Review: Terrible
Rating: 1 out of 5
Date: 01 26, 2014
Edit:  The author considers this review to contain spoilers, so I am adding a "spoiler alert" at her request.While the romance itself is just pretty bad (hero is a jerk with retrograde idea, heroine is a whiny doormat), the lack of knowledge the author brought to the football setting was so wrong that it was difficult to get through a chapter without laughter.  It appears she got a brief description of how football works from a fan of the game, so the games weren't that bad.  But she didn't understand anything about the BUSINESS of football.  A few of the major howlers:* In the middle of a winning season, the owner decides to attend a single practice in order to make decisions about who to cut.  Why are you doing this in the middle of the season?  Everybody cuts at the beginning, when it can actually make a difference.*A major part of the plot involves the team's excitement over a scout coming to a pro game in order to decide who to sign.  Everyone wants to get playing time so they can impress the scout.  Just . . . no.  Once you reach the NFL, you aren't going to get scouted like that.  Even if another team is interested in you, they can watch tape of your games.  Because, you know, you're in the NFL and all your games are televised.* There are rules and guidelines about how to approach a player who is signed to another team.  You can't just go up to him in the area outside the locker room and offer to buy him lunch.  Once a team is interested, the conversations are going to be between an agent and a team (not a "manager").  Even if scouts did attend NFL games to find players, they would never ever ever be empowered to offer someone a starting QB position.  The scene where the player tells his student sister to handle his contract negotiation (because she's a finance major) is ridiculous.  This isn't how the NFL works.* Wyoming is going to be one of the last states to get an expansion team.  How could Wyoming possibly support a team?* A Wide Receiver poisons a starting QB so that his friend can get more playing time.  Yes.  You read that right.* A backup QB gets signed to a team despite the fact that he wasn't good enough to get a scholarship to college (the book specifically mentions that he is paying off his student loans).  Was he playing college ball for free?  How exactly did he get signed to the pros?  No team, even an expansion, is going to be interested in having a starter who wasn't good enough to get a scholarship and has only had limited time as a backup.  They may sign him to support whoever they draft to be the real starter (though that is still unlikely), but why would they want that guy to be their starter when he wasn't good in college and he has only started in one game ever).* Why doesn't this team ever seem to travel?