Gallagher begins by quickly recapping football history: the National Football League’s first season in 1920, the growth in popularity of professional football starting in the 1940s, the first televised NFL championship in 1958, the founding of the American Football League in 1960, and the first AFL-NFL World Championship game, dubbed the “Super Bowl,” in 1967. The author rightly notes that more than half of the first 50 Super Bowls were anticlimactic “blowouts.” In the book he highlights games that turned out to be memorable contests, including the New York Jets’ surprise win in Super Bowl III (1969) and the Kansas City Chiefs’ 25-22 squeaker over the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl LVIII (2024). In accessible prose, he offers accounts of each game’s progress in language that’s pitched to readers who are already at least moderately familiar with football rules and terms. Frequent text boxes add interesting background information: statistics, players from Historically Black Colleges and Universities, or the lucrative (Taylor) “Swift Effect,” which has “increased the NFL’s brand value by over $330 million” since the singer started dating Kansas City Chiefs player Travis Kelce. The color photos are too sparse to have much visual impact, but they do present glimpses of coaches and players in action.
