Pain Gang: Pro Football's Fifty Toughest Players [Hardcover]

Because I love the NFL, therefore I would read any book on the sport, yet saying that, this book is very readable even for the non-extrme fan. it gives great fluid insight to make great players of the past and present.
You can pick it up by just looking at your fav players or positions.
Good stuff

As a pretty hardcore football fan, I was keen to read through a book glamourising 50 of the hardest gridirion greats of all time and Pain Gang served up that treat. The nostalgia for days that I couldn't possibly remember and the tales of iron men like Bronko Nagurski were well worth reading about. While I did know the backstories of a sizable chunk of the 50, there were plenty that I did not know much about especially from the early days of the sport.

The spread of players across the ages touches on the research that Reynolds put in, which is good if not great. The discussions of players from a bygone age are a history lesson for those of us who watch the game now and that history lesson was decently researched and very well written. A list of 50 players could very easily become repetitive and bland but Reynolds is a vastly superior writer to others in the same genre and was quite impressive in not repeating the closing cliches that accompanied the end of discussion on a particular player.

I could gripe about the selection of players and wonder why there were 8 Quarterbacks just because those guys are the glamour but that's not really the point. The purpose of the book is to look at 50 tough guys and frankly they all are. Reynolds himself seeks to kick off a discussion of relative merits right at the end even if he himself was clearly never going to come to a definitive answer.

There are a couple of things that let the book down though. The first is that there just isn't enough about why these players were particularly tough. In some obvious cases like Nagurski it is much easier to do but with no definition of toughness ever forwarded, it isn't always easy to see why one particular player qualifies as being top 50 over another who doesn't.

The second gripe is that far too much of the limited space given to each player is turned over to their career accolades and not about toughness. Indeed, Reynolds is pretty much an apologist for each player he includes and at times such as with "Night Train" Lane he appears to be spinning a PR line as much as anything by loading up on information that would compensate for a player's perceived PR weaknesses.

Overall, this is a good but not great book. The content for each player is not sufficient and it does feel as though reading someone's blog rather than a full book. I'm glad I read it but if I really wanted to reach into the toughness of the gridirion then I'd hark back to You're OKay It's Only A Bruise which remains unsurpassed and has a far more vivid tale of every game toughness to deliver.

I found this book fascinating and really interesting. It takes fans to the very heart of the action and details many inspiring tales of toughness. I especially liked reading about how Sam Huff dented his own helmet when he walloped Jim Taylor in the 1962 NFL Championship Game and how Chuck Bednarik knocked Joe Perry and himself out cold with a vicious hit. Pain Gang provides a colourful insight into the world of professional American football and highlights just how much commitment and bravery each player displays in order to entertain the fans each weekend. This book details so many wonderful tales of toughness and also looks at some of the most famous battles and incidents in NFL history. From the era of leather helmets in the 1920s to the modern day, you cannot fail to be inspired by Pain Gang. I loved it and would recommend it for any Christmas stocking.