Top Five Football Stories
Posted: February 5, 2017 Filed under: Top Fives | Tags: analysis, best Christmas stories, Best Football Stories, best of lists, criticism, Don DeLillo, F. Scott Fitzgerald, fiction, football, Irwin Shaw, John Updike, Mary Robison, short stories Leave a comment
Top Five Football Stories
It’s Superbowl Sunday. Woo-hoo.
Seems like a good time to countdown the best football short stories of all time.
Football and literature aren’t exactly peanut butter and jelly. There are far more baseball stories than football stories, for instance.
But there are some gems out there.
We give you a countdown of the top five football short stories.
5. ‘Game Plan’ by Don DeLillo
One of the funniest sports stories you’ll read.
4. ‘The Bowl’ by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Leave it to Fitzgerald to obsess on the myths and mores surrounding the Princeton-Yale football game.
3. ‘Coach’ by Mary Robison
Behind the scenes of family life with a small-time small-town small-college football coach. It’s a great read even if you hate football.
2. ‘The Eighty-Yard Run’ by Irwin Shaw
It’s old but not dated. The sports legend who peaks too early remains a modern archetype, and Shaw handles the subject beautifully.
1. ‘In Football Season’ by John Updike
There is virtually zero football in this story, and yet it captures the nostalgia surrounding high school football better than any piece of writing I know of.
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