On Tuesday, we shot the latest batch of our “Football Freakonomics” videos for the NFL Network.
This project has been a blast. There are a lot of people involved on the production, research, and digital sides, and they are all high-caliber and fun to work with. Our first two batches of videos were shot in Brooklyn warehouses. But on Tuesday we stepped it up, and got to work in the New York Jets’ indoor practice field out in Florham Park, N.J. (It was an off-day for the team, although there were plenty of players around doing individual workouts.)
Hey, Sanchez, I'm wide open! Dubner prepping for a Football Freakonomics shoot at the N.Y. Jets' training facility in Florham Park, N.J. (Photo: Bourree Lam)
I also ran into my old friend Nicky Dawidoff, a wonderful writer whose previous subjects range from ballplayer-spy Moe Berg
I absolutely cannot wait to read this book. I have read a lot of NFL books (too many!) and the sad fact is that football has produced far, far less good literature than baseball. When Nicky and I started talking about the best football book, we each came up with the same title: George Plimpton‘s Paper Lion
Am curious to know: what are your favorite football books?
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“How Football Explains America” by Sal Paolantonio
Never Die Easy – Walter Payton’s autobiography
A sadly unknown football book is Mark Bowden’s “Bringing the Heat,” which is about the 1992 Philadelphia Eagles. As far as I can tell, no one (save maybe David Halberstam’s Portland Trail Blazers book) has ever done a better job of tell a “year with a team” story, while mixing in the sociology of the sport, and yet Bowden also spent time with assistant coaches going over game tape to explain what happens during the play as well as any sportswriter I’ve ever read. I don’t know of any other football book with that kind of range.
Run to Daylight-Vince Lombardi (Complete old school text about football, life and leadership
Dick Butkus’ biography ‘Flesh and Blood’
Agree with the poster who chose “North Dallas Forty”. Dan Jenkin’s “Semi-Tough” was not nearly as real or serious, but still pretty funny.
But I’ve always thought the two sports that best lend themselves to literature are baseball and golf. Football doesn’t come close.
Carlisle vs. Army: Jim Thorpe, Dwight Eisenhower, Pop Warner, and the Forgotten Story of Football’s Greatest Battle by Lars Anderson
North Dallas Forty is both my favorite football book and favorite football movie. Even though there are more than a few degrees of separation between the two (the North Dallas Bulls?) and the endings vary so greatly, I was captivated by both. I have found no football-related equal in either medium.