NFL Daily with Gregg Rosenthal - The Best Football Books Ever

Episode Date: June 29, 2026

Gregg Rosenthal gives you the definitive list of the best football books ever. From 'A Thinking Man's Guide to Football' by Paul Zimmerman to 'Friday Night Lights by H.G. Bissinger, Gregg tells you which books you should read if you want a season in the life, the history of the NFL, adventures in training camp, a biography and more! NFL Daily YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/nflpodcastsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Welcome to NFL Daily, where it's always reading season. I'm Greg Rosenthal coming to you live from my garage in the middle of the summer. And yes, when I think a summer, I think it's go time for all the books that I want to read. And I get a lot of messages on Blue Sky or X. Whenever we ask for questions, one of the questions is, what are some of the best football books ever? and I thought, let's finally collect them all in one definitive podcast that I am calling the greatest football books of all time.

When I got my first job in football at Roto World, I felt like I needed to catch up in terms of learning the sport. And I went on a tear trying to read every single football book that I could for about five to ten years. straight. And so I feel like I'm in a good position. It's not exhaustive. It's only books that I've read, but I don't think there's that many great ones out there. And I got a little help from our dear friend Chris Wessling, who put together his greatest football books of all time document. And I'm going to go in order, roughly. We're going to go from the best books and just the ones that I think you would absolutely love if you are into football books. So let's get going. And I wanted to start with what I consider the Bibles. Essentially the greatest football books,

if you're going to pick one of all time. It's called the New Thinking Man's Guide to Pro Football by Paul Zimmerman, aka Dr. Z, who was the longtime Sports Illustrated writer. Now, if you're watching this on YouTube, it's a fun one today because I got all these old books that I'm going to be holding up. If you're listening, that works just as well. In the case of this book, I actually have like three different copies of it because I used to carry around this little paperback to every Super Bowl just to have as inspiration of what great football writing could be. And to me, Zimmerman combined the best X's and O's writing with humor and actually great writing. So you learn a lot, but he knows how to write and he's also an excellent reporter.

Five tool writer, I don't know if there's ever been anyone as good as him. I've shown a few different copies. There was an original in the 70s called the Thinking Man's Guide to Football. And then he had an updated version in 1987 called the New Thinking Man's Guide. And so it's a little more modern, but basically it's him going through position by position and talking to all the players, but the way he just mixes in reporting and just quick quotes about what it really means to play these positions and everything that goes into it was the book that helped me understand how little I really understood about football,

but it makes you love the game even more. The best compliment I could give this book is that I have thought so many times if someone came out with this book about today's generation of players that I know so well, like I would just lose it. Like there aren't books like this right now. Maybe I'm the man that should be writing this book, but I don't think I could do it. So if you're out there listening

and you love football reporting and write this book for me, I want this book. And yet, when you read it now, it is just as relevant and modern and you learn so much about the game. So again, the new Thinking Man's Guide to Football by Paul Zimmerman.

Okay, I'm dividing this into different sections. The next section is going to be, if you want a history of the league. If you were going to read one book and teach a college course in football, and you just wanted one book as your document, I would go America's Game by Michael McCambridge. It is, to me, the definitive history of professional football. He also wrote a good book on Chuck Knoll.

He wrote one with Brian Billick called More Than a Game, a Lamar Hunt book. But this is about how the NFL came to be. what the NFL was like before the Super Bowl even happened and then well into the Super Bowl era. And it really helps you get the characters and how pro football ended up taking over baseball and all the other sports. And it's really well written. It's exhaustive.

I think if you want everything in one place, this is it. My next category would be one with a question mark. And the question mark comes at the end of the sentence. is this the best sports book ever? I'm holding up Friday Night Lights by Buzz Bissinger. It's crazy to me that the show has overshadowed the book. For me, too. I mean, the show is one of my all-time favorite shows.

