Review: Every Day is Sunday (2025)

By Ken Belson

The on-field world of the National Football League can be engrossing and addicting. It's designed, at least, in theory, to be unpredictable in its results - making the five-month season something of a thrill ride for followers. That's why stadiums are sold out, and why the list of the most popular television broadcasts in a given year are absolutely dominated by NFL games. 

Even so, the off-the-field activities can be fascinating as well - maybe not quite as fascinating as the games, but they have a huge impact on America's favorite sport. The NFL is all about growing the game, which translates to growing the profits for the owners. To be fair, the players also get a share of that money, so they usually aren't upset when revenues go up either. There's plenty of cash to go around. 

The New York Times decided some years ago that the league itself and its dealings were worth covering on their own. Ken Belson picked up that assignment, and he's been on the job since then. It's not like he's had much down time during that span. What's more, he's been taking notes and writing stories about what has gone on over the years. 

Now he's emptied the notebook and dusted off the files in order to write a book on those years, "Every Day is Sunday." It's a solid look back at what's been going on in that span and beyond. 

The stars of the show are three different men. One, naturally, is the Commissioner. Roger Goodell by most standards has been effective in that role. He knows that his major goal is to keep the owners' accountants happy, and by all accounts he has done that. The value of NFL franchises has grown tremendously in recent years. Owners were never exactly candidates for financial aid, but lately only the super-super rich needed to apply to join the NFL club as entry fees (the cost of buying the team) has flown past $1 billion and into the mid-10 figures range. We might not be far from going into 11-figures ($10 billion) in the relatively near future. 

There's some good background information here on Goodell, who never has been a particularly warm and fuzzy public figure. There have been some slips along the way, but they haven't forced the league to change course very often. It's good to read something about Goodell's personal story and his overall philosophy regarding the job. 

Coming in just behind Goodell in terms of importance to the book are two owners: Jerry Jones and Bob Kraft. They take different approaches but are still the Biggest Dogs in a room full of them at owners' meetings. The personalities, however, are different. Jones is something of a rebel, always taking care to put the Dallas Cowboys first on his agenda - even if it may not go over well with his partners. Meanwhile, Kraft is more conciliatory. He often tries to bring parties together in the best interest of everyone. That can be thankless, but he's done it well. Both men are in the 80s, and both men have maintained their leadership spots for quite a while. 

Colson dedicates a chapter to most of the big issues that have come up over the years, even going back in time. For example, the NFL's jump to Fox Sports in the 1990s had a seismic effect on the broadcasting landscape, and not just in sports. It proved to be a huge move for Fox as it tried (and succeeded) in becoming the fourth major broadcast network. There are stories about franchise moves, poor player behavior, collective bargaining, the Colin Kaepernick saga (which affected free speech standards and team/player relations), and the continued rise of the Super Bowl as a quasi-national holiday. That's a good list by anyone's standards. 

Closer to home here in Buffalo, it was with some interest that there were a couple of references to Buffalo Bills' owner Terry Pegula along the way. It's interesting to see how Pegula has leaned on Jones for advice and guidance in several league matters since arriving in the Owners' Club. Pegula's predecessor, Ralph Wilson, didn't get along that well with Jones on policy matters involving the league, so the newcomer has flipped the script. At one point, Colson describes Pegula trying to solve a problem involving the league with a proposal at a meeting which was not only wrong, but almost painfully wrong. Terry has never been a particularly good speaker anyway, and it sounds like Pegula's opinion in league affairs has zero sway with anyone else in the league.

"Every Day is Sunday" may not have any great revelations in it about league affairs. Still, for those who haven't been paying attention to what's been going on with the league between Sundays, this is a good course on that subject. Meanwhile, those who do enjoy coverage of the NFL as a whole will find the behind-the-scenes information passed along at times to be quite interesting. Put those two aspects together, and the result is a worthwhile read for most football fans. 

Four stars

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Review: MISL 1980s

By Tim O'Bryhim

The Major Indoor Soccer League and I go way back. 

The Buffalo Stallions of the MISL were formed in 1979. The Buffalo Braves of the NBA had moved to San Diego the previous year, and there was an opening for another sports team to fill some dates in Memorial Auditorium. I had the chance to cover those games right from Day One, and it was a fun five years. I was even involved in the radio broadcasts of the home games for a couple of years. 

