The Dark Side of the Game: My Life in the NFL

by Tim Green

Book Overview

Tim Green is proof that all football players aren't meat-headed Neanderthals. Green, an ex-player who has made his mark as a commentator on National Public Radio and the Fox Network, shows both his... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0446520330
• ISBN13: 9780446520331
• Release Date: January 1996
• Publisher: Warner Books (NY)
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

An anti-romantic, insider's point of view

Very refreshing. Not the rah-rah, market-driven NFL mythology that you get from so many other commentators. Green takes a very matter-of-fact, no-nonsense approach. The Steve-Young-vs-Joe-Montana essay alone is worth the price of admission.

TOP DRAWER

This is an incredible look at the behind the scenes of American football. A truly excellent book!

A Serious Look At The Game

Tim Green is a former defensive end for the Atlanta Falcons. His autobiography of what he went through, saw, and felt in the National Football League is eye-opening.Most of the information in here is a well known fact, or has been thought to happen by many hard core fans and players. Mr. Green's confirmation of these facts make it all the more chilling.Some of the stories in here are quite amazing. One part of the book describes how players escaped the detection of steroid abuse.This novel is the most important, and best football book in my collection.

Tim Green shines on and off the field

I recomend this book to everyone. From the hardcore fan to the most novice fan. My girlfriend loved this book and she knew nothing about football. It reveals the truth about pro football.

A very honest book about NFL football by a former player.

"When I meet people for the first time, and they learn that I played for eight years in the NFL, their eyes glaze over with that far away look of a person dreaming about what he'll do if he wins the lottery." With these lines, Tim Green begins his autobiography. I must offer Mr. Green my heartiest congratulations because it takes a lot for this history major to buy an autobiography in hard cover. The last one I did buy was Lewis Puller Jr's moving Pulitzer Prize winning autobiography, "Fortunate Son" before it won a Pulitzer PRize. Bottom line: iit akes a lot to convince me to buy a book, written by a livng person about themselves. .. such as the book being interesting enough to have read about half of it in the bookstore. With his fourth book, Tim Green, a former defensive end for the Atlanta Falcons, has written an amazingly funny, refreshingly honest book about life in the "Big Time " of football. This is a book for fan (Both rab id & non), and non fan alike, irregardless of sex. It details the highs, lows, follies and foibles of football, both on and off the field, explaining such mysteries as what players really say on the field to one another after, ("Hi Ttim, how are you?... Good Brett, how about you?... Good."), racism ("Whenever a team travels anywhere, two large buses are needed to move them. It's not uncommon for one bus to be predominatly filled with blacks, and the other with whites.") what players eat (anything edible that's not moving fast enough to get away.) what it's like to play at the Meadowlands, ("football in a can"), right on down to what football players wear under their uniforms, ("The hard facts are that protective cups, as they are known, are as uncommon in the NFL as painted toenails.") Guess that's why there are no Dennis Rodman's in football. This is not howerver, a book for stuffed shirts, especially those in the NFL who are more used to the game of football being treated with the awe and admiration usually reserved for a WWII documentary of aircraft carrier warfare in the Pacific or the Battle of the Atlantic in WWII. IF your're such a stuffed shirt you certaily won't want this book since it's not a hagiography. IT is definitely not a Steve Sabol film with it's glowing commentaries and beautifully filmed sequences. Far from it, this book is real, funny, and sad in places, such as in it's description of former players having to start all over agian trying to get along on the average person's salaary after years of having had credit cards with $50,000 limits, huge bank accounts and being spoiled and fawned over. In short, it manages to transform football from the usual two dimensional cutout sport seen on weekend TV into a three dimensional sport which can live on after the TV has been turned off. Most fans probably never thought about the constant pain that it takes to play this sport, or what happens t players after the fame and money are gone. They probably don't consider what Deion Sanders is like