A review of the book “America’s Game.”
“America’s Game” by Michael MacCambridge is “The Epic Story of How Pro Football Captured a Nation.” MacCambridge elucidates the contributions of the first key owners of the National Football League (NFL) to the development of tLeaguegue and how football surpassed all other sports, baseball, especially, to become the key sport in America. The book gives an account of the history of NFL and, most importantly, an analysis of the business interactions between its owners who made it thrive as a business enterprise and a game from the 1960s until 2005. Also, he gives a vivid description of the creation of the Super Bowl. MacCambridge discusses in full length the account of the first commissioner, Bert Bell, who converged a team of owners and worked for parity in NFL. Also, Pete Rozelle, who engineered a million-dollar television income, ensured that the competitive balances were kept and maintained relative labor peace as compared to other sports. The book has an exemplary journalist approach that brings out the history of the business-oriented game of football through cultural and social contexts using weird characters and historical facts, which makes it a good fun read for fans of football.
MacCambridge begins by tracing the game from the World War II period when NFL was dangling on the verge of collapse. He reveals how the match between Baltimore Colts and New York Giants on December 28, 1958, brought NFL in the limelight and engineered it to become a dominant sport in America. The Game was referred to as the Greatest Game ever played and received a lot of media attention. He traces its epic transformation by paying exclusive attention to the six key franchises, namely the Rams, Browns, Colts, Cowboys, Chiefs, and Raiders, and how their contributions brought the ultimate successful development of the game. Along the way, MacCambridge introduces the readers to the legendary activities of the main football game architects such as Pete Rozelle, George “Papa Bear,” Halas and Lamar Hunt, among others. As he introduces the legends and the characters, he presents their rivalries, the games they played, and how passionate they were in making professional football the nation’s signature sport it is today.
He further explicates on the wavy decade that is from the 1980s and 1990s when the game barely stood due to labor disputes and off-field scandals, which shook the roots of the game until the times of Paul Tagliabue. He further presents Tagliabue’s role of over 15 years in ensuring the prevalence of labor peace, the inauguration of a free-agent system accompanied by salary, negotiation for $18 billion worth of television contracts, and the creation of the NFL Network which made tLeaguegue bigger. Pete Rozelle said to him, “You know, you’ve made a great contribution to tLeaguegue. You understand the business, and you understand the people. At the same time, who knows, you might be commissioner” (MacCambridge 472). In this part of the story, MacCambridge presents the inner workings of the NFL that led to its dominance in the American culture.
The protagonist in the book is Alvin Ray Rozelle, who is best known as Pete. He is presented as a lanky, affable man who was good in public relations and who, immediately after World War II, was a student publicist at Compton Junior College, where the training camps of the Rams were held.MacCambridge focuses on Pete and shows the readers his transformation into Ram’s general manager 14 years later as a replacement for Bert Bell, the commissioner who wept when he failed to get his way with NFL owners and later died when watching a Philadelphia Eagles game in 1959. When Frank McNamee learned about Pete Rozelle, he said, “Great! Who the hell is Pete Rozelle?” (MacCambridge 205). By then, Pete was 33 years old and a negotiator in hardball games. He had a reputation for making the corporate owners’ money. He was hired into the NFL, and due to his expertise and precision in public relations and sophisticated marketing, he brought a revolution to NFL operations. Essentially, he developed the NFL Films studio through which football would be aired and developed a licensing division under NFL properties. Moreover, he lobbied the Congress for antitrust exemption that prompted him to secure one national television package with CBS, thus removing all cash disparities among the teams, therefore, creating a source of financial income for NFL.
One of the most interesting and game-changing aspects of the NFL was how it competed with the AFL and how a team of independent-minded people initiated a rival, viabLeaguegue of its own, and how the ultimate merger between NFL and AFL came to be. MacCambridge points out that Lamar Hunt, the owner of the Kansas City Chiefs, was the core figure in creating AFL and the final merger. Interestingly, the merger prompted the NFL to become stronger and more focused on making football a big game under Pete’s leadership (MacCambridge 307). Through Pete, MacCambridge presents how football’s game came to gain publicity through mass communication media in the national television and through NFL studios.
Similarly, MacCambridge highlights other contributions of Rozelle Pete to the architecture of American football. Rozelle engineered NFL operations in a way that made the Super Bowl become a secular holiday by devising “Monday Night Football” through socialism, or what MacCambridge calls “equality of opportunity for all” (MacCambridge 237). Football took over Sundays in living rooms and bars worldwide with citizens shunning church, staying at home to bow to football at the altars of plasma screens. MacCambridge points out that television was the most major reason for the dominance of football. Consequently, billionaires invest massively in League is due to its high television ratings, a lot of television money, exclusive sponsorships, most profitable gains from gamblers, and general fan enthusiasts. However, the publicity of football through national television was majorly affected when Rozelle had football played on television on the weekend of John F. Kennedy’s assassination since it brought a lot of criticism on football (MacCambridge 256). Pete did not recognize the influence of politics on national television until then, and he learned how to recognize the fact that the NFL came after politics. MacCambridge presents the drug scandals among players, “too much craziness and too much women” (389) then, federal lawsuits that Howard Cosell called the NFL’s status as a “duly adjudicated illegal monopoly” and the endless labor laws that put NFL in jeopardy.
In conclusion, “America’s Game” is a well-researched book and a compilation of well-woven tales of the larger story of how NFL came to be. It gives an account of each league commissioner’s contributions to the NFL and the history of the development of the franchises that are present hitherto. Essentially, MacCambridge points out that, more than baseball, football is a game made for television. It is also a game that thrives best in parity in terms of equity of revenue, proper management, and salary caps, keeping the fans and owners interested in the game. Besides, as compared to other sports, MacCambridge shows that labor peace and visionary leadership are essential for the game’s prosperity. The book is highly recommendable to anyone interested in the National Football League, football in general, and its history.
Works Cited
MacCambridge, Michael. America’s game. Anchor, 2008.
Sandomir, Richard. “America’s Game”: The Real National Pastime. The New York Times Nov.7,2004.