Rick Telander on American Football--Five Books interview

Another excellent interview from the folks at Five Books. Focuses on the "Dark Side" of football, discussing books such as North Dallas Forty and Semi-Tough.

http://thebrowser.com/interviews/rick-telander-on-american-football-and-its-dark-side?page=full

 

Here we go again.

 

These come around like clockwork, don't they? Still, I think Telander (and Gent and Jenkins and Meggysey, et al.) are a necessary counterbalance to the mainstream cult and culture of big money football.

Can't separate the game from its central metaphors; shouldn't have game day without the existential anguish, too.

 

In all fairness, TheBrowser is a British site, maybe the topic hasn't yet reached cliche status there.

 

Football has no dark side.

/peterking

 

Counterbalance is good. I read all the books he mentioned and liked them all. Bootleggers Boys was a surprisingly good book.

The counterbalance side though needs to find some more spokes people other than Telander who seems to have a love hate relationship with the game. A few years back he wrote a glowing tribute to the game.

He did make an error in talking about one of the books on his list - You're OK. He said that Dean Steinkuhler and Mike Munchak played for the Raiders when in fact they played for The Oilers.

"He talks about Dean Steinkuhler, a tremendous player for the Raiders, who had 13 knee surgeries and another guy, Mike Munchak, a great player too, who had nine surgeries on his right knee alone."

 

Boom -- Like you, I was pleasantly surprised by Bootlegger's Boy.