Why We Love Football: A History in 100 Moments

In the ebullient follow-up to 2023’s Why We Love Baseball, journalist Posnanski rolls the highlight reel on the most memorable plays to ever grace the gridiron. The recaps mix the humorous and the heartfelt, describing Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez’s 2012 “butt fumble” as well as a 2002 Ohio high school game in which both teams cooperated to let an intellectually disabled student score a touchdown. Posnanski has a talent for restoring excitement to even the most well-known plays, offering a tense account of how Giants quarterback Eli Manning evaded Patriots defenders, who had engulfed him as if in “a zombie movie scene,” and passed to wide receiver David Tyree, who made an improbable catch in the Giants’ upset win in Super Bowl XLII. Elsewhere, Posnanski recreates the chaos of 1982’s “the Play”—when UC Berkeley made a game-winning touchdown with their opponents’ marching band already on the field, mistakenly believing the game over—and the exhilaration of the “Immaculate Reception,” a 1972 play in which Steelers fullback Franco Harris parlayed an astonishing catch into a touchdown that clinched his team’s win over the Raiders. Brimming with a fan’s enthusiasm and capturing the awe, bemusement, and thrills that the sport inspires, this is another win from Posnanski. Agent: Sloan Harris, CAA. (Sept.)