My First Good Reads Review-Football for a Buck By Jeff Pearlman

Football for a Buck: The Crazy Rise and Crazier Demise of the USFL by Jeff Pearlman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book is a wonderful mix of bathos and nostalgia. I did not watch a lot of USFL games, but the names and logos and uniforms excited my young mind. It was fun to witness the birth of a new league. I was a parochial New Yorker who couldn't bring himself to root for a team from New Jersey, so I looked over the team names and decided that I was a Chicago Blitz fan. One year later, my favorte team got traded, yes traded for a completely diffferent team, the Arizona Wranglers. If that last sentence strikes you as ood or suprising, you will love this book.

I've been reading Jeff Pearlman since he was the sports editor of my college newspaper, the Delaware Review. He excels at both ends of the reporting process. He gathers facts doggedly and verifies details even whent the story is "too good to fact check." He also writes compelling narratives with prose that is neither too cute nor too dry. It's a combination of artistic talent and professional restraint that I envy.

There are some myths busted in this book, but there are plenty that survive the rigors of Mr. Pearlman's reportage. There were some damn good football players in that league and some truly absurd characters throughout the league's front offices, upper management and outer orbits. Jim Kelly, Steve Young and Reggie White were three of the best football players in the world, and their contributions are well documented her. But of course their excellence gets overshadowed by the one USFL character too weird to invent in a novel, the owner of the aforementioned New Jersey Generals and later the 45th president of the United States.

Donald Trump's role is covered thoroughly. The parallels to his political style and the absence of any moral compass are important parts of how the league came undone. But Pearlman resists the temptation to make this a book about Trump. The players of this league and their fleeting run as professional players provide the real human drama here. The league was beautiful and fun. It had potential to become an enduring part of the American sports world. But mistakes were made. This is a great read of how those mistakes were made and what the league still means for the men who made them.


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