But the show, as much as it gets how central football is in the life of Texas teenagers and adults, the book is such a banger and gets in depth in a way that I think, the show just can't in certain ways. And it's not like it wasn't popular. This book sold over 2 million copies, which is incredible because it's not necessarily an easy book. Some of the characters from the TV show are very loosely based on the characters here, but not really. It explains in a way that Chuck Closterman, who joined the show, a few weeks back, did really well,

that for these kids, this is, in many. ways the peak of their lives. And I think it explains in a way how football has just has a chokehold on us as Americans and especially in Texas, it's next level. But how we kind of like it. I mean, it's not painting it with a negative brush. It is darker certainly at points than the TV show, but it's just incredible. And I go back to it. Again, kind of like Paul Zimmerman, it combines just insanely good reporting with great writing and the characters. our next level. So shout out to Buzz Bissinger, one of the best that ever did it. All right, my next category, and I've lined up a bunch of stacks around my desk of these books, and so hopefully I can

keep it all straight. The next category is probably my favorite genre of football books. And so I'm going to go through my favorite season in the life football books. And I tried to pick ones, too, that weren't as obvious. And I will start with bringing the heat by Mark. Bowden. It is about the 1992 Philadelphia Eagles. To me, it was so eye-opening in so many ways. He got such great access. The characters are crazy. Reggie White, Randall Cunningham, Buddy Ryan, Reggie Brown. They are just larger than life and Bowden like brings them to life. But it also got real. Like there's a lot of stuff about the players and their wives and their girlfriends. And sometimes how the girlfriends and the wives might show up to the same game by mistake and be

in the player's section that leads to issues. So the access that he had is kind of crazy. It's 500 pages and yet it reads almost like a thriller. I absolutely love this book as an inside the team type of book. You would never get this type of access now. He also wrote a book, Mark Bowden, about the greatest game of all time, as it's called, the greatest football game ever played Giants Colts that I would also recommend. He also wrote the book Black Hawk Down, which became a badass movie. So a versatile writer, Mark Bowden, but that's bringing the heat about the 92 Eagles. Collision Low Crossers is one of the three books that our producer Eric Roberts has tried to read in the last decade, but he said he didn't finish it. It was only three chapters

deep. I think this book, which is about the 2011 Jets, suffered a little bit because Hard Knocks came out at the same time and also suffered, let's be honest, with a terrible title. Collision Low Crossers just, it needed to be better. And yet, I've wanted books written about this era of football in depth where you really get what it's like to be inside a team. And Nicholas Dowdow, who is a Wall Street journal writer, really nailed it. And I think it's aged extremely well. So many good characters in this book, it's Derelle Revis. It's, it's, right? Ryan, of course, there's Mike Tannenbaum. There's a lot going on in this book, and I think if you want to understand what the modern NFL is like, it's a great one. Another one that really stands out to me as a book

that would never get written out is called Three Bricks Shigh of a Load by Roy Blunt Jr. This is an all-time classic. If you look at lists of the greatest football sports books of all time, it's very often on it. Blount is just a crazy talented writer and weird and awesome. It is a very druggie book. Blount seems like he's, you know, high half the time with the team. The team is high quite a bit. It's the 1970s Steelers. And whenever I hear how players today, they just, they don't have as much respect as, you know,

back in the day when, you know, it was gentlemen and this and that. And I'm thinking, are you high players? players talked way more trash back then. They were bigger characters because we knew what big characters they were back then because books like this were written. It is with the 1973 Steelers. It's very digressive and goes in different paths that are fascinating sometimes. It's about the ownership there. It's about Chuck Knoll. It's about Terry Bradshaw and how much disrespect he got at the time what a character he was and it's right before they go on their run as a dynasty so it's a moment in time but it honestly felt like you're you are very much in the

locker room he hangs out with the team the entire year it almost feels like you're smoking weed with them there's some serious issues that come up in this book whether it's drug addiction and depression and a little bit of crime there's a lot going on and there's one of the greatest teams of all time and like countless Hall of Famers who are profiled in depth in a really fun entertaining way. Not necessarily like the easiest book to read either, but it really rewards you.

And so that's three bricks shy of a load by Roy Blunt Jr. As I went through this exercise, I realized some of my favorite books, I don't know where the copies are. So there's a book called The Last Season of Weeb Eubank by Paul Zimmerman, Dr. Z, who I've mentioned before.

You're going to have to find it in a library because I looked for it online. You got to pay like 150, 200 bucks for it right now because it's out of print. It's hard to find. I might have given my copy to Matt Casey, who's a big Jets fan. Matt, if you have my copy, give it back. It's worth a lot now. I feel annoyed that I gave it away.