Sadly, things fell apart in a relatively short period of time, and the Stallions folded in 1984. It was nice while it lasted. I soon discovered that it's difficult to follow an indoor soccer team when your city doesn't have a franchise, although I kept an eye on the progress of the league as best I could. The MISL hung on in various forms until 1992.

It was with some degree of interest, then, that a suggested book from Amazon.com was something called "MISL 1980s." OK, I was in for that. Now after reading it, I have mixed emotions about it, starting with the idea that it's nice that someone still feels attached enough to the league to self-publish a book about it. 

O'Bryhim had written a book on the Wichita Wings, and also produced a documentary on that team. Having once written a book on the Braves, I know first-hand that such books about defunct teams from decades ago is more of a labor of love than an attempt to earn tons of money. 

Now comes a book from O'bryhim that's a little different than the first one, but there are some similarities. It's a collection of articles about the league in no particular order or format. That's means a particular article is going to be hit or miss in most cases.

For starters, the book is rather Wichita Wings-centric at times. There's not going to be too much drama three. The Wings were remarkably consistent over the years - but they were consistently mediocre. Wichita qualified for the playoffs in 11 of its 13 seasons, and never won a series. (By the way, the Wings moved over to the National Professional Soccer League after the MISL folded ... and went 0 for 8 in the playoffs there.) 

There are articles of various lengths that contain long interviews with players and coaches, and reviews of events in league history. The problem here is that the stories covers a lot of names and games that simply aren't going to be recognized by even casual fans of the league. It's not easy to make games from the 1980s interesting to an audience in the 2020s. I found myself skimming through some of the material. 

My favorite chapter in the book probably was "The Death of the MISL: A Postmortem." Several people, from fans to owners, chip in with thoughts on why the league didn't fully catch on and last longer. It's impressive how many different reasons come up - to playing at the wrong time of the year, to a union that asked for too much, to the rise of outdoor soccer and the growth of the NBA and NHL, to bad ownership, and to the lack of a national television contract. To some degree, all of those points have some truth to them. 

"MISL 1980s" is a book written by and for enthusiasts for indoor soccer, and their analysis sometimes is over the top. A good history of the league still might be fun to write, and it wouldn't have to be 20 volumes as O'Bryhim writes in this book. This isn't it, but it still might strike a chord with the good people of Wichita who are still keeping the faith in the Wings all these years later. 

Three stars

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Review: Fight Night 1939

By Joseph Monninger

Count me as among the relatively few around today who not only know something about Tony Galento, but had the chance to meet him. 

"Two-Ton Tony" (more on that in a moment) popped up a sports banquet in Elmira, New York, on a winter night in the late 1960s. As I recall, he told a few stories and signed a few autographs - in other words, a night of relatively easy money. I think I got his autograph that night. Galento came with his calling card - he was one of the few boxers who knocked Joe Louis down during Joe's championship run. Unhappily for Tony, Joe got off the canvas rather quickly and dispatched the challenger in short order.While continued excellence in anything is preferred, a one-time flash of greatness can last a lifetime in the right setting. 

It also can produce a book, which is in turn can be quite entertaining if the subject has a good backstory. "Fight Night 1939" is that book, and author Joseph Monninger has come up with an fun if relatively brief look at Galento and his brief brush with immortality. 

Galento was the son of immigrants and grew up in Orange, New Jersey. He dropped out of school at a young age, and picked up some odd jobs in his teens. The small but wide young man had more than his share of fights and brawls along the way, and he was pretty good at it. Tony also had a variety of jobs at that time, including one as an iceman. One time, after he started boxing, he was a little late for a bout. When asked why, he said he had two more tons of ice to deliver before he could leave. Thus, "Two Ton Tony" was born - although he wasn't exactly slim either. 

Galento wasn't stylish when he was in the ring. In other words, he was no Sugar Ray Robinson. Some of his fights degraded into wrestling matches at best and brawls at worst. But Tony could throw a punch and he could take a punch, and that made him a contender in the heavyweight condition. A 10-match winning streak earned him a shot at Louis, who remains one of the great champions in the sport's history and who was at the peak of his powers in 1939. Galento was a clear underdog, but one rule in boxing is that someone who can hit an opponent hard has a "punchers' chance" of winning against anyone.

Galento surprised everyone by staggering Louis with a punch in the first round, which led to him winning the road on the officials' scoring cards. If the population of Orange was thrilled by that development, it was ecstatic when Galento tagged Louis with a sharp left hook that sent the champ to the floor. There was barely enough time to consider the possibilities before Louis got up. By the fourth round, Galento was out of gas and the fight was stopped in favor of Louis. But the champ knew he had been in a fight, and the challenger had made a name for himself.  

