determining factor. Well, then, what is it? David Epstein investigates.

Though organized displays of feats of human skill are nearly as old as we are, the last hundred years has seen an explosion in competitive sports. The rise of the modern world, and all its expanding wealth, has fuelled the professionalization of what was, as late as the early 20th century, a largely amateur field, with men and women laying down their burdens to perform their talents for curious audiences eager to see the best that man had to offer. Now, thanks to televised broadcasts and corporate sponsorship, almost every conceivable pursuit of athletics contains a golden pot of wealth and prestige just waiting for the victor to claim it.

This yearning for status and income has thrown professional competition into overdrive, creating specimens of human skill and power unimaginable a century ago. These supremely toned machines have shattered records that scientists and experts thought unbreakable. But more than that, they've spurred a curiosity about why some athletes are better than others. CO2max and the 10,000-hour rule, the sprinter gene and fast-twitch muscles have all entered our lexicon as we probe at the heart of the human body in its highest, present-day form.

From Jamaican sprinters to Finnish skiers, from Kenyan runners to Scandinavian pole-vaulters, The Sports Gene is a fascinating, non-dogmatic exploration of the intersection of mind and muscle, genes and success. Mr. Epstein, a track-and-field athlete in his not-so-distant youth, eschews the Gladwellian approach to social and sports science, refusing to hail any given talent as the root of all athletic triumph. Instead, he gathers up all the various threads that might play a role in finishing first and attempts, in an open-minded way, to weigh them by their significance. In this, he takes fewer chances than the Gladwells and the Lehrers of the world, but he also profoundly reduces the odds of misleading his readers by oversimplifying what is inherently an extraordinarily complex system, extreme achievement.

Though Mr. Epstein devotes much more time to his investigation than he does to his pontifications, his conclusions do surface from time to time and seem, on the whole, reasonable and agreeable. The author rejects the notion that any one virtue lies at the heart of physical success; rather, it flows from the fusion of natural talent, mental fortitude and a great deal of practice. Certainly, there are athletes whose physical gifts outstrip these other components, individuals who rise on account of having won the genetic lottery, but it's equally clear that some among the genetically average have prospered thanks to an iron-willed desire to win. In this, we come to better understand both sporting success generally and generational athletes specifically. For when genetic gifts are married to a well-trained mind, there are few barriers left to ultimate success.

the Sports Gene could have been more opinionated. It could have attempted to dig more deeply into the truly exceptional amongst us, but we cannot call these flaws or missteps. For the work's virtue is in mixing together the small and the famous, the modest and the showy. It is a celebration of how success comes in simply too many forms to be so blithely defined by those who cynically set out to reduce thousand-dollar questions into ten-cent answers. For this, we all should be grateful.

An excellent and enlightening journey through the extremity of the human form... (4/5 Stars)

Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk is beautiful, exquisite irony

From The Week of August 19th, 2013

What is a hero? The people admire them, our cultures celebrate them and our literature elevates them to immortality. So it is safe to say that we know a hero when we see one. But if pressed to define the criteria for becoming one, we might offer up very different answers. Some of us might value the unsung heroes who toil quietly at thankless jobs that ensure our safety on a daily basis. Others, meanwhile, might emphasize self-sacrifice, believing that a hero is only a hero if we know of, and are inspired by, his or her actions.

But as difficult as it might be to define a hero, it is even harder to unknot the complex relationship between heroes and the societies that harbor them. For while society hails them, upholds them as objects of valor and achievement, it also devours them, reducing them from human beings, with flaws and tempers, to useful paragons that further society's ends. This is no way to treat anyone, let alone those for whom we have the deepest respect. This Ben Fountain captures in his outstanding novel.

For the men of Bravo Squad, they were just doing their jobs, doing what they were trained to do. But for everyone back in America, the ambush at the Al-Ansakar Canal is a defining moment of the Iraq War. Captured on film and replayed for all to see, this four-minute-long engagement, in which Bravo Squad risks their lives to rescue a convoy trapped by insurgents, is a re-affirmation of what they already know, that American soldiers are the bravest and best the world has to offer. And so, it seems only fitting that the survivors of the ambush, while being patched up, and while grieving for the men they've lost, be flown back to America for a thank-you tour, a whirlwind, whistle-stop affair that sees them shaking hands and smiling for photographs in a dozen major US cities before concluding at that most enduring of American rituals, an NFL game at Texas Stadium where they will be honored at Halftime.

