Anthony L. Gargano

NFL Unplugged tries to take the reader into the nitty-gritty world of the National Football League. It primarily focuses on injuries, pain, and the locker room, male dominated hijinks of professional football players. In many instances it relies on the stories of unnamed players, usually not the superstars, and we get a glimpse of their life in the trenches.

Unfortunately, this book fails on many fronts. First, there really isn't anything new here. None of the stories told are surprising and many of them are the types of things we have heard from other sources. Second, the writing relies too heavily on Philadelphia Eagles players. While players from other teams are included, there isn't a lot of breadth in this book.

And finally, the writing is sometimes so over the top pretentious as to be laughable. The author tries to show off his erudite writing skills in a way that is frankly a little embarrassing. It made for long, unnecessary "literary" attempts to tell stories that were best left unadorned with unnecessary verbiage. It tried to describe the guts and sweat and pain of professional football with ill advised flowery language.

While overall I more or less enjoyed this book, being a football fan. But I would not recommend it, nor would I felt I had missed out anything had I quit halfway through.… (plus d'informations)