THE PRO QUARTERBACK

by Murray Olderman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 28, 1966

This is a deluxe volume featuring color and black photos, plus many of the author's line drawings and sports cartoons, which accounts for the price. The text itself is massive, sometimes running slab paragraphs over 30 lines deep on an extra-wide page. The theme is the T formation as exemplified by all-time great quarter-backs, the fellows who call the signals. The pros interviewed and discussed are Bart Starr, Johnny Unitas, Gary Cuozzo, Sid Luckman, Sammy Baugh, Frankie Albert, Paul Christman, Tommy Thompson, Otto Graham, Bob Waterfield, Bobby Layne, Van Brocklin, Charley Conerly, Y. A. Tittle and several other pigskin pilots. Olderman, let it be said, is a sharp writer with a genius for the right extract for characterization. About Bobby Layne, Olderman quotes Doak Walker: ""Bobby never lost a game in his life. Time simply ran out on him."" Seldom has a game been so closely analyzed this side of chess. The quarterback faces a hundred decisions each play, which he decides as much by intuition as by his coach's ""war plan"". Olderman snaps the reader into the logic of play and the quarterback's utter absorption with winning... This is a first-rate exposition of the prosody of football, with the quarterback as poet of the poundage.

Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1966

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Prentice-Hall

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1966

Categories: NONFICTION