"Ten Super Sundays- The Thrilling Story of the Super Bowl," By Rick Smith

The NFL as We Knew It in the Late 1970s and Early 1980s

 

The Great NFL Fun Book- Where the Football Love Started

The 1970s kids NFL Bible

As I said in an earlier post about the magic of Scholastic book fairs and the NFL, my love for the game began in school. Why is that besides it was just a magical time where there was no Internet, social media, 4K streaming, etc? I credit (and blame) the ones who marketed the game and figured out that in order for the NFL and pro football (take notes CFL Commissioner) to prosper, you needed to feed gridiron crack to the kids, and for kids, Scholastic book fairs were academic crack fairs where kids discovered what truly interested them. I am not saying sports books are bad, because without them I never would have paid attention to geography, poetry (thank you Steve Sabol and John Facenda) or taken such an avid interest in reading.   Among the best books of that late 70s era besides All-Pro Football Stars was The Great NFL Fun Book I & II, which if you had them, I don't need to remind you of just how awesome it was a ten year old to read and get lost in.  They just don't make books for child sports fans like this these days.  Don't believe me? Give it a read here for free courtesy of the Internet Archive....

The Magic of Scholastic Book Fairs and the NFL

For most of us older pro football fans, our love of the game began in the classroom. Specifically, during those Scholastic book fairs of the 1960s, 1970s (my era), 1980s and 1990s. These were are formative years of fandom where the printed word and physical books truly mattered.  The All-Pro Football Stars books of the late 1970s are what helped to fuel my fandom, and couple that with Sports Illustrated, and weekly appointment viewing of The NFL Today, NFL Films' This Week in Pro Football, and of course Monday Night Football, a life long nearly 50 year fan was born. Fortunately the fine folks at the Internet Archive appear to now be able to once again offer digital lending of old out of print titles, including many of which are those treasured Scholastic sports titles that introduced us to the wide world sports. Now, if said titles are not able to be read at the Internet Archive, you most definitely SHOULD NOT use an anonymous Tor browser and VPN to mask your IP address and download these old Scholastic sports titles from the many shadow libraries that are on the Internet.