Pigskin: The Early Years of Pro Football

In Pigskin, Robert W. Peterson presents a lively and informative overview of the early years of pro football -- from the late 1880s to the beginning of the television era. He describes the colorful beginnings of the pro game and profiles some of the most famous players.

After the NFL formed in 1920, pro football's popularity grew gradually but steadily. It burst into national prominence with the Chicago Bears-Washington Redskins championship game of 1940. As one sportswriter put it: "The weather was perfect. So were the Bears." The final score was 73-0. Peterson shows how, after World War II, the newly-created All-America Football Conference challenged the NFL, which never viewed the new teams as much of a threat. That is, not until 1950 when the two leagues merged. In the first game of the 1950 season, the Cleveland Browns, winner of all four AAFC titles, buried the 1949 NFL champion Philadelphia Eagles 35-10.

An elegy to a time when, for many players, the game was at least as important as the money it brought them, Pigskin takes readers up to the 1958 championship game when the Baltimore Colts beat the New York Giants in overtime. An estimated thirty million people saw the game on their grainy, black-and-white television screens and many of them became instant fans. Pro football had arrived as a major sport.