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    Football for a Buck: The Crazy Rise and Crazier Demise of the USFL
    Unavailable
    Football for a Buck: The Crazy Rise and Crazier Demise of the USFL
    Unavailable
    Football for a Buck: The Crazy Rise and Crazier Demise of the USFL
    Audiobook14 hours

    Football for a Buck: The Crazy Rise and Crazier Demise of the USFL

    Written by Jeff Pearlman

    Narrated by Joel Richards

    4.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    The United States Football League was the last football league to not merely challenge the mighty NFL but also to cause it to collectively shudder. It spanned three seasons, featured as many as eighteen teams, secured multiple television deals, drew millions of fans, and launched the careers of legends—but then it died beneath the weight of a particularly egotistical and bombastic owner, a New York businessman named Donald Trump.

    In Football for a Buck, Jeff Pearlman draws on more than 400 interviews to unearth all the salty, untold stories of one of the craziest sports entities to have ever captivated America. From 1980s drug excess to some of the most enthralling and revolutionary football ever seen, Pearlman transports listeners back in time to this crazy, boozy, audacious era of the game. He shows how fortunes were made and lost and how, thirty years ago, Trump was a scoundrel and a spoiler. This is sports as high entertainment—and a cautionary tale of the dangers of ego and excess.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDreamscape Media Audio
    Release dateSep 11, 2018
    ISBN9781974920617
    Author

    Jeff Pearlman

    Jeff Pearlman is a columnist for SI.com, a former Sports Illustrated senior writer, and the critically acclaimed author of Boys Will Be Boys, The Bad Guys Won!, and Love Me, Hate Me.

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    Reviews for Football for a Buck

    4.5/5

    11 ratings3 reviews

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    • 5/5
      This is a marvelously engrossing story of the USFL--that's the United States Football League, for those of you not old enough to remember--an upstart organization that managed survive for three years playing football in the Spring, with its championship game held in July. It was the first professional home of Steve Young, Jim Kelly, Herschel Walker, and a few others who go on to star in the NFL. But while their stories are told here, it is the stories of those whose NFL career was brief or non-existent that are the most interesting. As high hopes turn into missed paychecks, teams folding, teams merging, and even two entire teams being traded for each other (!!), the author gives us amazing, funny, and bittersweet stories by the bushelful to keep us turning the pages. I'm not sure I have ever read any book that might have more instances of potentially libelous statements than this one. The USFL featured not just players smoking on the sidelines, but Al Pacino-Scarface quantities of cocaine, death threats, and airplane brawls. Many of those potentially libeled are no longer around to sue, but one man stands out as the worst of them all. The man who bought the New Jersey Generals and insisted the USFL switch to a fall schedule to compete head-to-head against the NFL. The man who put himself, his outsized ego, and his own ambition ahead of everyone else. And who is still doing so--our President, Donald Trump! First he destroyed the USFL. I guess that wasn't enough, so now he's going after the whole USA. You'll definitely enjoy this book if you care about football for the essence of the game, and the author does leave us with a nice closing scene that shows the camaraderie that still remains from those who are proud to call themselves former USFLers, even if few people have any idea what they're talking about.
    • 4/5
      Here I was trying to avoid a book about Trump and politics but even in this very entertaining book about the USFL, I could not completely get away. The USFL was a "professional" league that played football in the spring. It had franchises around the country including New York, Chicago, Tampa Bay and Philadelphia. How well most franchises succeeded depended largely on the business skills, football acumen and deep pockets of the owners who got involved in the fledgeling league. Herschel Walker, Jim Kelly, Doug Flutie and Steve Young were some of the league's superstars.

      The book is full of very interesting stories and anecdotes about the league's various characters and players. How teams recruited for players in the early days was fascinating. Pearlman also recounts the various ways the league was marketed and how they fought for respectability. An then came Trump...

      Trump wanted to play in the fall and winter and compete against the NFL and college football. How Trump miserably failed and helped take down the league is covered in the book.

      I enjoy Pearlman's sports books---very interesting reading. A pity that the league was unable to survive. But the reader can see that the seeds of destruction were sown very quickly.
    • 5/5
      This was a fun read, with extra points for on-point Trump tie. The man seems to destroy all that he touches. I didn't really get into the USFL, but thought it was fun. I had no idea so many prominent stars started there - I remembered Walker but not Steve Young, Sam Mills, or Doug Williams.