Skip to footer

Football 2016: a sideline full of 10 new books

Those who like to huddle over a good football read have quite a roster to choose from this fall.

6. 'After Further Review: My Life, Including the Infamous, Controversial, and Unforgettable Calls That Changed the NFL,’ by Mike Pereira with Rick Jaffe

  • By Ross Atkin

Mike Pereira is perhaps the foremost authority on the whistle-toting, flag-throwing game officials of the National Football League. Having spent 14 years officiating in the league and later serving in the league office, he is so well versed on the rules that he is now the resident rules expert for Fox Sports. In “After Further Review,” Pereira gives in-depth explanations of some of the most controversial plays in NFL history and endorses the high quality of today’s officials. He also provides a behind-the-scenes look at life as an official and an analysis of the evolutionary development of football’s rules. 

Here’s an excerpt from After Further Review:

“The NFL, with the exception of the Vice President of Officiating, Dean Blandino, is not a big fan of officials or officiating in general.

“There it is. I said it. Listen, I don’t like saying it because I love the NFL and loved my time working there. But that’s my belief.

“Why do I think that? Because officiating is perceived as a negative and that reflects poorly on the league. And the 2015 season was a perfect example of that. You will seldom hear anybody talk about how great officiating is and how good it is for the NFL. The fact is that any time an official throws a flag it’s a negative. It’s somebody doing something wrong, and that translates into the league getting complaints.

“It’s certainly not a revenue generator. In a league that puffs its chest about how their goal is to have league revenue increased to $25 billion by 2027, officiating is a negative. It doesn’t bring in a dime.”

6 of 10
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.