For Billy Lynn, the star of the footage which caught him trying to save the life of his dying friend while continuing to kill the enemy, this is a completely disconcerting experience. A 19-year-old boy from a small, Texas oiltown, he is utterly unprepared to be the center of anyone's attention.. And now there are 70,000 people who want to congratulate him, to tell him what they think about the war, and hail him as the bravest of the brave. He must interact with the rich and the poor, the kind and the venomous, all without doing dishonor to the army that has put him here. Over these few hours, he has to be what America needs him to be, but can he be that when he doesn't even know himself? Cheerleaders and millionaires, footballers and fans and at the end of it a war he must go back to, a war that might never end...

As winningly poignant as it is sharply satirical, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk is fiction at its best. Juxtaposing the small lives of the men of Bravo squad against the enormity of the spectacle of an NFL game, Mr. Fountain beautifully captures America's tortured relationship with its heroes, with its superficiality and with its founding mythology. For this is a country built on the idea of freedom, constructed to be welcoming to all those who wish to escape tyranny, that is, nonetheless, engaging in two savage and costly wars that have claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. Rather than deal directly with such a difficult truth, however, the people wrap themselves in the sanctity of their flag, focusing on the deeds of heroic men in order to avoid looking at the price they are all paying in a place that few of them could even find on a map. Never in history have so few been asked to bear the weight of so much for so many and this cultural, economic and experiential divide could not be better represented than it is here.

Beyond its potent cultural critiques, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk is a wonderful and warm character piece. From its young, virginal protagonist, Lynn, to his friend, Mango, his sergeant, Dime, and the film producer, Albert, who is trying to make their story into a movie, the actors here are complicated, rich and deeply entertaining. Mr. Fountain embraces their flaws, depicting them as young men who both love and hate war, who appreciate and scorn their treatment subsequent to the ambush, and who accept and yet cannot abide the empty platitudes of the rich, entitled men who want to be seen to be doting on them. For all their warrior prowess, these are clearly vulnerable men who would benefit far more from a few days respite than the overstimulated chaos of an NFL spectacular. And this brings us to the author's most trenchant observation.

The culture does not feat heroes for their benefit. They feat them to assuage their own guilt about what the heroes have been forced to do. The culture doesn't care about these boys. If it did, they would ask them what they wanted. They would help them with their care, with their futures. Instead of this substantial and meaningful aid, the heroes get fifteen minutes of unwanted fame while being jerked around by titans of industry with whom they have nothing in common and who seek to only use their momentary celebrity to polish their own egos. It is a display of such profound self-indulgence that would descend to the level of disgusting if it weren't so painfully predictable.

Mr. Fountain has a nimble pen, a sharp eye for cultural critique and a strong sense of injustice and irony, all of which he uses to wonderful effect in one of the best reads in years. (5/5 Stars)

Horror and hope in Juarez detailed in in This Love Is Not For Cowards

From The Week of January 14, 2013
For those of us fortunate enough to enjoy the stability and the security of the rule of law, it is difficult to imagine life without it. For though the media gives us a glimpse of the violence and the discord, this understanding barely scratches the surface of the toll chaos takes on societies afflicted by it. Ensconced in our comfort, we cannot conceive of never knowing if the police will protect our bodies, if the state will respect our rights, or if the institutions will allow us to provide for our families. And yet these are merely a handful of the potent fears that characterize life in countries teetering on the brink. This Mr. Powell captures admirably, albeit non-conventionally, through the enduring and universal lens of sport.

One of the most murderous cities in the world, Juarez, Mexico has virtually nothing to write home about. Its churches have been violated, its journalists have been butchered and silenced, its police have been bought. It is a land of broken dreams that, but for a quirk of fate, might have had a very different legacy. For it sits on the unfortunate side of the American border with Texas, a geographical reality that has bestowed upon it a very different political history, one that has shackled it with a legacy of corruption and revolution. But for all that Juarez has had its institutions undermined and its dreams twisted, one constant remains, one group of beleaguered souls in whom this battered place can invest some measure of their remaining hope.

The Juarez Indians, the city's soccer team, has, like its namesake, struggled for success. And yet, it experiences something of a miracle when it wins promotion to the first division of Mexican soccer. Mr. Powell, most recently a resident of Miami, relocates to Mexico to chronicle this development through the lens of the team's players, many of whom are not much better off than the residents they represent. Extortion, gang ties and poverty all stalk their steps, none of which aids their play which, for much of the season, is abysmal. Despite the best efforts of their world-class goalkeeper, the Indians surrender about as many goals as its town does bodies, creating a mid-season rift between team and town that speaks far more to Juarez's social problems than it does to the realities of sport. It's far from fair that a newly promoted soccer team bear the burdens of a broken town's dreams, but it does and they must forge from that burden something of which more than they can be proud.

