Fourth Down And Life To Go

"Fourth Down in Dunbar tells the story of how one community, plagued by drugs and violence, where many children are fatherless, gives rise to an incredible number of stellar youth athletes. Using [Deion] Sanders as the centerpiece of the story, David Dorsey explores Dunbar's history to show how the same drug culture that ruined so many promising futures also serves as motivation for football success"--

When the 1905 football season ended, nineteen players were dead and countless others were critically injured. The public was outraged. The game had reached a make-or-break moment—fourth down and inches. Coaches, players, fans, and even the president of the United States had one last chance: change football or leave the field. Football's defenders managed to move the chains. Rule changes and reforms after 1905 saved the game and cleared the way for it to become America's most popular sport. But they didn't fix everything. Today, football faces a new injury crisis as dire as 1905's. With increased awareness about brain injury, reported concussions are on the rise among football players. But experts fear concussions may only be the tip of the iceberg. The injuries are almost invisible, but the stakes couldn't be higher: the brains of millions of young football players across the country. Award-winning author Carla Killough McClafferty takes readers on a bone-crunching journey from football's origins to the latest research on concussion and traumatic brain injuries in the sport. Fourth Down and Inches features exclusive photography and interviews with scientists, players, and the families of athletes who have literally given everything to the game. It's fourth and inches. Can football save itself again?

From New York Times bestselling author and Michigan football expert John Back, an analysis of the state of college football: Why we love the game, what is at risk, and the fight to save it. In search of the sport’s old ideals amid the roaring flood of hypocrisy and greed, bestselling author John U. Bacon embedded himself in four college football programs—Penn State, Ohio State, Michigan, and Northwestern—and captured the oldest, biggest, most storied league, the Big Ten, at its tipping point. He sat in as coaches dissected game film, he ate dinner at training tables, and he listened in locker rooms. He talked with tailgating fans and college presidents, and he spent months in the company of the gifted young athletes who play the game. Fourth and Long reveals intimate scenes behind closed doors, from a team’s angry face-off with their athletic director to a defensive lineman acing his master’s exams in theoretical math. It captures the private moment when coach Urban Meyer earned the devotion of Ohio State’s Buckeyes on their way to a perfect season. It shows Michigan’s athletic department endangering the very traditions that distinguish the college game from all others. And it re-creates the euphoria of the Northwestern Wildcats winning their first bowl game in decades. Most unforgettably, Fourth and Long finds what the national media missed in the ugly aftermath of Penn State’s tragic scandal: the unheralded story of players who joined forces with Coach Bill O’Brien to save the university’s treasured program—and with it, a piece of the game’s soul. This is the work of a writer in love with an old game—a game he sees at the precipice. Bacon’s deep knowledge of sports history and his sensitivity to the tribal subcultures of the college game power this elegy to a beloved and endangered American institution.

“Impressively researched and reported and powerfully written, Third Down and a War to Go will put you in the huddle, in the front lines, and in a state of profound gratitude--not only to the Badgers and the hundreds of thousands of veterans like them, but to Terry Frei.” --Neal Rubin, The Detroit News On December 11, 1941, All-American football player Dave Schreiner wrote to his parents, “I’m not going to sit here snug as a bug, playing football, when others are giving their lives for their country. . . . If everyone tried to stay out of it, what a fine country we’d have!” Schreiner didn’t stay out of it. Neither did his Wisconsin Badger teammates, including friend and cocaptain Mark “Had” Hoskins and standouts “Crazylegs” Hirsch and Pat Harder. After that legendary 1942 season, the Badgers scattered to serve, fight, and even die around the world. This fully revised edition of the popular hardcover includes follow-up research and updates about many of the ’42 Badgers, plus a new foreword by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author David Maraniss. Readers and reviewers agree: Terry Frei’s heart-wrenching story of Schreiner and his band of brothers is much more than one team’s tale. It’s an All-American story. 2005 Honorable Mention in Recreation/Sports from the Midwest Independent Publishers Association

