Tropic of football : the long and perilous journey of Samoans to the NFL / Rob Ruck.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ruck, Rob, 1950- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

National Football League.

Football players--United States--Biography.

Football players.

Football players--American Samoa--Biography.

American Samoa--Biography.

American Samoa.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (337 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

New York : New Press, 2018.

Summary:

Longlisted for the PEN/ESPN Award "Everything that's rousing and distressing about block-and-tackle football is encompassed in Tropic of Football. . . illuminating." 'Newsday How a tiny Pacific archipelago is producing more players'from Troy Polamalu to Marcus Mariota'for the NFL than anywhere else in the world, by an award-winning sports historian Football is at a crossroads, its future imperiled by the very physicality that drives its popularity. Its grass roots'high school and youth travel program'are withering. But players from the small South Pacific American territory of Samoa are bucking that trend, quietly becoming the most disproportionately overrepresented culture in the sport. Jesse Sapolu, Junior Seau, Troy Polamalu, and Marcus Mariota are among the star players to emerge from the Samoan islands, and more of their brethren suit up every season. The very thing that makes them so good at football'their extraordinary internalization of discipline and warrior self-image'makes them especially vulnerable to its pitfalls, including concussions and brain injuries. Award-winning sports historian Rob Ruck travels to the South Seas to unravel American Samoa's complex ties with the United States. He finds an island blighted by obesity, where boys train on fields blistered with volcanic pebbles wearing helmets that should have been discarded long ago, incurring far more neurological damage than their stateside counterparts and haunted by Junior Seau, who committed suicide after a vaunted twenty-year NFL career, unable to live with the demons that resulted from chronic traumatic encephalopathy. Tropic of Football is a gripping, bittersweet history of what may be football's last frontier.

Contents:

God's sweetest work

The war and America come to Samoa

Hawaii : the North shore

Al Lolotai, Charlie Ane, and Bob Apisa

American Samoa in the 1960s

Jesse Sapolu, Dick Tomey, and Faa Samoa

Faa Kalifonia : Oceanside, California

Kalifonia dreaming

Back in Hawaii : where football still matters

David and Goliath

The Samoan paradox.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9781620973387

1620973383

OCLC:

1039670127