Red Grange and the Rise of Modern Football (Sport and Society)

Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1999. First Edition. Hard Cover. Near Fine/Near Fine. 6x1x9. Signed by author. First edition. Signed by author with inscription, "To Hugh: A great tennis partner and a great guy. I hope you will enjoy reading about #77." A fine copy in a near fine jacket. 1999 Hard Cover. ix, 265 pp. "Before the Super Bowl, before "Monday Night Football," even before the NFL, there was Red Grange. Catapulted into the public eye in 1924 by scoring four touchdowns in twelve minutes for the University of Illinois, the "Galloping Ghost" went on to a trailblazing career as a professional player, Hollywood football idol, and broadcaster. He ranked with Babe Ruth and Jack Dempsey in the 1920s as the most heralded figures in America's "golden age of sport," and when Sports Illustrated did a special issue in 1991 on the greatest moments in sports, Grange was selected for the cover. Grange's star rose in tandem with that of the sport itself. His spectacular performance as a college player coincided with football's evolution into a rallying point of university life, undergirded by post-World War I money, cars, roads, stadiums, and mass media. With a natural talent and down-home image that helped legitimize professional football, Grange became one of the first athlete-heroes and the first major sports figure to serve as a play-by-play broadcast commentator. John Carroll depicts the career of this softspoken pioneer who helped lift pro football above its reputation as "a dirty little business run by rogues and bargain-basement entrepreneurs." A reluctant celebrity and folk hero, Red Grange stood throughout his life as a symbol of older, rural American values: an unpretentious self-made individual making a mark in a society increasingly controlled by machines, vast corporations, and stifling bureaucracies. His story is an essential element in understanding football's central place in American culture.