This may be the best and most readable book ever written about professional football. It is chiefly about Vince Lombardi.
In 1969, after one year of retirement, Vince Lombardi could stand it no longer. He returned and became head coach of the moribund Washington Redskins. They were the Redskins who had Sonny Jurgensen—the paunch with a golden arm—and a lot of other good guys who seldom won. It was a typical Lombardi frontal assault on an impressive challenge. He was the man who had won more games, more championships, and more awe than any other man in football. The stories held that he was a brutal, ego-busting, driving disciplinarian—and in part he was. He was no paper lion; he was the real thing
Tom Dowling joined Lombardi at training camp and lived with him and his players throughout the long, painful, dramatic season. It is doubtful that anyone has ever so completely got under the hide o f professional athletes or written so fascinatingly about them. Lombardi emerges as everything everyone had been saying of him—and something much more.
Coach
is a superb portrait, exciting read, and an inside view of the most popular spectator sport in the country.