The Game Behind the Game : High Pressure, High Stakes in Sports Television

New York, NY, U.S.A.: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1989. First Edition First Printing Stated . Hard Back. Very Good/Very Good. 6" x 9 1/2. 291 pages. Blue boards with red quarter-spine and silver spine lettering. Tight straight clean book with no marks or stamps. Very light soiling on bottom page edges. No other defects noted. Terry O'Neil, a 15-year veteran of ABC and CBS Sports, takes us behind the cameras and into the fast-paced, intriguing, and highly competitive world of sports television. O'Neil draws on firsthand experience for striking, memorable, and often hilarious portraits of Roone Arledge, Brent Musburger, Pat Summerall, Al Davis, Tom Landry, Bill Walsh, Eddie Hart, Him McMahon, and many others. His keen insights, gained from working shoulder to shoulder through the long hours and tense moments of major telecasts, reveal the off-camera personalitites of Howard Cosell and John Madden, perhaps the two most compelling figures in the history of sports broadcasting, but men who, in television's paradox, have kept their essential natures frustratingly hidden from public view. Also gives fans an inside look at how players and coaches prepare for competition and cope with the pressures of success and of failure. We see black American track stars at the Munich Olympics draft their statement supporting the threatened boycott of the Games by African natiions and share the despair of Giants Coach Bill Parcells at the end of the 1983 football season. For sports fans and media watchers it is a rare and thoroughly entertaining portrayal of the kind of innovtion and teamwork that makes great sports television.