Bloody Sundays: Inside the Rough-and-Tumble World of the NFL

by Mike Freeman

Award-winning sportswriter Mike Freeman goes beyond day-to-day newspaper journalism and ESPN highlights to take us deep inside the game and reveal the NFL in ways that will surprise the most avid football fans. He travels to the sidelines and into the locker rooms to interview hundreds of players and coaches on their expertise. Breaking the game down to its essential elements -- coaching, offense, and defense -- Freeman profiles in depth three of today's football elite: Jon Gruden, head coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers; Michael Strahan, defensive end for the New York Giants; and Emmitt Smith, the legendary running back.

Bloody Sundays goes behind the scenes of the "secret society" of gay players who play in fear of their lives and careers, studies how the violence of the game ravages the bodies of players, and takes us into the owners' offices to look at the darker side of the sport.

Part tribute, part exposé, Bloody Sundays is a vivid portrait of professional football that "gives you so much to think about that you might find yourself switching off a game to read" (New York Times Book Review).

Genres: Sports, Football, Nonfiction

336 pages, Paperback

First published September 30, 2003

About the author

Mike Freeman is an NFL Insider for CBSSports.com. Before that, he was an NFL writer, investigative reporter, and columnist for the New York Times; a columnist for the Florida Times-Union; and a sports reporter, features writer, and investigative writer for the Washington Post, Boston Globe, and Dallas Morning News.

Reviews

[Kent Keifer]

There's not much of a direction for this book. The author covers a variety of topics, as much off the field as on. I prefer to read about on the field accomplishments so this wasn't really my thing. The book has also become very dated since the direction of the American culture and a new commissioner that has tried to remove the violence from the game and tackled many of the off the field issues that this book highlights. The author is pretty opinionated about who's the best players, coaches etc. and some of his strong opinions didn't pan out (such as Jon Gruden being the great young coach of our era). He treated the players very inconsistently when he ran though the top players at each position, since some like Jim Brown he only mentioned the negative (domestic violence issues) without talking about what a great player he was. This is probably not worth reading unless you are such a die hard football fan that you'll read anything on the subject.

[Dave Moore]

There are three things wrong with this book:
1. Freeman (who is African-American) awkwardly and sometimes inappropriately manages to inject race into every nook & cranny of his mostly anecdotal work
(calling Jim Brown, a convicted & recidivist abuser of women, a 'black hero'...seriously?)
2. he cites the Philadelphia Eagles (???) as a 'model franchise', Paul Tagliabue as the best commissioner, and his personal animosity toward Daniel Snyder is in the way & mentioned far, far too often
3. Freeman himself has no credibility, having falsified his own non-existent college credentials
I don't know how this was ever published

[Koen Verbeken]

In't kort: de American Football-wereld is heel complex, met heel wat ins & outs. Freeman neemt ons mee voor een blik achter de schermen. Zo passeren de belangrijkste speler- en coach-posities de revue, en bekijken we wat de League zelf doet om de spelers beter te beschermen tegen de after-effects van deze vrij gewelddadige (al is het wel gecontroleerd geweld) sport.
Mijn oordeel: Freeman is een doorwinterd football-journalist, en kent deze gesloten wereld als weinig anderen. Het verhaal over de homofobie , verteld door een homofiele (uiteraard anonieme) speler is erg onthullend, net als de uiteenzetting over het huiselijk geweld dat bij meer en meer spelers blijkbaar de kop opsteekt. Ook het hoofdstuk over het leven van een head-coach van een NFL-team is erg interessant.
Aan de andere kant is het boek ook wel wat gedateerd (geschreven in 2002). Zo heeft de auteur het over Michael Vick als de beste quarterback van de nabije toekomst, en hemelt hij de Tampa Bay Buccaneers danig op, terwijl dat achteraf een simpele eendagsvlieg bleek. Maar achteraf is het natuurlijk makkelijk...
En ook voor een grappige noot kan je bij Freeman terecht. Het hoofdstukje '99 Reasons why Football is better than Baseball' is hilarisch, en hij beschrijft ook wat ie zou doen mocht hij één dag tsaar van de football-wereld zijn.
Eindoordeel: **** (al is zijn voorliefde voor alles wat met New York te maken heeft, af en toe irritant, de rest is echt heel goed)

[Larry Mccree]

This book is a good read if you are into football and the life of football coaches and different things like that. I recommend this book because it has alot of interesting stuff in it that you would not expect it to have like the life expectancy of an average NFL football head coach and how early coaches wake up to get early work in and how most coaches have high blood pressure and they do not get enough sleep some nights. At the end of the book it shows who the author (Mike Freeman) thinks is one of the best players at that position and why he thinks there the best at the postion. I will say that at some points in the book it can be very dull and boring but overall a very goog book i would read again.

[P Graney]

Parts of the book were interesting. I did not read the book in its entirety, tried to find parts that peaked my interest. Seemed a little opinionated. I read this book a decade after it was published. It was humorous reading the section about Mike Vick. He definitely is an electrifying talent when he is able to stay on the field, whether from his own doing or from injury. It's somewhat ironic reading the selection about the homosexual player, and the issue with a former NFL player suing his after he was cut from the team (he alleges it had little to do with his level of play and more with his outspokenness on same sex issues) currently in the headlines.

[Beth]

Being an NFL fanatic, I really enjoyed this book. The author presents life inside the NFL from the several different points of view, including that of coaches, players, and front-office people. He also presents an interesting discussion of gays/bisexuals in the NFL, with an interview of a gay player who remains anonymous. This is a fascinating issue to me. I'm not sure if the NFL (or any major professional American sports league) will ever openly accept homosexual players. But, it makes an interesting discussion.

[Liam Johnstone]

When I first read this book, I thought it was really good, gave good insight into the lives of some football players.

[Jim Bouchard]

The truth behind the hype and the men behind the legends.

[Tlamar]

this book was very good and funny. IT was very informational.