Texas Celebrity Turkey Trot

Sports: A defensive back falls from fame to instant oblivion when he's suddenly cut from the Dallas Cowboys.

DIVA corrupt football team fights to become the sport’s dominant franchise/divDIV/divDIVThe Texas Pistols never should have been. The league had no business awarding a team to dying Park City, but it only took a little pressure—financial and otherwise—to bring the expansion franchise to town. At first, they’re worthless, playing in an empty stadium for slack-jawed fans, but the owners have a plan. Five years to financial security. Five years to complete domination of the sport. Five years to the Super Bowl. And it starts with Taylor Rusk./divDIV /divDIVBut Rusk, the finest college quarterback of his generation, is no fool, and he realizes quickly that all is not honest in Park City. He doesn’t want to stop the corruption; he wants a piece of it, and for a price he will lead his new team to glory. In Texas, football is life. But in Park City, it can mean death, too./div

National Bestseller: The “powerful novel” about the hidden side of pro football, written by a former NFL player (Newsweek). On the field, the men who play football are gladiators, titans, and every other kind of cliché. But when they leave the locker room they are only men. Peter Gent’s classic novel looks at the seedy underbelly of the pro game, chronicling eight days in the life of Phil Elliott, an aging receiver for the Texas team. Running on a mixture of painkillers and cortisone as he tries to keep his fading legs strong, Elliott tries to get every ounce of pleasure out of his last days of glory, living the life of sex, drugs, and football. Adapted for the screen in 1979, this novel, written by ex-Dallas Cowboy Peter Gent, is widely considered the best football novel of all time.

At the height of the sixties, a group of Texas writers stood apart from Texas’ conservative establishment. Calling themselves the Mad Dogs, these six writers—Bud Shrake, Larry L. King, Billy Lee Brammer, Gary Cartwright, Dan Jenkins, and Peter Gent—closely observed the effects of the Vietnam War; the Kennedy assassination; the rapid population shift from rural to urban environments; Lyndon Johnson’s rise to national prominence; the Civil Rights Movement; Tom Landry and the Dallas Cowboys; Willie Nelson, Jerry Jeff Walker, the new Outlaw music scene; the birth of a Texas film industry; Texas Monthly magazine; the flowering of “Texas Chic”; and Ann Richards’ election as governor. In Texas Literary Outlaws, Steven L. Davis makes extensive use of untapped literary archives to weave a fascinating portrait of writers who came of age during a period of rapid social change. With Davis’s eye for vibrant detail and a broad historical perspective, Texas Literary Outlaws moves easily between H. L. Hunt’s Dallas mansion and the West Texas oil patch, from the New York literary salon of Elaine’s to the Armadillo World Headquarters in Austin, from Dennis Hopper on a film set in Mexico to Jerry Jeff Walker crashing a party at Princeton University. The Mad Dogs were less interested in Texas’ mythic past than in the world they knew firsthand—a place of fast-growing cities and hard-edged political battles. The Mad Dogs crashed headfirst into the sixties, and their legendary excesses have often overshadowed their literary production. Davis never shies away from criticism in this no-holds-barred account, yet he also shows how the Mad Dogs’ rambunctious personae have deflected a true understanding of their deeper aims. Despite their popular image, the Mad Dogs were deadly serious as they turned their gaze on their home state, and they chronicled Texas culture with daring, wit, and sophistication.

Winner, Coral Horton Tullis Memorial Prize, Texas State Historical Association, 2014 During the early 1970s, the nation’s turbulence was keenly reflected in Austin’s kaleidoscopic cultural movements, particularly in the city’s progressive country music scene. Capturing a pivotal chapter in American social history, Progressive Country maps the conflicted iconography of “the Texan” during the ’70s and its impact on the cultural politics of subsequent decades. This richly textured tour spans the notion of the “cosmic cowboy,” the intellectual history of University of Texas folklore and historiography programs, and the complicated political history of late-twentieth-century Texas. Jason Mellard analyzes the complex relationship between Anglo-Texan masculinity and regional and national identities, drawing on cultural studies, American studies, and political science to trace the implications and representations of the multi-faceted personas that shaped the face of powerful social justice movements. From the death of Lyndon Johnson to Willie Nelson’s picnics, from the United Farm Workers’ marches on Austin to the spectacle of Texas Chic on the streets of New York City, Texas mattered in these years not simply as a place, but as a repository of longstanding American myths and symbols at a historic moment in which that mythology was being deeply contested. Delivering a fresh take on the meaning and power of “the Texan” and its repercussions for American history, this detail-rich exploration reframes the implications of a populist moment that continues to inspire progressive change.

Everybody knows that Texans take their sports seriously. Whether it's a high school football clash on Friday night, a college baseball game on Saturday afternoon, or a pro basketball matchup on Sunday morning, sports is serious business in the Lone Star State. How serious? Ask Don Meredith to comment on former Dallas Cowboys Coach Tom Landry: "He's a perfectionist. If he was married to Racquel Welch, he'd expect her to cook." Or talk to golf pro Lee Trevino about the tour: "You can make a lot of money in this game. Just ask my ex-wives. Both of them are so rich that neither of their husbands work." And if you're still not convinced, read what former Texas Rangers manager Whitey Herzog had to say in 1973: "We need just two players to be a contender. Just Babe Ruth and Sandy Koufax." These quotes and hundreds more are included in this collection of classic Texas sports quotes. More than ten years in the making, ". . . 'Til the Fat Lady Sings" features approximately four hundred quotes from more than a hundred different sources. Coaches, sports writers, athletes, broadcasters, fans, politicians, actors, and team owners all speak out with wit and wisdom about the games and the names of Texas sports. This book is a must have for everyone who plays and enjoys the game of life.

After a rollercoaster career as a pro football star and bestselling author, Peter Gent's ride in the fast lane ended in a bruising divorce and custody battle. Afterward, he returned to his hometown to rebuild his relationship with his son, Carter. This chronicle of ten seasons coaching Carter's "Connie Mack" league baseball team celebrates the redemptive power of sports, the healing bond between father and son, and the bittersweet turning point when a father must face the proud yet painful process of letting go.