Dream Season: A Professor Joins America's Oldest Semi-Pro Football Team

by Bob Cowser Jr.

At age thirty, Bob Cowser, Jr., is a happy husband, father, and English professor in upstate New York. But he senses that something is missing from the good life. He finds himself craving the exhilaration he felt as a young man growing up in sports-crazy Tennessee when he took the field for high school football games. In what is every Monday morning quarterback’s fantasy, Bob Cowser, Jr., revisits his glory days by joining the Watertown Red & Black, the country’s oldest semi-professional football team. Cowser drives the lonely sixty miles to try out for the team in Watertown, a former mill town of soldiers, corrections officers, and blue-collar workers that is a far cry from his leafy campus. As a rookie and an outsider, Cowser must work hard to earn the respect of these hard-edged men, some of them local celebrities. He must also find a way to balance the rigors of practice and game play with the demands of fatherhood, as his wife struggles to cope with a one-year-old son, a career, and a husband on the road. Can Cowser find a way to make the fulfillment of his childhood dream fit into real life as an adult?

Genres: Sports, Memoir, Nonfiction

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

Reviews

[Lorene]

In Cowser’s Dream Season, he reveals how the dream not only never dies, but also how it sulks, festers, blooms, and sometimes, matures into fulfillment. Much more than a chronicle of his semi-pro football experience, Dream Season provides us with a literary ancestry of those who played the game and later write about it: Cowser quotes poets James Dickey, Donald Hall, Arichbald MacLeish, and Robert Frost—after all, Cowser is “the Professor.”

What I love about Dream Season are Cowser’s candid reflections about what it means to be in the game, whether he is on the sidelines, covering a kickoff, or trying to convince his teammates that he has the ‘right stuff’ to “belong” on the field.

[Hubert · Rating 5 out of 5]

I met the author years ago and finally finished reading this very enticing, very honest memoir of life as a semi-professional football player in a semi-prof. league in New York state. The memoir touches on themes of manhood, family, patriotism, class, and brotherhood, and through the lens of this small slice of America the reader might glean issues larger than the confines set about in the book. While other sports books by Halberstam (Jordan) and Feinstein (Next Man Up about the Baltimore Ravens) carry much more glamor, Cowser's writings are no less real, no less important.

[Scott Parker · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had very high expectations for this book, because the author’s story was about his time playing for the Watertown Red & Black. It was actually very disappointing. The comparisons to Paper Lion are inevitable, but Bob Cowser, Jr., is no George Plimpton. As a reader, it felt like a rushed attempt to publish a book with a startling lack of depth. I was generous giving this book two-stars. Books on semi-pro/minor league football are already such a small genre that sometimes a weak story is better than no story at all.

[Lauren · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting mix of play-by-play footballspeak combined with intellectual and personal introspection. These things are at odds with one another and the space between--where this clashing occurs--is the really good stuff in the book. This structural conflict gives life to the many other conflicts in the narrative, obviating the need for overkill description. In addition to the personal contentions expressed--Bob the professor vs Bob the football player, Bob vs his wife, Bob's wife vs. Bob's obsession with football--the book also succeeds in giving insight into the many dimensions behind typical "town vs. gown" situations which hints at an examination of the gulf that separates many socioeconomic classes in this country.
It helps if you like football, but the sport bores me to death and I still liked the book.

[Shin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Similar to Friday Night Lights or The Courting of Marcus Dupree, this book is just as much about life as it is about football. A short read and very enjoyable, with prose clearly written by an English professor.

[Paul]

Bought it for a dollar, it was interesting enough. I can't say I would recommend it. I did learn a lot about the New York area semi-pro football scene though.