Robert W. Peterson

This is a good book about the early, rough-and-tumble years of pro football, and the men who played it.

I had expected tales of amazing games and the developments in rules and equipment, but it leaned too heavily on the minutiae of the business dealings and what players played under what fake names when. I got a little lost at times.

That said, the story is an interesting one (maybe there’s another book out there that’s more what I’m looking for), about the changing times as the nation turns its eyes from baseball to football, and from college to pros.

One thing that made me proud to be a football fan – there was no official freeze-out of black players like there was in baseball. True, blacks weren’t in football for around a dozen years around WWII, but that soon corrected itself. While baseball had to wait for Jackie Robinson to break the color barrier in 1947, the pros can go back to Fritz Pollard in 1920. He was also the first black coach in the pro game.

The less said about the Redskins, all the way around, the better!

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