Pigskin: The Early Years of Pro Football

by Robert W. Peterson

Book Overview

If the National Football League is now a mammoth billion-dollar enterprise, it was certainly born into more humble circumstances. Indeed, it began in 1920 in an automobile showroom in Canton, Ohio, when a car dealer called together some owners of teams, mostly in the Midwest, to form a league. Unlike the lavish boardrooms in which NFL owners meet today, on this occasion the owners sat on the running boards of cars in the showroom and drank beer from...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195119134
• ISBN13: 9780195119138
• Release Date: October 1997
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.5" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

Great history of the early years of football

Does a really good job of covering it from the turn of the century through till the 1958 Colts-Giants championship game. A really interesting read if you're into the history of football and the rule and tactic changes over the years.

Fascinating book about the early history of Pro Football

This was a book that surprised me when I read it because it has so much great information about the early days of pro football. The struggles of football at the professional level to become a "respected" game was one of the surprises in the book along with the fact that, for example, the "draw play" that is used today was discovered completely by accident years ago (read the book to find out why). The book is a great look back at the early years of the game, the subtle changes to the game over the first few decades and the changes that brought the game to the status it has today in our society. This is a great read about the early history of football in our nation.

Solid Pro Football History

What I most like about this book is the author's dedication to historical accuracy. It was apparent that the author weighed the reliability of different accounts of what happened in order to give a true picture of pro football's past. Often this meant discarding some of the more colorful but dubious stories frequently repeated in other books. I was impressed with the sources used for the book. Sources included research of the Professional Researchers Association, other respected books and authors, and original interviews of star and more ordinary former players as well as coaches. The book spans the era of pro football from the late 1800's to the 1958 NFL championship game. Roughly the first third of the book is devoted to the pre-NFL days of pro football prior to 1920. There are 16 pages of photos. The quality of these photos- even considering that they are old- is not good, unlike the cover photo, which is very good. I did not find the book difficult to read. This is a book I would recommend to anyone of high school age or older who wants a good foundation on the history of pro football. This book delivers a solid, straight-forward account of how pro football developed.