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Overview
They are one of the superb and distinctive teams of the National Football League - roguish, free-swinging, fiercely competitive - a collection of exceptional characters who play with abandon. They are the Philadelphia Eagles, one of professional football's great franchises. In Bringing the Heat Mark Bowden gets deep inside Gang Green - inside a football team, both on and off the field, as no writer has done before. By the end of 1991, the Eagles were a frustrated bunch. They hadn't even made the play-offs - after losing in the first round three years in a row - and they were having to get along without Buddy Ryan, the coach who had been fired after bringing them to the brink of greatness. Under the new head coach, Richie Kotite, the tightly knit defensive squad remained Buddy's boys, disgruntled and proud, determined to prove that the Super Bowl can be won by peerless, unglamorous defensive play. Then, just one week before 1992 preseason workouts were to begin, star defensive lineman Jerome Brown slammed his Corvette into a Florida palm tree, flipped, and died. His death was devastating to his teammates - he had lived his life convinced that he was indestructible, and everyone had believed him. Now the Eagles were on a mission: to honor Jerome, vindicate Buddy, and magnify the soul of professional football. This is the story of that season and its aftermath. Rowdy and hilarious, Bowden's account probes the essences of America's most popular spectator sport - the training camps and player drafts, the tensions between coaches and jocks, the often stormy relationships between athletes and their wives/girlfriends, the greed, the ever-present matter of race - all the drama and pressure that suffuse the business, which never stops being a game, of professional football. Bowden spares us none of the flagrantly obnoxious and reckless behavior of a group of men who are paid handsomely to beat each other up, and who believe fervently in the glory of what they do. He giveSynopsis
Bringing the Heat is the story of one team's season-long campaign for the NFL championship, told through the personal stories of the men on the field and the coaches, managers, and owner on the sidelines. The team is the 1992 Philadelphia Eagles, a group of players assembled in the iconoclastic image of their former head coach Buddy Ryan. They are known throughout the league for their ferocious defense and for the otherworldly talents of their quarterback Randall Cunningham.
Award-winning journalist Mark Bowden gets deep inside the world of professional football in a way no writer has ever done before, with an insightful and hilarious portrait of one of the most exciting teams ever to play the game. He spares none of the game's ugliness - the greed, the racism, and the often sadistic violence - while capturing the beauty of athleticism at its highest level, the courage of men who face each play knowing that one bad hit can end a career, and above all the exultant glory of victory that inspires their struggle to be the best.
Publishers Weekly
This look at the Philadelphia Eagles covers both the tenure of coach Buddy Ryan, which began in 1986 and ended with his firing in 1991, and the next three years of current coach Rich Kotite's regime. The 1992 season is the focal point, but Bowden, who covered the Eagles for the Philadelphia Inquirer, deals in depth with the years leading up to that season. Of particular interest are Bowden's profiles of many of the Eagles' colorful characters, including Ryan, owner Norman Braman (who sold the team to Hollywood producer Jeff Lurie in 1994) and players Jerome Brown, Seth Joyner and Randall Cunningham. Bowden pulls no punches, documenting the stormy off-the-field lives of several team members including Joyner and Wes Hopkins, as well as describing the players' dislike of star quarterback Cunningham. Although a bit melodramatic at times, this is as thorough an account of a sports franchise as any fan, even Eagles fanatics, could want. Photos not seen by PW (Oct).