But since I don't have it in person, I'm just going to hold up one of its biggest characters, which is Joe Namath. This is a book called I Can't Wait Until Tomorrow because I Get Better Looking Every Day by Joe Willie Namath. That's literally the title of the book. And the book cover is just Joe Namath's face, which is absolutely hilarious, as is the title of the book. The book itself is fine. It's funny.

It's with Dick Schap. But it's a reminder of that team. Web Eubank is a guy who I think people have kind of forgotten as among the best coaches of all time. He won three different championships between the NFL and the pre-Super Bowl era. coached Johnny Unitas. He coached Joe Namath. John Riggins is in this book. A truly great book about a coach at the end of his career, a player Joe Namath, whose body is breaking down and is betraying him in a team that's already kind of hit the mountaintop and is maybe on the way down, but incredibly written, incredible access for this one. Again, these are the teams,

you know, the season and the life type of books. Another one a little more modern is Patriot reign, I've mentioned this before on the show by Michael Hawley. It was about the 2002 Patriots right after they won their first championship. And Bill Belichick gave great access to Michael Holly, who is still in the Boston media there. And he has some great scenes inside meeting room, some real tough talk about Patriots players by the Patriots coaches that got into this book. He continues it on to get a better ending. into 2003 so that they win the Super Bowl at the end of that year, but it's really mostly about the 2002 Patriots,

a lot of good Brady Bledso stuff. And again, great access in terms of Belichick wanting and accepting a guy being in all their team meetings throughout the season. So for all the people that say Belichick is stingy with access, he's done it a few times for books. And then the final one in this category, I don't think it's as good a book as the rest of them,

but it's called Next Man Up about the 2000. and for Ravens by the late John Feinstein, who's a great writer. Maybe not as tight and great as some of these other books, but it's got Ray Lewis, it's got Jabal, Lewis, it's got Billick, it's got all these Hall of Famers, it's a little more modern, and it is fun going through this season with the Baltimore Raven, so I would recommend that one as well. All right, the next category I am going to call Adventures in Training Camp.

And again, I'm doing these roughly in the order of, how great they are. And this is probably the last section where they're all stone cold classics. Paper Lion by George Plimpton was for a long time one of the most famous, most popular, most sold sports books

ever written. I feel like it's probably not known as much. I couldn't find my copy. I don't know where it is, so I'm holding up, if you're watching on YouTube, the sequel to it, which was called Mad Ducks and Bears. which is just more football talk by George Plimpton.

But the premise is simple. It's this stuffy, highly educated political talk show, you know, appearing writer, George Plimpton, very literary too, who pitched going to training camp as a player with the 1963 Lions. And they let him be a player. It was eventually turned into a movie. He started doing it in other sports,

but Paper Lion is the original. the culmination is he gets, they won't put him in an actual scrimmage or an actual preseason game, that's what he wanted to do, but they do put him in a team scrimmage as like a fifth string quarterback, and that's kind of the culmination of the book.

But him just hanging out with all these great pros at just a different time. You see how different the game is. Dick LeBoe is a terrific character in this book. I believe Matt Mellon is too. Dick LeBoe is like a long-haired. guitar playing heartthrob in this book, which is hilarious. And similar to this book, Paper Lion is the one I'm talking about, although his sequel is pretty good too, not as good, is a book called A Few Seconds of

Panic, which should have become a modern classic. It's by Stefan Fatsis, who was a Wall Street journal writer who convinced Mike Shanahan to let him do what George Plimpton did, except at kicker. So it is a training camp where Fatsis gets to be a kicker for the 2008 Bronzer. Joe Plummer is here. I believe Champ Bailey is here off the top of my head, and they let him do some kicking in the interteam scrimmage, and it's a great inside look at more of a modern NFL team, but also really hilarious.

