Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Pages: 520
•
Trim: 6½ x 9½
978-1-5381-0194-0 • Hardback • August 2019 • $38.00 • (£29.00)
978-1-5381-0195-7 • eBook • August 2019 • $36.00 • (£28.00)
Chris Willis is the head of the Research Library at NFL Films. He is the author of multiple books on early pro football, including The Man Who Built the National Football League: Joe F. Carr (2010), Dutch Clark: The Life of an NFL Legend and the Birth of the Detroit Lions (2012), A Nearly Perfect Season: The Inside Story of the 1984 San Francisco 49ers (2014), and Walter Lingo, Jim Thorpe, and the Oorang Indians: How a Dog Kennel Owner Created the NFL’s Most Famous Traveling Team (2017), all published by Rowman & Littlefield. Willis was nominated for an Emmy in 2002 for his work on the HBO documentary The Game of Their Lives and won an Emmy in 2016 for his work on HBO’s Hard Knocks: Training Camp with the Houston Texans. He was awarded the Professional Football Researchers Association’s Ralph Hay award for lifetime achievement in pro football research and historiography in 2012.
In the 1920s, Red Grange (1903-91) was a spectacular college football player and a peer of the larger-than-life sports stars of that flashy decade, including Babe Ruth, Jack Dempsey, and Bill Tilden. They were the crest of the first wave of sports marketing, and Grange, with his agent C.C. “Cash and Carry” Pyle, may have made more money out of his celebrity than any of them, while establishing professional football as a viable enterprise in the process. Grange wrote an autobiography in the 1950s and has been accorded two serious biographies since: John Carroll’s Red Grange and the Rise of Modern Football and Gary Andrew Poole’s The Galloping Ghost. Now, Willis (research library, NFL Films) takes a personal look at Grange, whom he depicts as humble and amiable. The book’s centerpiece is an extended section on the Grange-led barnstorming tours of 1925–26. Willis presents a deep study of all aspects of that tour, devoting attention to Grange’s life before and after his playing days, relying on interviews with descendants of Grange’s family, friends, and colleagues. VERDICT A highly recommended picture of a football legend and one of the league’s first superstars.— Library Journal
This book scores a touchdown . . . [Red Grange] should be at the top of your football reading lists as a must read.— Gridiron Greats
Every bit as good as I’d hoped . . . We highly recommend [Red Grange] and appreciated the sheer volume of knowledge Willis dropped in it.— Pro Football Journal
There is no better way to understand the 100th season of the NFL than to begin with the remarkable story of Red Grange, whose singular talent changed the way football was marketed and consumed at a time in this country when people of all walks of life were starving for big stars on the big stage. Chris Willis of NFL Films, the brilliant biographer of our national obsession, has told this story as only he can—with unparalleled scholarship and in entertaining detail.— Sal Paolantonio, National Correspondent, ESPN, and author of How Football Explains America
Chris Willis didn’t know Red Grange. He didn’t see him play. But, if there is anyone who might make you believe he did, it’s Chris Willis. Truly one of pro football’s leading historians, Willis combines well-researched facts with a human touch and an unequaled understanding of the game and the era of which he writes. Few others have his appreciation for the unquestionable impact Grange had on professional football during its formative years. During a time when college coaches like Amos Alonzo Stagg were calling the pro game “a menace to college football,” Willis chronicles how Grange—a model of good behavior and sportsmanship—converted pro football naysayers to enthusiastic supporters. There is no one better suited to tell the tale than Chris Willis.— Joe Horrigan, Executive Director, Pro Football Hall of Fame
There are few figures in football history more mythic or more seminal than Harold "Red" Grange. In his carefully-researched new biography, Chris Willis expertly puts Grange in the context of his times, showing his outsized influence on the collegiate game and the immense importance of his arrival in the fledgling universe of the National Football League. The heart of the book is Willis's portrayal of Grange's punishing 1925-26 coast-to-coast barnstorming tour with the Bears—aptly described by one writer as a "national hysteria"—when the biggest star in college football helped legitimize the NFL.— Michael MacCambridge, author of America's Game: The Epic Story of How Pro Football Captured a Nation