Going Long: The Wild Ten-Year Saga of the Renegade American Football League in the Words of Those Who Lived It
by: Jeff Miller

Hardcover. NY, Contemporary Books, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 398 pages. From its inauspicious beginnings through its improbable Super Bowl victories and its ultimate demise, the American Football League had a colorful and sometimes bizarre ten-year history that will not soon be forgotten. Going Long takes you back to that thrilling decade with the men who made the AFL--and who made it great. In this unique oral history, 170 voices come together to tell the unbelievable story of that maverick league, a rollicking tale of eight teams that refused to die.In 1959, the NFL had just a dozen teams, with only two located west of the Mississippi River. For forty years, it had enjoyed total dominance over the gridiron, tackling rival franchises and knocking them out of the game. But a revolution was coming to American football, and it all began with a man named Lamar Hunt, the Texas millionaire who desperately wanted a league of his own. With a team of enthusiastic investors, Hunt fired what he later called "the first cannon shot in what turned out to be the pro football war." It was a war that would rage on for ten rough-and-tumble years.Flavored with wild (and often ribald) anecdotes, inside stories, personal interviews, and never-before-told material, Going Long brings the incredible story of the upstart AFL to life through the words of the players, coaches, owners, and others who lived it--including Joe Namath, Mike Ditka, Bubba Smith, Roger Staubach, Pat Summerall, Curt Gowdy, and many others. Hearkening back to a simpler time in sports, this behind-the-scenes true story reveals the origins of the modern game we know today and how it all began with a fight to the death for professional football supremacy.