Just win, baby
From Pop Warner to the pros, America's favorite sport is cutthroat, vainglorious and all-consuming for its players

Bloody Sundays

Inside the Dazzling, Rough-and-Tumble World of the NFL

By Mike Freeman

MORROW; 302 PAGES; $24.95
We Own This Game

A Season in the Adult World of Youth Football

By Robert Andrew Powell

ATLANTIC; 320 PAGES; $25
Little wiggle room remains as to what is America's favorite spectator sport.

Football has all the lurid elements that make up a "must-see" reality show: nonstop action featuring meaty men clad in gladiator gear trying to decapitate each other; a packed stadium of beery fans screaming for blood; scantily clad cheerleaders seemingly offering themselves to the victors; hours upon hours of national television devoted to analyzing every twitch and tackle; and a climactic Super Bowl championship game in January that transforms our fair and prideful country into a national frat party.

As the hype rises to the irritating drone of American media saturation, the stories have begun to shift toward the often violent and sad reports of how high a price athletes and society pay for their Sunday fix of concussive contact. Two new books this fall show us that football remains a better game to watch than to actually play.

"Bloody Sundays," by New York Times reporter Mike Freeman, is a sweeping, state-of-the-union report on the National Football League. Freeman moves effortlessly through such well-trod topics as coaching, offense, hiring practices, salary caps and crime.

Despite too many bad analogies (a league-wide talent at quarterback is as thin as "the scalp of a middle-aged man"), the reporting is smart and thorough.

The in-depth look at former Oakland Raiders coach Jon Gruden, who led the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to victory in last year's Super Bowl, reveals an intense, sleep-deprived football junkie. For Freeman, Gruden embodies what it takes to be a successful NFL head coach: single-minded ruthlessness.

Etc. etc.