Nate Jackson was one of the characters as a bottom of the roster type of guy, and he ended up writing a book called Slow Getting Up, which was a fun from the perspective of a player book, if you were looking into that. All right, we're continuing on to a category that I'm going to call the best book to buy as an investment. I'm holding up a book called Finding the Winning Edge by Bill Walsh. When I bought this, and it's basically how to build a football program

for other coaches, it's not the most readable thing in the world, but there are a lot of interesting insights until how Bill Walsh ran a team and a lot of good examples from his career, but it gives you an idea of why every coach had this book. It's on Bill Belichick's bookshelf. Every coach owns it. And I bought it for maybe like 150 bucks 15 years ago

because it was hard to find. And now I see it going on Amazon, minimum 350 to 400. A lot of people are selling this thing for like $1,000. So this is worth a lot, finding the winning edge. That's pretty cool. Just more of like a brag. than like an amazing book, but it is an interesting document. Let's do biographies.

Not my favorite genre, so I just chose the best of the best. When Pride Still Mattered, which is about Vince Lombardi, it's by David Moranis, won a ton of awards. The title is supposed to be sarcastic in a way, but people totally missed that point. It really punctures the myth of Vince Lombardi while also showing what an incredible coach and man he is. And that to me is the best type of biography.

It just makes him a human. He was just a dude. But it makes you appreciate what he overcame to become Vince Lombardi and the demons that he dealt with throughout his career. And it's really great if you want to go to school. There's a lot of literature on the old Packers. But when Pride still mattered, probably my number one biography by a decent amount. Education of a coach is a book about Belichick and how he became Bill Belichick by David Halberstam,

who is one of the best nonfiction writers of his generation. He wrote the best and the brightest about the JFK crew that got us into the Vietnam War. And then this is him focusing on how Bill of Belichick became Bill Belichick largely through his father. And it's a really intelligent and quick look at Belichick. It's really good. And the other one that stood out to me was the Namath book by Mark Kriego, really good about Joe Namath, former NFL network employee, Mark Creagle, who I see bouncing around Santa Monica every once in a while. I never say hi, though. We didn't really know each other. If you are into biographies, though, I know a lot of people are. The Johnny U. bio is pretty good. Tom Callahan, not the same level of the ones I talked about.

And the genius, which is by David Harris, about Bill Walsh, is great. Although it made Bill Walsh seem kind of miserable, which bump me out. But that's how a lot of these guys are. Let's go to more history books. Chris, Chris Wessling, really love the history books, and I can't say I major in those as much, but I've definitely read enough. The Real All-Americans by Sally Jenkins stands out because it's a story that I just would have never heard of in my life and is really significant how in the early 20th century, around 1912, a team of all natives, Native Americans, led by Jim Thorpe. It was coached by Pop Warner, defeated the Naval Academy, defeated a bunch of Ivy League teams, went on this long undefeated streak. And you can imagine all the things that they overcame to do that.

And it's really the story of a sport just starting and an incredible overcoming of. everything stacked against these Native Americans in life, and they're able to essentially become champions on the field in a way that the society at the time we're not going to allow them to become in life. Some other good history books. I mentioned all the Packers before. Instant replay by Jerry Kramer is a good one.

This was a sensation when it was released. It's also with Dick Shop, Dick Shop, rather, who was on ESPN a long time. This is like a number one bestseller. It is really fun, well written. It was an inside look at the Vince Lombardi Packers. So it's more of a history of the Packers than a biography, and it's really good. If you were ever into the Bill James abstracts back in the day, I think the closest thing

football has to it is the Pro Football Chronicles, which is by Dan Daly and Bob O'Donnell, I believe. And it's just a quick history going through in different arguments and sections and stats. I learned a lot from that book, but it's also very entertaining to read. And a more modern book I would throw in this category is why we love football. It's by Joe Posnansky. It's 100 different moments. It's really quick. It's great for kids.

My son loved it, but I think it's great for adults too because Posnansky is a great writer. So you basically just get four pages with extra reporting and some insight into, let's say, the Russell Wilson, Malcolm Butler play. And he goes through 100 moments that kind of defined. football as we know it. It's modern, it's older ones. It's great. Some other history books, Jeff Perlman, to me, had the definitive Cowboys book from back in the day. Boys will be boys about the glory days of the Dallas Cowboys. And then I mentioned the best game ever is that book by Mark Bowden about the championship between the Giants and the Colts back in 1958. We're getting to the end here. But I wanted some X's and O's books on my list. And I'm going to go blood,

Blood, Sweat, and Chalk by Tim Layden. Kind of an inside look of how coaches build the game, and it's from the early 2010s, maybe 2012. So that's a fun one. The Art of Smart Football by Chris Brown, who had a great website. Shout out to Chris Brown. I used to keep in touch with him back in the day,

but it's called the Art of Smart Football, where if you're looking really deep X's and O's, it's some fun insight. I don't know if you can still find this book or not, but I liked it a lot. The Bob McGinn Super Bowl book called the Ultimate Super Bowl book deserved to be a classic.

