{"product_id":"9781555846268","title":"Dream Season: A Professor Joins America's Oldest Semi-Pro Football Team","description":"\u003cb\u003eA rookie outsider chases his sports-obsessed dream to relive his football glory days in “the ultimate fan book” (\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e).\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Bob Cowser, Jr. is a happy husband, father, and English professor in upstate New York. Only one thing is missing: the exhilaration he felt as a young man in sports-crazy Tennessee when he took the field for high school football games. In what is every Monday morning quarterback’s fantasy, Bob joins the Watertown Red \u0026amp; Black, the country’s oldest semi-professional football team, hungry to win its first championship in two decades. Over the next five months, and with the hesitant blessing of his wife, Candace, Cowser drives the lonely sixty miles for try-outs in a former mill town of soldiers, corrections officers, and blue-collar workers.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e A far cry from his leafy campus, the “Professor,” as his teammates call him, must work hard to earn the respect of these hard-edged men—some of them local celebrities—and the confidence of his coach, a former mill worker who has never used a playbook. Balancing the demands of family and academe with the rigors of practice and game play, Cowser must find a way to fit his childhood dream into his real life as an adult.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “Deserv[ing] to join the ranks of great football books like George Plimpton’s \u003ci\u003ePaper Lion\u003c\/i\u003e, Frederick Exley’s \u003ci\u003eA Fan’s Notes\u003c\/i\u003e, and William Morris’s \u003ci\u003eThe Courting of Marcus Dupree” \u003c\/i\u003e(\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e),\u003ci\u003e Dream Season \u003c\/i\u003einvites us onto the line of scrimmage for each heartbreaking loss and breathtaking win, into the locker room of a fabled team challenged by a roller-coaster season, and ultimately into the heart of a man with a persevering thirst for glory. “Real, vivid, sensitive, accessible, warm, brutal, and wholly consuming,” this remarkable story reminds us why we love the games we play (Lee Gutkind, author of \u003ci\u003eForever Fat: Essays by the Godfather\u003c\/i\u003e).","brand":"Grove\/Atlantic, Inc.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47132475490544,"sku":"9781555846268","price":12.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781555846268_p0.jpg?v=1769899154","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781555846268","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}