Out of Their League
In 1969, Meggyesy, a hardworking outside linebacker for the St. Louis Cardinals, abruptly quit the NFL after a successful seven-year career. A year later, he published this memoir, both a chronicle of his growing disillusionment with the sport and a searing critique of the football factory. Writing that “football is one of the most dehumanizing experiences a person can face,” he describes alumni boosters providing financial incentives to college players, players pushed to play hurt, unethical use of painkillers, institutionalized racism, and a lot of bad behavior by the players themselves. What Jim Bouton’s Ball Four (1970) was for baseball, Out of Their League is for football—though the latter is darker, angrier, and more political by far. Though NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle was savvy enough to ignore the book and avoid fanning the flames of controversy (unlike MLB’s Bowie Kuhn’s response to Ball Four), its contents were still incendiary and the book was widely read. After a soul-searching hiatus from the game, Meggyesy returned to football—not as a field player but as a players’-union organizer. Some aspects of this book will strike modern readers as dated, but its core critique is as valid as ever: players are still paying with their bodies for the fans’ viewing pleasure. --Keir Graff