It wasn't released on like a major, major publisher. And yet it goes through every Super Bowl, if you can imagine a deeply reported, highly X's and O's game story that you would spend a month on writing and then would come out a month later. It's got one of those, breakdowns for literally every Super Bowl. If you really want to find why each team won each Super Bowl

with insights from the players and the coaches, it's Bob McGinn's Super Bowl book. It is really good. And yeah, while we're getting crazy X's and O, as I mentioned Bill Belichick and his dad earlier, I actually bought the book Football Scouting Methods by Steve Belichick, which is more of a historical document than it is, you know, as modern. But it's literally the book a lot of people bought, I think, when they wanted to get into scouting. and learning how to scout. And I found it helpful, too, of just charting different things like that. I didn't want to leave here without mentioning at least a few fiction books.

I got North Dallas 40 by Peter Gent, which is a loosely fictionalized story of the Roger Staubach Cowboys. It cranks it up. They made a couple great movies about it, but that's a fun one. Billy Lynn's Long Half Time Walk by Ben Fountain, probably the best modern novel about just the mix of commercialism and football that really has this country, like, in a chokehold, as I mentioned earlier, for decades. It's set at halftime during a Thanksgiving game.

It includes a Jerry Jones-like figure, and it's about a veteran who comes back and he's honored at halftime. And it's called the long halftime walk. A lot of the thoughts that go with this, like, what am I doing here? It's about America. about more than football, but it's very much about football. And then I had to mention a fan's notes, which I know was Chris Wesleyan's absolute favorite football book, certainly favorite football novel. I like it a lot, too, by Frederick Exley. It's maybe the best book about what it's like

in terms of a fictional representation of being a completely addicted, obsessed fan. There should be more books like this, but it's a great book about what it means and why we are so obsessed and how it can almost take over your life. The last few books I couldn't really fit into any category, so I'm just going to call them oddities. All the Madden books are great. His first book is, hey, I wrote a book. I got it out of the library just to make sure, like it is like hanging out with John Madden. He's an underrated writer. He's with Dave Anderson from the New York Times, so he smooths everything out. I'm holding up a book called All Madden. He has five or six books.

There's a lot of great insight in these books. I would recommend them. There's an analytics book called The Hidden Game of Football by Bob Carroll, Pete Palmer, and John Thorne, which is really old and gets deep into the numbers in a way that you just wouldn't have thought was possible 20, 30 years ago. It's somewhere around here, but my stacks have finally let me down. I can't find it. God's Coach by Skip Bayless is an outrageous book that I can.

can't believe exists. And I know it's Skip Bayliss. The subtitle is called the hymns, hype, and hypocrisy of Tom Landry's Cowboys. And it destroys Tom Landry. But it does it in a way with a lot of inside stories that, you know, you got to read it all with a little bit of grain of salt. I know it's Skip Bayless, but I found it fascinating. There's some people who come out of this book not looking great at all. There's a lot of negative stuff about the Tom Landry Cowboys about, you know, how they presented themselves as greater than the rest, and that what was going on behind the scenes was very often dark, and Skip Bayless gets into that in a major way,

just absolutely destroys Tom Landry. I can't believe this book exists. A few books that I wanted to include just because their covers are badass, and the writing is very often badass. Out of their league by Dave Megasie. I mentioned the 70s are just a crazy time, and this became a very famous book about the, types of pills and everything that football players had to go through,

how much they were taking advantage of, especially back in the 70s and weren't being paid very well. On the front cover, it even says the roughest sports book ever written. But just they don't make books out of their league by Dave Megasey anymore. Some other just like fun covers, run to daylight, which is Vince Lombardi's book, which is also a pretty good book. I would recommend it, just a classic cover. one by Jack Tatum who became famous, unfortunately, you know, for paralyzing Patriots receiver,

Darrell Stingley, had a book called They Call Me Assassin and interesting, complicated career, Jack Tatum, and became very famous for that play. But I would recommend this one as well. And I don't even know if I ever read the Dick Buckus book, Stop Action, but if you're watching on YouTube, tell me this isn't a badass cover. It is an incredible cover. Some of these old 70s covers, I just had to get just because they look cool. So I mentioned some West's favorites, but I had to be real, and there were a few that I haven't read that he absolutely loved.

