From Booklist
Tom Landry was the coach of the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys for the team’s first 29 years, compiling an unprecedented 20 consecutive winning seasons and two Super Bowl championships. Landry laid the foundation for the modern NFL, using computers to help analyze player data, scouting small and historically black colleges, and instituting the now-common practice of having the coaches call the plays, among other innovations. Landry was viewed by players, coaches, fans, and the press as aloof, intellectual, and, more often than not, inscrutable. In 600-plus pages, Ribowsky does little to penetrate the veil. Despite exhaustive research, there is little insight into Landry the man, but there are endless and often fascinating details of his playing career, his time as a bomber copilot in WWII, and, of course, his three decades leading the Cowboys. Readers looking for insight into the private Landry will be disappointed; readers looking for a recap of one of football’s greatest innovators and coaches will be enthralled. --Wes Lukowsky
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
Review
“[Ribowsky] recounts Landry’s life honestly, avoiding both distortion and hagiography while portraying a stoic, flawed man of honor…. A triumph of extensive research and interviews. It will be welcomed by all football fans.” (Library Journal, starred review)
“A meaty biography of one of the NFL’s legendary coaches…. [Ribowsky] provides as complete a picture of ‘God’s Coach’ as we’re likely to get. A must-read for fans of America’s Team and, given Landry’s impact on the game, for Cowboy haters too.” (Kirkus Reviews)
“In Ribowsky’s authoritative biography, Landry appears more stoic king than coach, his ever-present fedora serving as a crown…. Ribowsky’s thorough examination of a surprisingly complicated man offers original reporting, which serves here as merely a complement to this impressively researched work…. An eloquent, honest tribute to a football genius.” (Publishers Weekly, Starred Review)
“Fascinating…. Readers looking for a recap of one of football’s greatest innovators and coaches will be enthralled.” (Booklist)
“[A] huge and hugely entertaining biography…. Extraordinary…. That Ribowsky, an outstanding biographer with books on Al Davis, Satchel Paige and Howard Cosell to his credit, doesn’t idolize Landry across the book’s 640 pages makes his judgment all the keener.” (Allen Barra - Dallas Morning News)
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