| The Lion in Autumn: A Season with Joe Paterno and Penn State Football |  | Author: Frank Fitzpatrick
Publisher: Gotham
Category: Book
List Price: $14.00
Buy New: $2.62
You Save: $11.38 (81%)
New (6) Used (9) from $2.62
Rating:  9 reviews
Sales Rank: 2630662
Format: Bargain Price
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 336
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.3 x 0.8
Dewey Decimal Number: 796.3326309748
ASIN: B000VYSV4C
Publication Date: August 3, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: BRAND NEW BOOK. NEVER BEEN READ. SOME SHELFWEAR MARKS. BLACK REMAINDER MARK....
| |
| Also Available In:
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Fascinating. . . . One of the best books ever written on the rise and fall of a great college football coach.
Allen Barra, San Francisco Chronicle
The Lion in Autumn takes readers inside Penn States storied football program as legendary coach Joe Paterno fights to turn his struggling team into a winner once again. In more than a half century at Penn State, Paterno has won more bowl games (21) than any other coach and more games (354) than all but one, en route to two national championships and five perfect seasons. But in the new millennium hard times arrived in Happy Valley. His Nittany Lions had losing seasons in four of five years, dropping sixteen of twenty-three games in 2003 and 2004. There were boos at Beaver Stadium and increasing calls for the aging Paterno to step down. Award-winning sportswriter Frank Fitzpatrick followed JoePa through the 2004 season as the beloved coach struggled to save himself and his storied program. Fitzpatrick trailed Paterno from fund-raisers to the spring practices to the sidelines, detailing how the coach endured another losing season while building a team that would win the Orange Bowl and compete for the national championship in 2005. Interweaving stories from past seasons into the narrative, Fitzpatrick fleshes out the legend of Paterno. BACKCOVER: Insightful. . . . Fascinating reading. Chicago Tribune
A rather startling success. . . . Significant. . . . literary. . . . [Fitzpatrick] relies on his own tenacity and attention to detail with just the right amount of historical perspective. Pittsburgh Post- Gazette
[Demystifies] the college football coach, moving behind the spectacle of Saturday afternoon to reveal flesh and soul and humanity. Buz Bisinger, The New York Times
You dont have to be a Penn State fan to appreciate it. ESPN.com
Download Description
"A legendary coach, a struggling team, and a storm of controversy: An award- winning sportswriter takes you inside a tumultuous season of Penn State football, in the bestselling tradition of A Season on the Brink. In his fifty years of coaching football at Penn State, Joe Paterno has become one of the most popular figures in American sports. Only one other coach has won more football games than Paterno; his team has won more bowl games than any other; and he does it all the way it was meant to be done, with his players succeeding in the classroom as well as on the field and in the pro ranks. Along the way, Paterno has transformed a once obscure agricultural college into a huge research university in the Big Ten, whose endowment now exceeds $1 billion, tens of millions of which ""JoePa"" has personally helped to raise. But lately the tide seems to have turned in Happy Valley. Since 2000, Paterno's Nittany Lions have lost more games than they've won, and accusations of off-the-field crimes have tarnished his program's reputation. Award-winning sports reporter Frank Fitzgerald followed Joe Paterno and his Nittany Lions through the 2004 season, from fundraisers in State College to the sidelines at Beaver Stadium. The Lion in Autumn delivers the complete story of this frustrating, tormenting, and ultimately exhilarating turning-point season and the history that led up to it. This is the chronicle of fifty phenomenal years-including the dynasties of undefeated and national championship teams that came before-and a riveting fight to reclaim a legacy."
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 4 more reviews...
Good Read for Penn State Football Fans May 21, 2008
The book "The Lion in Autumn:A Season with Joe Paterno and Penn State Football" is a good book to be read by a Penn State football fan. The book takes you through the Nittany Lions 2004 season where they finished the disapointing season at 4-7. The book travels through the rough season with an inside look at Penn State football. Week by week the book takes you in depth into what happened during the 2004 season. The book goes in chronological order game after game with recollections of Nittany Lion football pasts along the way. At the end of the book there is an afterword about the Lions next season whre they went 11-1 and finished 3rd in the country. I recommend "The Lion In Autumn" to any Penn State football fan who is looking for something to read.
JoPa December 24, 2007
I thought the book was very good. Would recommend it to Penn State fans as well as any other football fans.