FansNotes by Frederick Exley, I mentioned that one. I love it. But The League by David Harris is a little like the Michael McCambridge book that I talked about earlier, like a full history of the NFL, but a little darker, a little more no-holds-barred. the type of book, maybe the NFL wouldn't want you to read. He really loves that book. I've been meaning to read it forever. And then he loves the history of the John Madden Raiders called Badasses. So I have this on my list by Peter Richmond. I want to get to this book eventually. And that's the great thing about reading and books and even football books, which there aren't as many great ones coming out. Now, I don't feel as there used to be, but I try to get to them all. I've read so

much football and I live so much football. I have to admit now in the off seasons when I'm reading more, I need an escape and I haven't been keeping up as well in recent years. I'm more of a fiction guy. But going through some of these books for this exercise made me want to reread some of them, made me want to go and find some of the books I haven't read over the years. So if you have any suggestions for me that I didn't get to that you think I should have mentioned, and there are a lot a very good football books I didn't get to that I have read, of course. Hit me up, you know, let me know that you read this, pick up one of these books, and if you like it, let me know that you read it. I tried to be as exhaustive as possible. Eric is probably thinking, yeah,

I think you mentioned enough books here. I didn't want to be involved in this, but I'm sitting here on this side of my computer laughing. Like, for those who are, if you're listening to this, it was almost felt like an SNL bit. Like, read it. reaching around the camera. I kind of want you to send me a picture of your stacks at the end of this so I can put picture in picture because it felt like a bit that you were reaching over, reaching under. Like at one point right now, the books are coming into the screen. At one point they're coming into the other side of the screen. It felt like a bit, honestly. Like you just kept pulling from more and more. I mean, coming in. I set them up in a semicircle in order so that I could pull them up. And frankly, I feel bad. I mean, there's more. Here's Peter King inside the helmet. Great book. Like I felt like I had to make. some decisions at some point. I was involved in about as little of this planning for this show as I have ever been in NFL Daily. I was like, oh, he's going to give us 10, you know, a little synopsis here and there. No, off the dome. You're just giving us like, I should have kept count. I should have kept count and I feel bad. I let you down because this would have been, I know you like numbers.

Well, here, 32 nuts. This was a crazy, this was nuts to watch. Here's why I did it. Because I could do an episode entirely on one or two of these, each one of these books almost. But I wanted to have one spot, the definitive list. These are the greatest football bucks of all time. And so if someone wants to come back and ask me four years from now, I can send them this link. And it'll always be there where I feel like this is an exhaustive list. But of course, we're going to find some more. And I hope you get to at least one of these.

And I did try to roughly order it from top to bottom, although even some of the books at the end are some of my favorites. Thank you, Eric, for listening and bearing with me today. It's summertime. I really did enjoy this. This was like honestly watching you do this, off the dome, it seemed like you enjoyed just kind of rattling off. It looked like you had a lot of fun doing this. I don't know what it says that one of my favorite podcasts I ever did was just me talking

for 30 minutes straight. I didn't have a co-host. We had ideas for co-host. It didn't work out. And then I realized, who am I kidding? I want to get to all these books myself. And so I hope a lot of people can enjoy that this summer. Obviously, we're in our summer programming season here.

It is July 4th week. Enjoy your reading. Enjoy your books. And yeah, enjoy our quarterbacks ranking episode. We've been saving this one. It is coming up later this week. That is going to be myself and John Ledyard. That will take you into the July 4th weekend.

In the meantime, I'm not going to say this as homework, but try to read one of them. Let me know if you like that. Even Eric, I want you to read one of them too. This is an IHeart podcast, guaranteed human.