Galento fought a while longer, losing to a couple of contenders, before World War II essentially ended his career. He kept his bar in Orange, did some wrestling and a little movie work (Hollywood always like a tough guy), and certainly told a million people about how he knocked Louis down. Tony died in 1979. 

Most of the book serves as a biography about Galento, which leaves Louis in the rare position (for him) or playing the role of a supporting character. And that's OK; there are other places to go to read about Louis and his impact on America - which was enormous.  

The book has a couple of areas that feel a little bit odd. Monninger didn't have a great deal of available research material, since Galento died in 1979. There are several moments when it felt like the author was expanding his descriptions of scenes in order to fill out the manuscript. At least he's a good enough writer to pull it off reasonably effectively.   

Meanwhile, the book was first published in 2006 under a different title. It's hard to know from a distance prompted the re-release of a book that came out 19 years ago. I missed that one, but at least I'm caught up on the story now.  

There don't seem to be many characters like Galento out there these days, and that's too bad. "Fight Night 1939" fills us in on Two Ton's story, and reading it is a pleasant way to find out about an interesting character from boxing's past.

Four stars

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Review: A Big Mess in Texas (2025)

By David Fleming

The sports book business seems specialized enough on its own, but there could be a subclass that could describe a particular type of literary effort. 

Let's call it, "Defunct Teams and Leagues."

While many sports books concentrate on success stories, and deservedly so, some cover the spots on the sports landscape where almost everything went wrong. It's particularly true for start-ups teams and leagues which is a reading exercise in "What were they thinking?" Such books have a serious side, naturally, since we're talking about events that affected people's lives. But they have the extra benefit of often bringing laughs to the table. 

That all brings us to "A Big Mess in Texas," by David Fleming. 

Hardly anyone remembers when the National Football League wasn't on particularly solid financial ground. It started in 1920, and ran through teams like tissues for several years. You'd think that the NFL would have been poised for success by 1950, when the league merged with its major rival, the All-American Football Conference. But even so, only a few teams were earning a profit, and most were hanging on. Pro football still took a back seat to the college game in terms of interest, and revenues weren't keeping up with expenses - and wouldn't until television entered the, um, picture.  

In 1951, a football team called the New York Yankees (no relation) was struggling in a major way in the NFL. It had lost a huge amount of money by the standards of the day, and competing with the New York Giants had become a bad idea. It was time for the franchise to go elsewhere. Anywhere. 

And Dallas was pretty much anywhere at the time. Texas certainly loved football, but mostly in the form of high school and college football. The pros hadn't even tried to put a team there yet. But Giles Miller, the son of a wealthy Dallas businessman who never saw a long-shot financial chance he couldn't bet on, decided to take a chance on it. He was so confident, in fact, that he agreed to be responsible for the Yankees' leftover debt from 1951 - which got the franchise off to a flying standstill. 

Everyone tried hard, but there were too many obstacles. Fleming does some of his best work in describing the racial situation in Dallas, which was not pretty at the time. The new Dallas Texans had three African-American players on the roster, and Miller had plans of having integrated seating in the Cotton Bowl for games. But the powers that be wouldn't let the races sit near each other, generating substantial anger among both whites - who wanted no part of integration - and blacks - who wanted no part of sitting in the worst seats while sections of the stadium went unused. It's not exactly a formula for success. Dallas wasn't quite ready for the NFL, although the Texans probably knocked down a few walls that helped pave the way for the arrival of the Dallas Cowboys in 1960.

(Just to confuse things a little more, 1960 also was the year that the American Football League was formed, and a team in Texas debuted as ... the Dallas Texans. That team couldn't compete with the Cowboys and eventually moved to Kansas City.) 

The original Texans started slowly and then got worse. Attendance was never good and quickly faded to virtually nothing. Before the season, ownership essentially gave up and handed the franchise back to the league, which had it finish the season by playing road games and paid its bills. The Texans finished 1-11, with the win coming over a Chicago team that didn't even bother to play its starters until late in the game. Coach George Halas of the Bears was a little too overconfident about that one. Eventually, NFL commissioner Bert Bell convinced Carroll Rosenbloom to take over the team and move it to Baltimore, where it thrived for quite a while.