The result of months of living in Juarez, This Love Is Not For Cowards is a mesmerizing piece of gonzo journalism. Calling to mind Charles Bowden's Murder City, Mr. Powell smoothly interweaves his chronicle of a soccer season with observations of Juarez itself, inadvertently creating a contest to see which can be more bleak. No surprise that the town, with its carbombs and its corpses and its cops who are either crooked or dead, wins the day. And yet, Mr. Powell so wonderfully captures the Indians, a team of earnest athletic young men who've devoted their lives to soccer, that their labors, their almost desperate need to succeed in the face of impossible odds, seems even more tragic. At least the efforts of the Indians comes from a place of honesty. The same cannot be said of the criminal, corporate and governmental elements of Juarez who do little to bring peace, much less healing, to this devastated place.

All the more tragic, then, when the team's shortcomings cause the town to scorn it. For Juarez simply cannot take another disappointment, another broken dream. It needs a win like no other place. And yet such are the limits of sport. For victories through athletics, though inspiring, are like orgasms. They are fleeting explosions of joy that cannot be sustained and that, when gone, leave one feeling exactly the same as they felt hours, days, months before. Sport cannot heal. Sport cannot mend. Sport can uplift for a time, but it is a shot in the arm, not a longterm solution. For that, other, darker, more difficult roads must be braved.

This Love Is Not For Cowards is searing work that does not provide us with a happy ending, with hope for the future. It respects us more than to lie to us. It is, instead, a piece of personal truth, an exemplar of a world it is the duty of humanity to make disappear into our past so that we all can enjoy a brighter, better future. (4/5 Stars)

Scorecasting by L. Jon Wertheim and Tobias J. Moskowitz

From The Week of April 17, 2011

Any rational fan of professional sport understands that mythology plays a significant role in their love for their favorite pastime. Home-court/field/ice advantage, the hot hand, the hitting streak, momentum... We have welded these and dozens of other axioms onto the basic narrative of sport because, well, the human brain is a powerful machine designed to find patterns in the chaos. In other words, our beloved teams don't just lose because a few, random bounces went against them in a contest between two teams of roughly equivalent skill. No, "the refs were against us," or "that Smith couldn't miss," or "their best players were their best players." Meaning out of chaos... Scorecasting is a systematic attempt by Mr. Wertheim and Mr. Moskowitz to demolish the most widespread of these sporting conceits, subjecting them to the rigor of statistical analysis. And though they largely succeed in this mission, I'm left to wonder if they haven't missed the point of sport.

Scorecasting assembles a collection of statistical oddities in sport and explains them in one of two ways: you're not seeing what you think you're seeing, or you're not properly interpreting what you're seeing. An example of the former is streaky hitting in baseball. The authors conclude that these fabled runs of excellence are essentially meaningless. If a baseball player hits for an average of .300 in a given season, that doesn't mean he will hit successfully three out of every ten times. He may get ten hits in a row before making outs in his next 15 at-bats. This does not make him streaky; a coin flipped ten times may come up heads ten times, but flipped a thousand times, it will come up heads roughly half the time. The sample size is everything... An example of the latter is home-arena advantage. In an era of standardized stadia, it shouldn't make any difference to the players where they are contesting the match, but yet home teams generally win more often than they lose. Why? Because referees tend to favor the home teams over the visiting ones, calling penalties against road teams they don't call against home teams. The authors again conclude that the fans themselves play almost no role. From punting in football to hot-off-the-bench shooting in basketball, most of the popular sports suffer the wrath of precisely this analysis and, in virtually every case, the narrative loses out to cold, hard truths.

Scorecasting will be a handy weapon in the arsenal of stat geeks, a club with which to pummel other fans obsessed by the narrative and mythology of sport. Yet it completely misses the point of why people love sport. It is not to tease out every variable, dispel every illusion, capture every nuance. It is to experience the joy of victory and the despair of defeat. It is to ride the glorious highs of winning streaks and championships and suffer through the doldrums of winless months and trophy-less decades. Passion is what creates the bond between a person and a team. It's a bond built on irrationality, not logic. If we subjected every aspect of sport to logic, no one would pay $100 for a ticket to see grown men act out a child's game. A fan would not buy a jersey for a team whose players don't even know he exists. But people do buy tickets and they do buy jerseys because they want to be part of the narrative. And there's no room for that in statistics.

