For guys like Russell Boudreaux, football is the only way out of their small Louisiana town. As the team's varsity tight end, Rus has a singular goal: to get a scholarship and play on the national stage. When his best friend is unfairly arrested and kicked off the team, Rus faces an impossible choice: speak up or live in fear. Desperate for change, Rus kneels during the national anthem. In one instant, he falls from local stardom and becomes a target...

"Before there was Colin Kaepernick, there was Fritz Pollard. The first Black quarterback to play in the NFL, Pollard was a dynamo, leading his team to a national championship, drawing record crowds, and earning the highest salary in the league. He was also subject to a constant stream of racist abuse. Spectators jeered and threw rocks, and opposing players singled him out, using the cover of the game to pummel the only Black man on the field. It would...

"Drawing on 720 original interviews, a New York Times best-selling sportswriter captures as never before the elusive truth about the greatest athlete of all time who took the world by storm from the mid-1980s into the early 1990s--and then, almost overnight, disappeared."--

"This joyful celebration of black and brown lives is based on real events in the famous athlete and activist's young life and reveals the power of radical self-love and knowing your self-worth."--

"The game gets more serious off the field in this new football romance in the Playbook series. Elliot Reed is living her best life. Well, that might be an exaggeration, but she's trying really hard. With her dad's passing, this year has not been the easiest. But now that she's landed her dream job as the Strategic Communications Manager for the Denver Mustangs, things are starting to look up. Or at least they were until Quinton Howard Jr. decides...

"Chronicles the shameful history of the treatment of Black players in the NFL as well as the breakout careers of a new generation of Black quarterbacks, including Colin Kaepernick, Patrick Mahomes, Lamar Jackson, and Kyler Murray. "--

One year before Jackie Robinson broke the color line in major league baseball in 1947, four black players joined the Cleveland Browns and Los Angeles Rams to become the first professional football players of African-American descent in the modern era. While blacks had played on professional teams in the early days of pro football, none had joined a team since 1934. In this book twelve players who began their careers from 1946 to 1955 not only reminisce...

"Unlike baseball, football did not have a thunderclap moment like the arrival of Jackie Robinson at Erbbets Field. Instead, the game started out as the most egalitarian of American sports, reversed course during the Great Depression when the NFL purged its few black players and then slowly reintegrated after World War II. Even then, the sport needed another three decades before owners, coaches and fans looked at players based on their ability, rather...

"The author shares his story of how he was portrayed in his NFL career, including his background growing up with racism, his Hall of Fame career, his disputes with Rams management about his contract, and more."--