But there's still a bit of a legacy here, as the Texans had more talent on the field than off it. Gino Marchetti found a home in Baltimore and became a legend. Art Donovan not only had Hall of Fame talent, joining Marchetti in Canton, but he also was a world-class party animal. Quite a few of the laughs in this book are provided by Donovan, and deservedly so. Running back Buddy Young, an African-American, was simply beloved by teammates and fans wherever he went. George Taliaferro is recognized as one of the Black pioneers of the sport, and went on to a life that earned him a statue by the stadium at Indiana University. There are several other connections to the Texans involving football standouts (on and off the field) that are pointed out here, thanks to some fine research. Therefore, it's easy to keep an interest in the material here, particularly if you enjoy reading about football history. 

Admittedly, not everyone qualifies for that last classification. Some gray hair might be needed to appreciate what happened in some cases. Even so, "A Big Mess in Texas" nicely paints a picture of the last NFL team go go under financially. It doesn't take very long to go through it, and there are plenty of interesting moments to push the reader along. Fleming did good work here.

Four stars

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Review: Brady vs. Belichick (2025)

By Gary Myers

A long, long time ago ... the Beatles and the Rolling Stones came across the Atlantic in search of fame and fortune. What's more, they succeeded by any standard. Most music fans enjoyed both bands, while some of them picked a side if asked who they preferred. 

Naturally, there was a way for outsiders to cash in on the argument. The odd magazine popped up on the newsstand entitled "Beatles vs. Rolling Stones." That sounds like there was a big competition between them, which would be an overstatement, even if such publications were an excuse for young fans to cut photographs out and paste them on scrapbooks 

Such magazines came to mind when I saw the title of a football book, "Brady vs. Belichick," and the discussion is still light-hearted but a bit more serious than the musical version 60 years ago. In 20 seasons, the New England Patriots won six NFL championships, played in nine Super Bowls and 13 AFC championship games, and won 17 division titles. That's the greatest run in league history, and there were two major common denominators in that stretch: Quarterback Tom Brady and head coach Bill Belichick. (Owner Bob Kraft also was involved, naturally, but had less direct involvement in the fate of the team on the field.)

But which one deserves the lion's share of the credit for the dynasty? That's the task veteran football writer Gary Myers takes on with this book, which is a rather thankless job. After all, both Brady and Belichick are at worst in the discussion as the greatest person to work at their respective occupations.

To review the situation, Myers essentially writes something of an informal history of the dynasty, jumping through specific episodes of the Patriots' past. With two decades to cover, there's plenty of material available to review.

On the good side, it's been five years since Brady fled to Tampa Bay and ended the relationship with the Patriots. (Tom spent three years with the Bucs before retiring, winning one more Super Bowl along the way.) That means some football people are more open about expressing opinions. Myers talked to some former players, opponents, coaches, etc. in his research. That means there are some good stories and opinions that come out now that are "safe" to discuss. 

Belichick comes off with single-minded devotion toward making the team better each and every day he was the coach. He didn't exactly spare his feelings along the way, often criticizing everyone from Brady all the way to the last man on the roster. It doesn't sound like anyone was too anxious to come to work, even if they liked the end result. It's easy to think of a comment made about Scotty Bowman, who coached the dynastic Montreal Canadiens teams of the 1970s. It was said that the players hated Bowman on 364 days of the year, and liked him after they won the Stanley Cup. 

Brady, meanwhile, was smart enough to realize that he needed to be one of the boys in the locker room no matter how wealthy and famous he became. Brady probably left millions of dollars on the table in his contracts in an attempt to try to have a better team around him. He also won over the offensive lineman by showing respect for their efforts and never thinking he wasn't "one of the boys" at heart. 

Myers winds his way through tales of the dynasty in a leisurely way, jumping around a bit in the process. Perhaps the biggest problem with the book is that the premise expressed in the title is unanswerable. Basketball coach John Wooden once summed up his thoughts on such as things by saying, "No coach can win without talent, but some coaches can't win with it." In other words, it takes coaches and players working together in order to have a chance at something special. The answer to the "Brady or Belichick" question - who was more responsible - depends more on your orientation than anything else, and we know that from page one. I would guess this won't change many minds, either way.  

The Patriots' great run hasn't exactly been underreported over the years, and you can be excused for being a little wary of the subject at the point and not needed to know more. But fans of those teams probably have an insatiable appetite for information and stories about the era, and they'll enjoy the insights offered in  "Brady vs. Belichick"  

Three stars

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