This is a well-researched and enlightening piece. For some, it will surely strike a cord. But for me, it only succeeded in taking away the last vestiges of magic leftover from childhood. Looking for good, statistical arguments, a must-read. Wanting to believe in the magic of sport? Steer clear. (3/5 Stars)

Now I Can Die In Peace by Bill Simmons

From The Week of July 25, 2010

Bill Simmons, also known as the Sports Guy, is a pioneer of a new form of 21st century journalism which has flourished thanks in large part to the rise of the Internet. It is a journalism that forsakes objectivity for the passionate fandom that can only come from a lifetime of watching a team perform day in and day out. Without moderation, sycophantism would be inevitable to a writer in this practice, but Mr. Simmons outshines his peers because he writes about his teams -- the Boston-area sports franchises -- with a charming balance between veneration and criticism, on issues both important and trivial. This is an admirable quality in a fan, a label typically slapped on those with a complete incapacity for objectivity and rational thought. And so, while the Internet has brought to light a Bill Simmons for every team, the journalistic eye of the original has put him a cut above the rest.

Now I Can Die In Peace is a collation of Mr. Simmons' columns, from 1999 to 2004, which primarily concern the Boston Red Sox. Tracing the franchise's history of torture, the book has Mr. Simmons' wonderful flair for conflating sports and culture into a personalized amalgam of joy and sorrow, emotions with which all lovers of sports are familiar. Spicing this stew with his own personal experiences, we see a life in development set against the backdrop of organized sport which has an irrational but amazing hold over most of us adult males. But while all this is thoroughly entertaining, it is a book that could not have held together without the stunning u-turn of fortune the Red Sox experienced in 2004 when, down three-games-to-none to the New York Yankees, on the brink of elimination in the ALCS, they came back to win four straight games, eventualy claiming that season's World Series. It's an event which, for generations of fans of the team, was an exorcism of all the pains and torment, allowing them, yes, to die in peace.

This is a fluffy read, but what book about sport, not consumed by stats, isn't? Sport is an indulgence, a connection with the past. Its literature is no different. Nonetheless, it has an inexplicable power to unite us in common cause and in shared memory, of a time when we were younger and dumber and far more care free. This work won't win any literary prizes, but it is raw, heartfelt and witty, all of which make it perfect for the now. (3/5 Stars)

The Score Takes Care Of Itself by Bill Walsh

From The Week of January 17, 2010

In 1979, coming off a 2/14 1978 season, the San Francisco 49ers, then one of the NFL's most pathetic franchises, hired a head coach with no prior experience in the NFL. He was 48-year-old Bill Walsh, a collegiate coach who, while a known commodity in the, was an unknown to the team's beaten-down fans.

Nine years later, in 1988, Bill Walsh would retire, having transformed not only the 49ers into the most successful NFL franchise from 1980 to 2000, he forever changed the style of play in a league once dominated by hyper-basic, run-first offenses. Bill Walsh won three Superbowls not by getting lucky, not by stepping into the right team at the right time; he won because he installed an ethos in the 49ers, from the players to the secretaries, an ethos that demanded commitment to detail, respect for ones fellows and success from ones endeavors. He changed the culture of a team and, in doing so, rewrote the NFL's record books.

In The Score Takes Care Of Itself, Bill Walsh, over a series of interviews conducted a few years before his death, ruminates over his successes and failures, spending as much time on his philosophy of success as he does the glorious history of his time at the 49ers. In words eerily familiar to what one might hear at a seminar on good corporate culture, he expounds on his belief that success is based as much on attitude and deportment as it is on talent, and that people are defined as much by their comrades and coworkers as they are by their own actions.

Here are the thoughts of a good man reflecting upon his successful life, a man who achieved more than anyone could've dreamed before voluntarily stepping away and letting someone else take the glory of his creation. We would be fools to ignore his wisdom. We would be unkind not to acknowledge his goodness. (4/5 Stars)

A Few Seconds Of Panic by Stefan Fatsis

From The Week of January 17, 2010

A Few Seconds Of Panic is Stefan Fatsis' delightfully funny look inside a modern NFL locker room during training camp, the gruelling, summer portion of the NFL year where rosters are set, plays installed, and camaraderie forged for the difficult season ahead. But Mr. Fatsis, a former reporter for the Wall Street Journal and currently a contributer to NPR's All Things Considered and Slate's Hangup And Listen, doesn't just want to report on football players; he wants to endure training camp as a player would. And so, in the tradition of Paper Lion, he negotiates himself an invitation to the Denver Broncos' camp under Mike Shanahan, trying out at one of the more marginal positions on a football team, punter.

