Running For My Life: My Journey in the Game of Football and Beyond / by Warrick Dunn

Just after midnight on January 7, 1993, Cpl. Betty Smothers of the Baton Rouge Police Department was helping a local store clerk institute a night deposit at a nearby bank when both women were ambushed by two gunmen who shot and ultimately killed Smothers. The violent incident was notable not just because a loyal police officer was killed--only the fifth Louisiana policewoman ever--but because Smothers was the single mother of five children, the oldest being Catholic High Senior football standout Warrick Dunn. The previous fall Warrick, a quarterback, corner and kick returner, had guided Catholic to its first ever state championship game and later signed a letter of intent to play football at Florida State. With the death of his mother, he assumed his role as head of his family even as he would enroll at FSU later that same year. Dunn instantly became a key component of a backfield which included Heisman trophy winner (and Warrick's roommate) Charlie Ward, helping lead the Seminoles to their first ever National Championship almost a year to the day of his mother's death. The rest of the story is something of a legend, Dunn breaking all manner of school rushing records, winning awards and receiving accolades on his path to a standout pro career where he won a Super Bowl as part of the Tampa Bay Bucs and was a three time Pro Bowl selection.

But this story's not really about football. No book which opens with a man confronting his mother's murderer on death row can really be about a game. And even though Dunn's story, his athletic career included, is something of an improbable feel-good tale of overcoming obstacles, the book's not a publicity piece or an overdramatized memoir weighed down by sentiment. The narrative is a truly down-to-earth confessional from a humble, soft-spoken man who managed to parlay a horrendous tragedy into an opportunity for love, forgiveness and a chance to help those in need. Since 1997, the Warrick Dunn Family Foundation has helped thousands of underpriveleged single parent families find help with basic needs assistance and the "Homes For the Holidays" portion of the non-profit has given the gift of home ownership to thousands in the Greater Baton Rouge area, Tampa Bay, Tallahassee and Atlanta. Dunn is now a minority owner of the Atlanta Falcons. (796.332092 DUNN)

All The Right Moves (DVD) 1983 / a film by Michael Chapman; starring Tom Cruise, Craig T. Nelson and Lea Thompson

For 18-year-old Stefan "Stef" Djordjevick, the only way to escape his bleak Pennsylvania steel town is with a football scholarship. A star defensive back on his high school team, he knows that each game, each performance is critical to the rest of his life. Stef's not the only one who wants out. Everyone including his girlfriend wants to escape their grim surroundings and the inevitably dismal future which comes with it. Even Stef's head coach, the gutsy but verbally abusive Coach Nickerson dreams of riding his winning team to a championship and hopefully a much better position ("somewhere far away") as an assistant in college. The night of the defining game holds high stakes, higher still when things don't go right and the tension between Stef and Coach Nickerson becomes hostile to a point where both their plans and dreams come crashing to a hault.

