"Are you kidding me?" asked a Sports Illustrated
story in early 2003, shortly after autocratic Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones hired equally autocratic Bill Parcells ("The Big Tuna") as head coach of his NFL franchise. It was a sentiment repeated throughout the world of professional football, a world in which the fortunes of the Cowboys had declined after three consecutive 5–11 seasons, and a world Shropshire seeks to expose in this uneven examination of the Cowboys' 2003 season. Shropshire (Seasons in Hell
; etc.), a writer for Playboy
, Sports Illustrated
and Slate.com, takes a magnifying glass to the Cowboys' amazingly improbable 10–6 record in Parcells's first season. He plumbs coaching philosophies, quarterback controversies and locker-room gossip, seeking to understand the reason for the team's first trip to the playoffs since 1999. Shropshire pores over each game, and even transcribes the coach's public utterances. Inexplicably, though, he devotes little space to the relationship between owner and coach. Maddeningly digressive (containing meditations, at times lengthy, on subjects such as zombies, the 2012 Olympics, motivational speaking and hurricanes) and listlessly written ("[Flozell] Adams is a player of gigantic physical size"), the book will appeal to only the most devoted fans. Agent, Jim Donovan Literary. (On sale Aug. 31)
