Instant Replay

Reviews

“This was the book that started it all—for athletes telling their stories, for sportswriters going in depth, for great athletic tales being bound between the covers. Dick Schaap’s classic is timeless. Required reading for anyone who loves sports or sportswriting.”

“In my life as a writer and reader, there are only a few books that I’ve read over and over again for the sheer pleasure of the experience. Jerry Kramer’s Instant Replay is the only sports book among them. I loved it when I was a teenager, and I love it still today.”

“An unprecedented look into the gritty world of professional football…Still the gold standard of sports biographies.”

“The best behind-the-scenes glimpse of pro football ever produced.”

“An honest, hilarious, and insightful diary, with Lombardi alternately serving as the hero and the villain, the lovable leader and the soul-crushing ogre.”

“A classic for its insights into the game and its people, [written] with wit and without scandal or obscenity…A landmark work.”

“This seminal, as-told-to diary…changed the way sports readers expected their heroes to sound. No more of this Grantland Rice purple prose. Schaap gave us the tough jock sounding like a real—and witty and introspective and profane—human being.”

“Groundbreaking…Candid…An uncommonly frank account.”

“[Kramer is] observant, honest, sensitive, and a bone-crusher at right guard.”

“The gold standard for football memoirs…This modern sports classic is a smart, funny and literate diary of the Packers’ successful quest to become the first team to win back-to-back Super Bowl victories.”

“The first great professional sports diary.”

“A no-holds-barred diary…One really gets a sense of the physical, mental, and emotional agonies players can go through in a season.”

“The ultimate football diary…Detailed and dramatic…Kramer’s description of his decisive block against Jethro Pugh at the goal line in the waning seconds [of the Ice Bowl]…is as fresh and raw as the minus-fifteen-degree weather at kickoff.”

“Kramer detailed the 1967 championship season in an understated, respectful tone but showed a keen eye for details the fan would never glimpse.”

“Daring stuff for its time, revealing how athletes really act, talk, and think back when such candor was taboo.”

“A must read…An insightful look at the sometimes-maddening methods of Lombardi and the love-hate relationship the players had with the legendary coach.”

“One of the great sports books of all time.”

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