Right from the start, this movie makes one thing unavoidably clear: there's a mill, and it's not an all that happy-fun place to work. Like the wide-screen close-up of a frozen Jack Nicholson revealed in Kubrick's The Shining, the steel mill is brought abruptly to viewer attention in the film's opening shot. There is nothing even remotely good about the mill. Absolutely everything, every devastatingly sad element of the town from its name, Ampipe, dubbed after the "American Steel & Pipe" company, right down to the drab homes of the workers emanates from the tomb-like structure atop the hill.  No one is left unscarred by its grim (and grimey) presence, from the miserable workers who trudge up the hill every morning to the even more miserable workers who are laid off daily and the multitudes of dependents and non-workers who, like Stef, plod through lives of quiet desperation. Consequently there are no smiling faces in Ampipe, only the leering, hungover scowls of men and the vacant stares of defeated women. The one outlet (other than alcohol) available to the people of Ampipe is also something toxic, as corrupting and pestilential within itself as the pollution spewing from the smoke stacks. Given to living vicariously through the lives of 17 and 18-year-olds, the entire town exists in a sort of emotional vacuum where a stumble here or a miscall there defines far more than collective misfortune. It proliferates a system which necessitates bitter personal conflicts, distorts the truth, neglects higher priorities and fosters evil intentions. The individual opportunities created stand as the lone redeeming element. That the theme of dead-end industrial commerce within a small, rural community is relentlessy driven home for viewer enlightenment is probably a good thing because nothing else in the movie is very significant. As a film All The Right Moves is, well, kind of dumb. Cliche, cliche, cliche--it goes without saying. It's a little embarassing watching Tom Cruise, who looks so ridiculously out-of-place that comparisons to Rudy will inevitably get thrown around by viewers who've only seen the latter, and even the always effervescent Lea Thompson seems badly miscast as the dowdy, enabling girlfriend whose own passions for music are cruelly overlooked. But the movie's so dated it entertains with its camp value, maintaining a kitsch effect popular with 80's movies these days, much of it do to the lamentably tacky (funny in an ironic way) teen aphorisms and awkward slang strewn throughout the dialogue. Plus, like so many bad books and movies, the cover art is noticeably good. (DVD ALL) 

College Football

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100 Years of Texas Longhorn Football / by Gene Schoore; w/ foreword by Darrell Royal

Burnt Orange Nation can’t go wrong with this comprehensive and very-well illustrated book commemorating a century of Longhorn football. All aspects of the program are touched on as notable players, coaches and games fill this book with all a gung-ho gridiron fan could want concerning UT football. Legendary coach Darrell Royal talks about the Big 8 years while Schoore does a good job well-representing the team that’s become a stamp of the Lone Star State.

The Last Coach: the Life of Paul “Bear” Bryant /

by Allen Barra

Deified by fans of Alabama football, Bryant was the legendary Crimson Tide coach of the 60’s/70’s glory years during which the program routinely clamped down on SEC competition and was never out of the national title picture. See why Bama crazies continue to pay homage, erect shrines, and devote rooms in their houses to the coach who’s been dead over two decades but still lives on.
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A Fire to Win: The Life and Times of Woody

Hayes / by John Lombardo
‘Three yards/Cloud of Dust’ coach Woody Hayes may not be too pleased with the way the game has assumed a more airborne mode of moving the ball. Offensive schemes haven't just deviated from tradition; old ideologies are routinely tossed out the window as teams undergo full-on transformations practically overnight. Fans nostalgic about the olden days of limited forward passing and simpler playbooks will like this unique insight into the former Ohio State Buckeyes legend.

Runnin' with the big dogs : the true, unvarnished story of the Texas-Oklahoma football wars / by Mike Shropshire

Shropshire recounts the origins of the Red River Rivalry/Shootout with exceptional intuition; stating the case for why this particular “border war” inhabits the American spotlight on a yearly basis. Both teams, both states, both fan-bases and all those caught in the cross-hairs are accounted for as this is a great read for anyone wanting more of the Big XII’s most intense rivalry.
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Rammer, Jammer, Yellow Hammer: a Journey into the Heart of Fan Mania / by Warren St. Johns

Ever wonder why fans willingly shed their clothes, write numbers/letters on torsos, and don face paint in the coldest weather imaginable? For all those bewildered over the reasons behind such antics and anyone just looking for a good read, here is a book to satisfy curiosity. Author St. Johns divulges some of the awkward reasons why college football’s die-hard fans routinely exhibit the most extreme and often peculiar rituals when rooting on their favorite schools and teams.
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Still Kicking: My Dramatic Journey as the First Woman to Play Division One College Football / by Katie Hnida
A true American success story, female place-kicker Katie Hnida recalls her time as a Division 1A college football player first with the Colorado Buffaloes and later at the University of New Mexico. Acquainting the reader with hardships endured with first garnering serious attention for her abilities and then persevering amid discrimination and abuse, Hnida delivers a breakthrough testimony about becoming the first ever female to compete at the highest amateur level of the male-dominant sport.