God’s Coach: The Hymns, Hype, and Hypocrisy of Tom Landry’s Cowboys
Today’s PJ Lifestyle Bookshelf selection comes From Ed Driscoll’s “Far from Complete: Great Books Missing in the Kindle Format” article:
God’s Coach: The Hymns, Hype, and Hypocrisy of Tom Landry’s Cowboys, by Skip Bayless: In the last 15 years, sportswriter Skip Bayless tarnished his reputation by making an unsubstantiated claim that 90s-era Cowboy QB Troy Aikman was playing for the other team (IYKWIMAITYD) only to reemerge after years in the journalistic wilderness as a talking head on ESPN. But at the start of the 1990s, he wrote a pretty decent summation of the first three decades of the team that helped transform the NFL into America’s most popular professional sport. Bayless, then a Cowboys beat writer, wrote his first book in the immediate aftermath of new owner Jerry Jones acquiring the Cowboys and unceremoniously showing Landry, the Cowboys’ legendary founding coach, the door. God’s Coach ends up actually casting most of the blame for the Cowboys’ woes in the 1980s with the eroding skills of draftmaster Gil Brandt, but the revered Landry shouldn’t emerge unscathed for looking the other way while so much corruption tore his team apart. And Bayless’s prose makes this book an endlessly enjoyable guilty pleasure for NFL fans. I suspect it would get plenty of rereads if it ever appears in Kindle format.
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if bayless were to tell ne that the sun rose in the east, i’d have to question it.
If we’re all sinners & make mistakes, which is true why do so many like the author of this book spend so much time “exposing” the sins & mistakes” of others. I was not a Cowboys fan while growing up & enjoyed watching Pittsburgh take them apart during the Cowboys run as “America’s Team”. As much as I rooted against the Cowboys then I still respected Tom Landry & still do. I root against New England nowadays, but that doesn’t mean I would read a “tell all” book about all the things they’ve done wrong. Too many in America today do not understand or practise humility. Hubris yes, humility no.
I respected Tom Landry too, and Roger Staubach was my favorite QB back then. This Bayless doesn’t appear to have much credibility, and I agree Kenneth with your comments about humility and hubris, so I don’t think I’ll waste my time on this book either.
It’s Skip Bayless, so I won’t read it.
The cowboys have always seemed sleazy and unsophisticated.
The cheerleaders sex it up a litttle too much. Jerry Jones obviously wears a wig.
Jimmy Johnson is a great coach and charming, but seems to not really care about anything beyond himself. Barry Switzer is the oiliest man in the history of football.
Michael Irvin was a great player and charming, but a slave to booze, cocaine, sex. He eventually ran out of rope and now speaks to motivate other addicts to change.
The Cowboys traded for the great Charles Haley who was by far the biggest nut in the NFL. I will spare everybody the ancedotes.
Going old school, Pete Gent wrote a book on 70′s cowboy sleaze that was put into a movie. Thank God for penicillin.
A few years back Tony Romo’s media romance with a country singer/starlett. In this case they both seem like nice people, but who cares?
But Michael Irvin shows us there is always hope even for ex Cowboys.