Though there's never any chance that a 43-year-old sportswriter will ever actually make the regular season roster for the Broncos, his fellow team mates, amused and delighted by Fatsis' attempt to kick his way their world, welcome him their fold. They open up to him in ways they would never open up to a regular reporter. And though the success of this book does not hinge solely on the congeniality of the players he competes and trains with -- his charming descriptions of teaching himself to punt prior to trying out with Denver definitely entertain --, A Few Seconds Of Panic would be much poorer for the Broncos shutting him out, dismissing him as a joke.

It's trendy to cut down professional athletes. They are grotesquely over-remunerated for the jobs they perform. and if we aren't discussing their bloated wages, we're pointing out how much trouble they get into, who has the most DWIs, who beats his wife, who hits the Crack pipe. This ignores, of course, that the owners and administrators of the leagues these athletes work for have traditionally been the ones to scale up their profits, to extort more money from fans through tickets and merchandising, and that players have tried mostly to earn for themselves a fair slice of that greedy pie. The lesson here? That we should never judge people we don't know. Without all the facts, we're forced to make generalizations and generalizations about a group of people are, if not outright wrong, are certainly unnuanced and unfair. The players Mr. Fatsis encounters are three-dimensional, possessing morals and dreams and flaws just like the rest of us. Yes, they are handsomely compensated for playing a game, but then they also possess an uncommon drive to succeed, to be better, a drive which has thrust them up into the stratosphere of success. They are people and I, for one, find that gratifying. As is this book... (4/5 Stars)

The Blind Side by Michael Lewis

From The Week of December 13, 2009

Michael Lewis, a writer of nonfiction who has covered topics as wide-ranging as the culture of Wall Street and the art of Moneyball in baseball, here interweaves the evolution of American football with the bizarre life of a young African American boy growing up in Tennessee.

Lawrence Taylor was so feared a linebacker, offenses that played against him, during his stint with the New York Giants in the 1980s, would often be forced to block him with multiple players, greatly diminishing the effectiveness of their plays. This lead to the emphasis on the Left Tackle, now widely held to be the most important position along an offense's line. He must be a player big enough to block a defensive end and fast enough to track down a linebacker and keep him from the quarterback. He is a hybrid of speed and skill bred to combat the Laurence Taylors of the world. Enter Michael Oher, a high school student who is as undereducated a tenth grader as he is a giant of a human being, which is to say he can barely talk and he's nearly 300 pounds. The Blind Side conflates the evolution of the Left Tackle with the rise of Michael Oher, his adoption into a successful Southern family, his remarkable athletic gifts and, finally, his entry into college. Though the book concludes prior to his turning pro, Mr. Oher would eventually be selected by the Baltimore Ravens in the first round of the 2009 NFL draft, a meteoric rise for a man who could barely communicate merely seven years earlier.

A quality book with a quality tale to tell. Michael Oher is easily the star here. Unfortunately, Mr. Lewis has a tendency to oversell his premise, as noteworthy a flaw in Moneyball as it is here. Annoying, yes. Misleading, possibly. But it does not derail an engrossing read. (3/5 Stars)

The Education Of A Coach by David Halberstam

From The Week of November 15, 2009

Though the NFL's Spygate Scandal casts some doubt on the genius of Ernie Adams and Bill Belichick, Education Of A Coach, which is David Halberstam's portrait of two football lifers and the friendship that built the New England Patriots into a dynastic powerhouse, in the National Football League, is no less potent for it. This was always a story about the men and not the achievements which inspired its writing. Thus, it succeeds in giving us glossed portrayals of difficult men who seem to have generally refused to grant Mr. Halberstam much by way of full and honest disclosure.

No matter how reluctant the participants may have been, there is a lot here for fans of coaching, fans of the Patriots, and fans of excellence in sport. We will never know Bill Belichick, but we will know his father who coached at Navy for longer than some lifespans. We'll never know Ernie Adams, but we'll see how the theory of innovation brought his football team into the 21st century and forced a league to catch up to it. Perhaps that's enough. I know I was satisfied in this tale which is as much about the history of second chances as it is about football. (3/5 Stars)