As children, we all believe that one day we can reach that impossible dream. Most people don't fulfill their childhood dreams because they stop believing in themselves. "Fourth Down and Long" is an inspirational look at one man's desire to reach his goals-despite life's adversity. From the time he was a small boy, author Tony Lotti dreamed of being a collegiate All-American football player and one day playing in the rough-and-tumble world of the National Football League. Despite a serious car accident, followed by emergency appendectomy surgery, nothing could compete with Lotti's desire to achieve those dreams. Inspired by his faith and family, Lotti remains steadfast through the ups and downs of life. No matter what your profession or status in life, "Fourth Down and Long" will encourage you to never give up on your dreams or the search for happiness-no matter how impossible it seems.

Once Ed Buck, sports reporter, and Adam Benson, star quarterback for the Chicago Bears, played football on the same college team. Years later, they are still close friends. In New York for a game against the Giants, Benson hands Buck the biggest story of his career. Gambling on football is one of the country's leading "industries," and the mob's been forcing Benson to throw games. The quarterback has had enough. Sunday, he tells Buck, he's playing to win, and to hell with the mob. After the game, Buck can run with the story. Adam Benson never makes it off the field alive, and Ed Buck suspects his friend was murdered. Buck knows barely enough to convince a police detective to look into Benson's death--but more than enough to set the mob on his tail. As Lt. Gerry Keegan probes the tangled connections between the dead quarterback and the head of an organized crime family, uncovering drug dealing, murder, blackmail, prostitution, and double- and triple-crosses, Ed Buck and his fiancee run for their lives. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

The stakes are high even off the field in a scorching romance from the USA Today bestselling author of Pass Interference and Line of Scrimmage. When her relationship goes up in flames, Holly Funchess jumps straight back into the heat—by becoming a firefighter. Running as far away from her past as she can, Holly trains hard and lands a job with a small San Diego firehouse. With everything to prove, she has no problem putting her love life on the back burner. But where there’s smoke . . . A former football player with a string of failed relationships behind him, Chase DeMarco has put his all into his Coast Guard career and the youth football team he coaches. He’s not about to let anyone distract him—especially Holly, the woman at his gym who seems to relish getting under his skin. But when their skirmishes turn into full-contact workouts—and they face off against the dangers of their jobs—Chase and Holly must choose between letting the clock run down or playing to win… Praise for Desiree Holt and her fan-favorite novels “Readers can’t help but root for them to fall in love.”—RT Book Reviews “Her novels are about the story: the characters, their motivations, their flaws and back stories and always about human nature. They are also about mature love and respect and very steamy sex.”—Austin American-Statesman “I have read many other books by Desiree Holt and have enjoyed every one of them. Just keep them coming.”—Fresh Fiction

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Discover the game-changing theory of the cycles of history and what past generations can teach us about living through times of upheaval—with deep insights into the roles that Boomers, Generation X, and Millennials have to play—now with a new preface by Neil Howe. First comes a High, a period of confident expansion. Next comes an Awakening, a time of spiritual exploration and rebellion. Then comes an Unraveling, in which individualism triumphs over crumbling institutions. Last comes a Crisis—the Fourth Turning—when society passes through a great and perilous gate in history. William Strauss and Neil Howe will change the way you see the world—and your place in it. With blazing originality, The Fourth Turning illuminates the past, explains the present, and reimagines the future. Most remarkably, it offers an utterly persuasive prophecy about how America’s past will predict what comes next. Strauss and Howe base this vision on a provocative theory of American history. The authors look back five hundred years and uncover a distinct pattern: Modern history moves in cycles, each one lasting about the length of a long human life, each composed of four twenty-year eras—or “turnings”—that comprise history’s seasonal rhythm of growth, maturation, entropy, and rebirth. Illustrating this cycle through a brilliant analysis of the post–World War II period, The Fourth Turning offers bold predictions about how all of us can prepare, individually and collectively, for this rendezvous with destiny.