The Essential Smart Football
by Chris B. Brown | 
Next Man Up
by John Feinstein | 
The Best Game Ever
by Mark Bowden | 
Paper Lion
by George Plimpton | 
Collision Low Crossers
by Nicholas Dawidoff | 
A Few Seconds of Panic
by Stefan Fatsis |
The Dark Side of the Game
by Tim Green |
The Art of Smart Football
by Chris B. Brown | 
Boys Will Be Boys
by Jeff Pearlman | 
The Education of a Coach
by David Halberstam |
The Anatomy of England
by Jonathan Wilson | 
Monsters
by Rich Cohen | 
Inverting The Pyramid
by Jonathan Wilson | 
Johnny U
by Tom Callahan | 
Slow Getting Up
by Nate Jackson |
Wearing borrowed uniforms, practicing on obscure college campuses, and led by a former Marine Corps W.W. II fighter ace as commissioner, the American Football League (AFL) debuted in the Fall of 1960 to challenge the monopoly of the well-established National Football League. Within ten years it had won two Super Bowls and had forced a merger with its rival, splitting the NFL into the National and American Football Conferences. This colorful history of the AFL and its unforgettable cast of characters, from Billy Cannon to Joe Namath to its "Foolish Club" of team owners, arrives on the 50th anniversary of the AFL's first season to recount the startling success of an upstart league that prevailed against long odds.