Rose Bowl Dreams: A Memoir of Faith, Family, and Football

by Adam Jones and Adam Jones

Book Overview

Advance Praise for "Rose Bowl Dreams" "No true football fan should miss Adam Jones' "Rose Bowl Dreams." It's more than a football book; it's an inspiring commentary on life itself." --Winston Groom "Adam Jones had the good sense to be born into the middle of four generations of a football-lovin' Texas family, and now that I think about it, that's probably redundant. "Rose Bowl Dreams "reads as if Jones just pulled up a chair, popped open a cold one and started telling stories. He's good company, and you don't have to be able to name the starting lineup of the 2006 Longhorns to enjoy him. "Rose Bowl Dreams" may not be for Aggies, but the rest of us could learn something about faith, family and football." --Ivan Maisel, senior writer, ESPN.com, co-author of "A War in Dixie ""The best football book since Frederick Exley's classic "A Fan's Notes." Adam Jones' "Rose Bowl Dreams "delves deeply into everything that made this country great--mother, God, football and drinking. Even if you can't stand any of those things, "Rose Bowl Dreams" will almost certainly change your mind." --Kinky Friedman, author of "What Would Kinky Do?: How to Unscrew a Screwed-Up World" "Much like Adam Jones, my parents took me to my first football game at age six. As a result, I never stopped playing the game or writing about it. This is a remarkable story about football and family. It provides a wonderful message about how sports, if handled in the proper context, will forever keep humans together. "Rose Bowl Dreams" made my spine tingle.'' --Jim Dent, "New York"" Times" bestselling author of "The Junction Boys" and "Twelve Mighty Orphans """Rose Bowl Dreams" reveals what lies at the heart of the hardcore college football fan better than any other book I've read. This story of faith and faith rewarded will move all readers, even those who scarcely know the difference between a punt and a pass." --W. K. Stratton, author of "Backyard Brawl: Inside the Blood Feud Between Texas and Texas A&M ""God created college football as a grand gift to an imperfect world. I learned this as a very small boy living in the middle of the Texas Panhandle. In time I would come to believe that college football contained all of the joy, faith, pageantry, feeling, failure, and renewal that any person could hope for out of life. It taught me about patience and commitment, about enthusiasm and exasperation, about fatherhood and faith. "Like Norman Maclean's classic, "A River Runs Through It," "Rose Bowl Dreams" is a memoir that transcends the limits of the sports genre to contemplate faith, love, grief and the challenges of fatherhood. Rose Bowl Dreams is the story of a family whose passion for college football begins at a small stadium in the remote Texas Panhandle and leads to college football's most famous venue, the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. Rose Bowl Dreams develops parallel stories of a son and his mother, a crisis of faith, and three fraught football seasons that end in bittersweet triumph as the author follows the story of the University of Texas Longhorns between the time he discovers his mother has inoperable cancer and Texas triumphs in the National Championship Game over USC in what might well be the greatest college football game ever played. Along the way Jones lays bare the heart and passionate soul of the college football fan. To millions, college football is the essence of life. It is, yes, religious in intensity. And its impact on families and its greater meaning possesses tremendous resonance. Rose Bowl Dreams reveals the growth and evolution of a college football fan with the humor and poignancy only personal experience could provide: kitchen table conversations with Panhandle football legend "Bulldog" Jones, good-byes to a mother who taught her son about unconditional love and unconditional fandom, the wise counsel of a psychiatrist father, the love of a beautiful woman, raising three boys, Mennonites singi

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312373694
• ISBN13: 9780312373696
• Release Date: August 2008
• Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books
• Length: 286 Pages
• Weight: 1.18 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.5" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Can I get an Amen?

Where else can you mix Shakespeare and football, Bloody Caesars and longnecks, playbooks and hymnals? Adam Jones weaves a lyrical tapestry out of what is essentially many large men fighting over a pigskin, and you don't even notice when the action moves from the kitchen to the stadium to the church and back again. That God is a pretty funny guy, too.

A grateful man can go home again

Adam Jones writes from his heart about a family, a hometown, a state and a football team that he has loved his entire life, and he does it with candor, compassion and a whip smart sense of timing and humor. His is a life well lived and he has no difficulty knowing Who to thank, and while I am on that subject, we can all thank God for this writer's unqualified talent. You do not have to be a Longhorn junkie to appreciate this book: anyone who has ever marked the Fall by Saturdays has a memorable read in store for him regardless of what conference he calls home. Adam Jones writes about family and football as well as Rick Bragg ever has, but without the requisite "writer's chip" on his shoulder, and in the doing he shows that a grateful man can definitely go home again.

Rose Bowl Dreams It's Great Writing and Even Better Reading

Whether or not you come from a family of fans steeped in the often curious traditions of Texas (the state not the Team) football, which I don't, or whether or not you love college football with a passion that passes all understanding, which I don't, or whether or not you've buried your mother, which I haven't, or whether or not you can explain, must less interpret the actions of any number of college football coaches, which I can't, you need to READ THIS BOOK. Because, simply put, if you like great writing, which I do, and if you love books that are a joy to read because reading brings you joy, which I do because it does, then this book is for you. By way of full disclosure, Adam Jones is a friend, a great guy to break bread with, a hell of a lot of fun to swap stories with, and he's also managed to marry pretty well and produce some great kids. That's real nice and all, but this book goes way beyond nice. How many authors can write, and not offend "he fit in like a Hasidic Jew at a Southern Baptist Convention"? Jones pulls that one off, and many, many more. If you love football or you love to read, you need to read Rose Bowl Dreams.

Not just for football fans!

I'm a Texan. I'm a Longhorn. I love the culture of both, but I'm not a rabid football fan as we Texans are expected to be. If you are, you will definitely love this book. If you aren't, don't pass it up just for that reason. Jones uses football as a framework for the passage of time and a touchstone for important events in his life. He clearly loves the game, but his book is about so much more than that. It's about growing up, living in Texas, the extraordinary women and men in his family who shaped the man he has become, the relationship between his faith and reality, the power of friends and the effect that all of these things had on his perspective upon the birth of his children. Jones is an insightful writer whose humor reflects his intelligence and compassion. You can just tell he's a really good guy, and it's a pleasure to read his memoir and get to know him. I look forward to his next book!

The subtitle says it all.

Although football is a thread in this story, it's really somewhat of a prop for a much bigger story about faith and family. Even though I am a card-carrying member of the orangeblood "Cult of '69," what moved me in Rose Bowl Dreams and kept me reading are the stories of grandparents, parents, children, and the perfect spouse bound up in a tale about a growing faith.