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I finished this over a week ago, but for various reasons I hadn't gotten around to writing about it here until now. One of those reasons may well have been a lack of enthusiasm on my part, which is a shame, because the book is actually pretty good.

In retrospect, it was a mistake to read this right after Stefan Fatsis' book about NFL training camp. I liked the idea of reading these two similar books back-to-back, but in the end I got a bit sick of football. It's sort of like how movie theme nights often seem a little better in principle than in reality. I guess I can only read so much about football game plans in one month.

I did read some of this while watching a football game. It's not exactly the most masculine of things to read a book during a football game, but you can actually get through a lot of pages during all the down time in a game. People complain about baseball being slow, but I get through as many pages in a football game as I do during a baseball game. Sports don't exactly lend themselves to deep literature, but it's not bad watching football while reading about it.

It was also good to have the game on in the background, if only because it puts into focus how different today's game is. In Plimpton's book, it seemed that regular people could actually play the game. Flipping through the pictures, the players look like people you'd see in everyday life. Sure, they are big guys, but not the 300-pound behemoths of today.

And then there's the money aspect. The players of the 1960s had a grueling life, and they were still paid about the same as those in the stands. Even after reading Fatsis' book, I wondered why some of today's players bother with the game. Even with all the money today's players make, the life of an NFL player doesn't always seem worth it. That was, of course, doubly true in the 1960s.

The Plimpton book is probably better in that it gets deeper into the game. Plimpton is obsessed with learning everything about being an NFL player. He had his few weeks in the NFL, and he was determined to take full advantage. The Fatsis book is probably more enjoyable, simply because he leaves some stuff out. Unlike Plimpton, I may not want to know everything about life in the NFL, just the good stuff.