Blue 42 Hut Hut Hike! Super Bowl LX is on Sunday, February 8th, in San Francisco, and both teams are going to try their best to win the big game and take home that famous silver Lombardi trophy. The game is sure to have it all, from receptions to tackles, and let’s not forget about those commercials that dazzle our senses during the breaks in the action. But wait, there’s a flag on the play because you don’t have any football books to read or movies to watch in anticipation of the big game. Luckily, the library is here to kick a field goal of wonderful recommendations straight down the uprights. Visit your library today before these truly tremendous recommendations get intercepted by another intrepid football fanatic. And remember, every day is a touchdown at the library!
Movies
Friday Night Lights: directed by Peter Berg-2005
Odessa is an oil town in the western part of Texas that is home to the Permian High School Panthers, the football team with the best winning record. The city’s economy is in a tailspin, but football is the one thing that brings all the people of Odessa together, and on Friday nights, as many as 20,000 people fill Permian’s football stadium to watch Coach Gary Gaines lead the team to victory. And in Odessa, a football victory is prized above all else. The players ponder the fact that there is little future in their hometown … and that a championship season can be as much a burden as a triumph.
Him: directed by Justin Tipping-2025
Him centers on a promising young football player, invited to train at the isolated compound of a dynasty team’s aging QB1. The legendary quarterback takes his protegee on a blood-chilling journey into the inner sanctum of fame, power and pursuit of excellence at any cost.
Any Given Sunday: directed by Oliver Stone-2000
Tony D’Amato, the embattled Sharks coach, faces a full-on blitz of team strife plus a new, marketing-savvy Sharks owner who’s sure Tony is way behind times.
Jerry Maguire: directed by Cameron Crowe-1997
A sports agent suddenly discovers his scruples and promptly loses his job. But with the help of one loyal colleague and one outrageous client, he learns that loving well is the best revenge.
Non-Fiction
When the Cheering Stops: Life After the NFL by Gay Culverhouse-2021
A heartfelt account of the difficulties football players face after they leave the NFL.
The NFL is the nation’s most popular sport, but the athletes who make the league rich suffer greatly once they step off the field.. Long after the lights have dimmed on their playing days, NFL players face emotional distress, physical injuries, and cognitive decline, often suffering on their own. Personal interviews with former players reveal that many struggle with finances, finding a second career, addiction, depression, and violence. While success stories are also shared, the unfortunate truth is that there are far more players left hurt and broken after retirement.
Written by former Tampa Bay Buccaneers president and founder of the Retired Player Assistance program, Gay Culverhouse, this book provides a unique inside perspective on the NFL and the long-term physical and emotional toll playing in the league takes on the players who make it great.
Turf Wars: The Fight for the Soul of America’s Game by DeMaurice Smith-2025
During his fourteen years as the head of the NFL Players Association, DeMaurice Smith was a front-line advocate for football players through some of the most tumultuous crises in NFL history: Colin Kaepernick’s protests, Deflategate, a lockout, two collective bargaining agreements, and more. But after witnessing the league’s troubling response to discrimination and racial unrest, both within the league and beyond, Smith realized it was time to pull back the curtain and speak truth to power.
Drawing from his years of unprecedented access and unparalleled knowledge of America’s favorite sport, Smith documents his years leading the NFLPA and explains how the NFL distorts the truth, telling partial stories to insulate itself and grow its $20-billion-a-year brand-and the players’ battles to protect themselves. From contract negotiations to battles over suspensions, Smith shows us how the union fought to protect players from the greed, racism, and dishonesty on which the league is built. He also takes readers inside closed-door meetings and unreported conversations and confrontations with the industry’s most powerful figures, such as Robert Kraft, Jerry Jones, Tom Brady, and Roger Goodell.
Turf Wars puts every NFL crisis, both familiar and lesser known, within a broader cultural and historical context, framing the league’s extraordinary rise as a mirror to America’s own history. Revelatory and profound, Turf Wars is a book about the soul of football: its degradation and how to save it.
Every Day is Sunday: How Jerry Jones, Robert Kraft, and Roger Goodell Turned the NFL into a Cultural & Economic Juggernaut by Ken Belson-2025
On February 11, 2024, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell & the league’s two most powerful owners, Jerry Jones & Robert Kraft, looked down at the spectacle before them. What they saw was the sport’s championship game, the Super Bowl, now a de facto national holiday, being played in a shiny new $2B stadium, home to the first franchise based in Las Vegas, after the league’s embrace of nationwide gambling. The moment was over 30 years in the making. “We’re not competing with the NBA or MLB,” Goodell later quipped in private. “Our competitors are Apple & Google.”
In Every Day is Sunday, veteran New York Times Business & NFL reporter, Ken Belson, traces the evolution of the league from “one of the four US professional sports,” into the cultural & economic juggernaut it is today. Belson illustrates how the league’s rise coincided with the arrival of Jones & Kraft in the early 90’s. He provides an inside look on how these two men reshaped the league, taking readers into the secretive owner’s meeting, how they decided Goodell was the right man to place as Commissioner, and how the three built, wielded, and held on to their collective power.
Playmakers: How the NFL Really Works (and Doesn’t) by Mike Florio-2022
For almost twenty years now, the NFL has been simultaneously an athletic, financial, and cultural powerhouse-and a league that can’t seem to go more than a few weeks without stumbling into a scandal. Whether it’s about domestic violence, performance-enhancing drugs, racism, or head trauma, the NFL always seems to be in some kind of trouble. Yet no matter the drama, the TV networks keep showing games, the revenue keeps going up, and the viewers keep tuning in. How can a sports league-or any organization-operate this way? Why do the negative stories keep happening, and why don’t they ever seem to affect the bottom line?
In this wide-ranging book, Mike Florio takes readers from the boardroom to the locker room, from draft day to Super Bowl night, answering these questions and more, and showing what really goes on in the sport that America can’t seem to quit. Known for his constant stream of new information and his incisive commentary, Florio delivers again in this book. With new insights and reporting on scandals past and present, this book is sure to be the talk of the league.
