Ken Rappoport – författare

Super Bowl Sunday has become akin to a national holiday with over 16.5 million Americans requesting the following Monday off from work or calling in sick last year.Now after reaching its 50th anniversary, it is a perfect time to look back at the game.Immerse yourself in the greatest moments in football history. Barry Wilner and Ken Rappoport charge through every Super Bowl, covering the most intense moments in the sport’s history. Revisit some of America’s classic and current football heroes, including: Joe Namath, Tom Brady, Joe Montana, Terry Bradshaw, Bart Starr, Dave Robinson, Max McGee, Chuck Howley, Johnny Unitas, Jim O’Brien, Duane Thomas, “Mean” Joe Greene, Marcus Allen, Matt Millen, Phil Simms, David Tyree, Ray Lewis, Peyton Manning, and more.

The second book in the Lyons Press Game Changers sports series answers the questions: What were the 50 most revolutionary personalities, rules, pieces of equipment, controversies, organizational changes, radio and television advancements, and more in the history of football? And how, exactly, did they forever change the game? Football’s Game Changers offers fascinating, detailed explanations along with a ranking system from 1 to 50 that is sure to inspire debate among professional and college gridiron aficionados. Ranging from each sport’s beginnings to today and tackling on-the-field and off-the-field developments, the Game Changers series offers a history of each sport through its turning-points and innovations. Full-color, and including photos, pull-outs, and sidebars throughout, books within the Game Changers series are important and entertaining additions to every sports fan’s library.

Consistently ranked among the top ten college football rivalries by fans and pundits alike-and often ranked among the top five-the annual Army-Navy game is the one rivalry that, as one commentator has noted, "stops the most powerful men and women in the world in their tracks for one day a year." It is also quite possible that it is the only rivalry to raise over $58 million in war bonds (1944 game), have an outcome so contentious that the game had to be suspended for six years by the President (1893), or be played in the Rose Bowl (1983), requiring a military "airlift" of nine thousand cadets and midshipmen to California. But Army-Navy is first and foremost about football, and as Barry Wilner and Ken Rappoport relate in this engaging history, it may be college football in its purest form-and not just as a "training ground for the NFL." Though struggling for national ranking, the service academies have done surprisingly well over the years given their recruiting handicap, producing five Heisman Trophy winners and a number of national champions. The rivalry's most successful player may have been Roger Staubach, Heisman winner and Hall of Fame quarterback, who led the Dallas Cowboys to two Super Bowls in the 1970s following his four-year mandatory service in the U.S. Navy. The Army-Navy rivalry is also about traditions, and in a concluding chapter on the 2004 game, the authors take us through the pageantry: the march into the stadium by the student bodies of both schools; freshman push-ups after each score; and the final, moving show of sportsmanship following the game as thousands of cadets and midshipmen stand at attention while the alma mater of each school is played by their respective bands. A rivalry like no other, Army versus Navy receives due recognition in this colorful, thorough history.

From fond memory or through the film Miracle, most Americans know about the stunning upset of the Soviet Union by the underdog U.S.A hockey team at the 1980 Olympics—engagingly retold in this book—but after this most unlikely of achievements, what do the authors consider to be the top twenty sports upsets of all time? Their answers in this entertaining volume will surprise some, perhaps appear obvious to others, but will no doubt prove to be fodder for bar-room arguments and spirited debate over sports talk radio. Ranking the miracle at Lake Placid in 1980 as the hands-down, undisputed greatest sports upset ever, the authors go on to describe nineteen others whose ranking may prove to be more controversial. Which team was the most improbable World Series winner—the 1969 New York Mets or the 1914 Boston Braves? What was the sport of boxing’s greatest upset—Buster Douglas over Mike Tyson in Tokyo in 1990, or Cassius Clay (Mohammad Ali) over Sonny Liston in 1964? How surprising was Billy Mills’ 1964 Olympic marathon win? Or seventeen-year-old Michael Chang’s triumph at the French Open in 1989? The authors make their case for each of these “miracles, shockers, and upsets” in convincing style, and also include sidebars on upsets that didn’t “make the cut” but still qualify as compelling stories, such as “Cinderella Man” James Braddock and the 1950 World Cup shocker that was the subject of the film “The Greatest Game Ever Played.”

When Harvard came back from a 16-point deficit with less than a minute to go to tie Yale in their now-famous 1968 gridiron tilt, the headline in the Harvard Crimson the following Monda proudly boasted, "Harvard Beats Yale, 29-29." This and nineteen other improbable comebacks are the subjects of Wilner and Rappoport's latest volume of extraordinary achievements from the world of sports, and include the 1914 "miracle" Braves, Billy Casper's incredible rally to beat Arnold Palmer in the 1966 U.S. Open, the New York Giants' magical playoff run in 1951, and others. Also included are sidebars on individual athletes whose "combacks" included overcoming disease (i.e. Lance Armstrong) and reviving a career (i.e. Michael Jordan and Muhammad Ali).

Wearing borrowed uniforms, practicing on obscure college campuses, and led by a former Marine Corps W.W. II fighter ace as commissioner, the American Football League (AFL) debuted in the Fall of 1960 to challenge the monopoly of the well-established National Football League. Within ten years it had won two Super Bowls and had forced a merger with its rival, splitting the NFL into the National and American Football Conferences. This colorful history of the AFL and its unforgettable cast of characters, from Billy Cannon to Joe Namath to its "Foolish Club" of team owners, arrives on the 50th anniversary of the AFL's first season to recount the startling success of an upstart league that prevailed against long odds.

Covered by four networks, allowing every game to be televised, “March Madness” has become an American phenomenon as anticipated as the Super Bowl. This is the story of the tournament from its beginnings seventy-three years ago as just an eight-team “bracket” to today’s sixty-eight-team format. From the “Cinderella” teams like Butler and Gonzaga to perennial powerhouses such as UCLA and Kentucky, covering buzzer-beaters, upsets, and dynasties, the story of one of the most-followed sporting events in history is comprehensively told here.

Crazyball is a look at the wild, unusual, unimaginable, funny, and downright strange occurrences in sports. Barry Wilner and Ken Rappoport take us from the worst teams in history to sports’ craziest superstitions, wackiest pranks, and ultimate blown calls. This book is filled with moments that will make you laugh, shake your head in wonderment, lose your breath, or simply ask: “Really?!”