 On the Outside Looking In August 25, 2007
One of the great joys of Penn State football fandom is reading books about Coach Paterno and his program. As both a fan and a reader, any disappointment I had with this one was chiefly due to the limited access given to the author. After a nine-loss season in 2003 that marked the nadir of precipitous competitive slide, and an increasing number of off-field incidents, Coach Paterno was understandably guarded -- even abandoning a longstanding tradition of meeting with reporters over cocktails the night before game day. (Stiffing reporters in this fashion was probably an unwise political move that helped to contribute to the "JoePa Must Go" sentiment.)
What then is a writer to do? One approach could have been to chronicle the growing division within the Penn State community -- former players, alumni, students, and the media -- over the tough times in Happy Valley, using a few colorful and outspoken characters as a catalyst for that division.
Instead, Mr. Fitzpatrick delivers a fairly straightforward chronicle of the 2005 season's aspirations and disappointments. He does an adept job for those readers who may not be familiar with the programs history, but for those readers who are the chapters on glories past provide no new insight and interrupts the narrative of the current season.
Penn State's decline was primarily attributable to lackluster recruiting that produced players unable to compete effectively in the Big Ten, and Mr. Fitzpatrick is spot on when he writes that Paterno was mindful of this: "Other teams had more talent than Penn State. But to admit that too often in public was to demean his players.... [He] understood that the quickest solution to the Nittany Lions' troubles would be to search harder and more selectively for talent." (p. 287)
Once again, Coach Paterno's refusal to publicly contemplate life after football is highlighted, where is prospective retirement activity has changed over the years from collecting stamps to cutting grass. With the almost immediate death of Alabama's Bear Bryant after his retirement, Mr. Paterno is quite candid about his deep seated fears: "I'm alive. I don't want to die. Football keeps me alive." (p. 276) This outlook is quite tragic and perplexing, given his successes off the field as an educator, philanthropist, community leader and family patriarch.
In short, this volume does not quite rise to the level of incisiveness of Ken Denlinger's "For the Glory" or Coach Paterno's decades-old autobiography, which is in desperate need of an update. But it reads quickly and provides and admirable journalistic account of Happy Valley's darkest days in the Paterno era.
Good Book, Fair To Both Sides November 11, 2006
I just finished the book a couple of days ago and as it settled it my mind, two impressions came over me.
One is that there is a big part of Joe Paterno who still feels deep inside that he is not as good as his rich college classmates at Brown and how he has to prove to them that he belongs.
The second is that while Saint Joepa Paterno can talk all he wants about the excesses in college athletics, he is not willing to forgo any of the excesses that reward him. You don't see him turning away any of the huge salaries or the other luxuries, do you.
Paterno comes across as a control freak, if he is trying to prepare his players and assistant coaches for the outside world, why does he restrict acccess to them so tightly.
I am a big sports fan of college and pro sports but I have major issues with people glorifying coaches the way they do. They are just athletic coaches. They are not helping solve the problems of the world, just entertainers.
Joepa also comes across as humorless, a man who takes himself way too seriously.
It is a shame that Fitzpatrick was denied access to so many sources. It would have been interesting to find out why Joepa's son is unwilling or able to get a job on his own instead of depending on Daddy.
As noted above, Joepa was influenced greatly by his days at Brown. I would have loved to learn how in the world an Italian kid from Brooklynin the 40s made it to the Ivy League.
This is not a puff piece on the man, that is a great accomplishment by the author.
Good Synopsis of Joe Paterno and College Football May 12, 2006
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I hesitated picking up this book because even though it was published only one year ago, it is arguably outdated since Penn State football finally bounced back and had a very good year. That said, I am glad I read it because the book goes beyond the marketed "A Season with Penn State" storyline and provides a very good historical synopsis of Joe Paterno and his role in the history of college football.
Since Paterno has been around so long, people tend to forget his importance in the development of college football. Once he retires, he will undoubtedly be remembered in the same breath as Bear Bryant, Knute Rockne, Daryl Royal, Bud Wilkinson and the other Legends (with a capital "L") of college football.
This book provides interesting insights into his personal history and the development of Penn State University, which Paterno literally transformed from a backwater agricultural school into a well-known and successful state school. I doubt any coach in college sports history has been more important to his school's development than Paterno has been to Penn State.
The parts about the actual season are fairly boring, since PSU was horrible the year Fitzpatrick followed them but it is worth picking up if you are a fan of college football history.
|
|
|
|
Other schools are available at CollegeFans.com | |
