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Bibliography The literature on the National Football League is growing rapidly with each passing year, as more scholars are working in the field of sport history and more journalists are writing serious biography and history. There are a number of general histories and reference works that contain summary histories. Total Football II: The Official Encyclopedia of the National Football League, edited by Bob Carroll, Michael Gershman, David Neft, and John Thorn (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1999) contains a general history, brief team histories, and short biographies of players, coaches, and executives. The ESPN Pro Football Encyclopedia, 2nd. ed., edited by Pete Palmer et al. (New York: Sterling Publishing, 2007) has many of the same features and is more up to date, although the quality of the historical narrative does not match that of Total Football II. Among the general histories of the league, Will McDonough et al., 75 Seasons : The Complete Story of the National Football League, 1920–1995 (Atlanta: Turner Publishing, 1994) is one of the most frequently cited works. It features decade summaries, player profiles, all-decade teams, and excellent photos. There is a functional general history located at NFL.com, a labor history at NFLPA.com, and a Super Bowl history at SuperBowl.com. Four serious historical works are required reading for anyone seeking to understand the forces that have shaped the National Football League. Michael MacCambridge’s America’s Game: The Epic Story of How Pro Football Captured a Nation (New York: Random House, 2004) picks up the history of the NFL in 1945 and takes it into the early twenty-first century. MacCambridge provides an overarching view of the growth of the NFL and the cultural appeal of the game, and explains how it has become the new national pastime. It is rich in detail within a sweeping historical context and interpretation. Craig Coenen’s Crepeau_text.indd 237 7/1/14 11:29 AM 238 bibli o grap h y From Sandlots to the Super Bowl: The National Football League, 1920–1967 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2005) begins with the early history of the league and its struggles for survival. The author devotes considerable attention to the relationship between NFL and its host cities. It is a story of both failure and success, leading ultimately to the triumph of the NFL in the national marketplace. Coenen’s analysis of labor issues, race, and drugs are significant parts of the narrative. More narrowly focused in time, David Harris’s The League: The Rise and Decline of the NFL (Toronto: Bantam Books, 1986) examines the decentralization of the NFL in the 1970s and 1980s as Pete Rozelle’s power eroded in the face of the legal struggle with Al Davis and the City of Los Angeles, and its aftermath. Harris’s research is meticulous and awe-inspiring, as he has constructed this history by combing court records and the backgrounds of league officials and owners, revealing a maze of financial manipulation, shady deals, twisted ethics, and out-of-control egos. Michael Oriard in Brand NFL: Making and Selling America’s Favorite Sport (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007) laments the transformation of the NFL from a football league to a brand in a brilliantly argued and convincing narrative beginning with the 1960s and running into the early twenty-first century. Although labor issues and drugs are part of the story, in the end Oriard’s major contribution is his analysis of the marketing of the league as product, image, and brand, to the detriment of the game itself. The prehistory and early history of the NFL is the subject of several quality books and a large number of research efforts by members of the Professional Football Researchers Association. The PFRA maintains a Web site at www .professionalresearchers.org that houses all of the issues of The Coffin Corner : The Official Magazine of the Professional Football Researchers Association, which began publication in 1979. The site contains longer research papers dealing with the history of football from the seventeenth century to the early 1970s. The quality of the publications is uneven, but there are many that are indispensable for the study of the early years of professional football and the history of the NFL. Two of the most informative works on the early history of professional football are Marc Maltby’s The Origins and Early Development of Professional Football, 1890–1920 (New York: Garland Publishers, 1997) and Keith McCellan’s The Sunday Game: At the...

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