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    The Little Red Book of Football Wisdom
    The Little Red Book of Football Wisdom
    The Little Red Book of Football Wisdom
    Ebook161 pages1 hour

    The Little Red Book of Football Wisdom

    By Niels Aaboe

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    About this ebook

    Every football fan has heard Vince Lombardi’s famous adage: “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.” The same is true of Knute Rockne’s exhortation to “Win one for the Gipper.” Quotes like these have become part of football’s lore.
    Less well known is Alex Karras’s advice on the best way to stop All-Pro running back Jim Brown: “Give each guy on the line an ax.” Or Randy Cross’s opinion of his fellow players’ intelligence: “The NFL, like life, is full of idiots.” And then there’s this glimpse into Bill Parcells’s game plan: “If my quarterback runs, I’ll shoot him.”
    The Little Red Book of Football Wisdom is a collection of witty and hilariously irreverent quotes about America’s most popular sport. Players, coaches, celebrities, and literary giants weigh in on the best—and worst—football teams, athletes, games, fans, and more. These are just some of the folks whose words appear in these pages:
    • Joe Namath
    • David Halberstam
    • Joe Montana
    • Paul Hornung
    • Deion Sanders
    • Mean Joe Greene
    • Richard Nixon
    • Jerry Seinfeld
    • Barack Obama
    • Bruce Springsteen
    • Hunter S. Thompson
    • Faith Hill
    • Ernest Hemingway
    • And dozens of others!
    With a rich history dating back nearly 150 years, football is America’s game. Through the words of people who’ve played, coached, and cheered the games, The Little Red Book of Football Wisdom brings football’s vibrant tradition to life.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSkyhorse
    Release dateSep 1, 2013
    ISBN9781628735017
    The Little Red Book of Football Wisdom

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      Book preview

      The Little Red Book of Football Wisdom - Niels Aaboe

      INTRODUCTION

      In the early 1970s, the comedian George Carlin began performing one of his most famous routines: a hilarious and smart skit on the differences between baseball and American football. Alternately taking on the personas of an addled flower child and cigar-chomping general, Carlin compared the loose poetry of baseball to the military-style structure of football. The bit is very funny, but watching it today, one detects unease beneath the humor. You definitely get the sense that Carlin—who grew up rooting for the Brooklyn Dodgers and later switched to the Mets—knew what was coming: baseball would soon lose its place as America’s premier game.

      One look at the television ratings for the 2013 Super Bowl will convince even the most die-hard baseball fan that Carlin’s premonition has come to pass. Nielsen estimated that of all the TV sets that were switched on while the Baltimore Ravens were battling the San Francisco 49ers, more than 70 percent of them were tuned to the game. Super Bowl XLVII was the third most-watched television event in U.S. history, attracting more than 111 million viewers. Professional football—a game that was once played on sandlots and frozen fields by men who earned most of their money doing other things—is now a global phenomenon.

      Since football didn’t reach the sports pinnacle overnight, the game has a rich, colorful history, which I’ve mined for the material included in this book. Careful readers will detect a slight weighting of quotes from the sixties, seventies, and early eighties. The reason for this is that pro football entered the modern television era during this period, which is largely due to talented and innovative players, coaches, owners, and executives like Pete Rozelle, Jim Brown, Lamar Hunt, Joe Namath, Al Davis, and Art Rooney. Along with many others whose words appear in this book, these were groundbreaking figures and personalities whose influence extended well beyond the gridiron.

      As pro football grew in popularity, it generated some of the best sports writing of the post-war era. George Plimpton may have started the ball rolling—at least in terms of long-form writing— with Paper Lion, published in 1966. In it, Plimpton chronicles a preseason he spent practicing and playing with the Detroit Lions. Along the way, he profiles quite a few of his teammates and coaches, many of whom prove to be unexpectedly thoughtful, articulate, and funny.

      Jerry Kramer’s Instant Replay, written with Dick Schaap and published in 1968, takes another tack. The book is a season-long diary, written from a veteran player’s perspective. Kramer’s description of playing guard for Green Bay Packers’ coach Vince Lombardi—whom Kramer and other players alternately revered and hated—is widely considered a sports classic.

      In the same category is Roy Blount Jr.’s About Three Bricks Shy of a Load, written after the author spent a season with the Pittsburgh Steelers. First published in 1974, Blount’s book is an affectionate, hilarious, and sometimes bawdy portrait of a team that stood poised to dominate the NFL for the rest of the decade.

      But great football writing and reporting didn’t end in the seventies. And players, coaches, broadcasters, and others have never stopped saying memorable things about the game. Vince Lombardi and Knute Rockne are quoted in the collection, of course. But so is Alex Karras, who offers advice on the best way to stop All-Pro running back Jim Brown: Give each guy on the line an ax Then there’s Randy Cross, offering his opinion of his fellow players’ intelligence: The NFL, like life, is full of idiots The book includes this glimpse into Bill Parcells’s game plan: If my quarterback runs, I’ll shoot him And no collection of football quotes would be complete without something from Dandy Don Meredith, who co-broadcast Monday Night Football for eleven years, including this call from a Denver Broncos game: "We’re in Mile High Stadium, and I really am!"

      As these examples suggest, The Little Red Book of Football Wisdom offers dozens of wise, witty, and hilariously irreverent quotes about America’s most popular sport. Players, coaches, celebrities, politicians, and literary giants weigh in on the best— and worst—football teams, athletes, games, fans, and more.

      By the way, it’s worth noting that George Carlin eventually became a fan of pro football. Not surprisingly, his favorite team was the Oakland Raiders, a franchise known as much for its outlaw mystique as for occasional on-field success. Carlin expressed his devotion to the team in typically Carlin-esque fashion. He didn’t use all of the seven dirty words you can’t say on television (another one of his classic routines), but he came awfully close.

      —Niels Aaboe

      New York City

      Sammy Baugh

      PART ONE

      THE GAME

      Ground acquisition. That’s what football is, football’s a ground acquisition game. You knock the crap out of eleven guys and take their land away from them.

      —GEORGE CARLIN

      • • •

      [F]ootball, truly, is about land. The Settlers want to move the line of scrimmage Westward, the Native Americans want to move it East.

      —DAVID MAMET

      • • •

      [My] obsession with field position—with territory—is a legacy of my coaching days at West Point, where we’d get free advice from every major on campus.

      —BILL PARCELLS

      • • •

      People get hurt all the time in the game of football, it’s part of what we do.

      —LAWRENCE TAYLOR

      • • •

      Football is the expression of the strength of a dominant race, and to this it

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