captures one of the league's biggest years. Schultz begins by talking about the old NFL-AFL rivalry, the history of both league's leading up to the merger and how an intense feeling of dislike helped to build intrigue week in and week out. This section is expansive, going back into the NFL's rise in the 1950s and the AFL's sudden jolt in the 1960s. Its amazing to think that despite the NFL's grasp as the more venerable league, the AFL was able to take two of the four super bowls played at the end of the decade. Its largely due to the inventiveness many AFL teams were willing to commit to, such as favoring a more open passing game and more soccer style kickers.
As he starts exploring the season, each team gets at least a little attention, spotlighted in a weekly game that gets broken down for how it unfolded in a chapter. Injuries leading up to it, quotes from players and coaches and storylines that made the game intriguing. The team's remaining season is expounded upon, and the author includes some more future information for teams that did not make the playoffs in the 1970 season. Some of the highlights were the recaps of Georga Blanda's miracle come backs, Tom Dempsey's record shattering field goal to beat the Lions, and Paul Brown's eventual revenge against his namesake team, the Cleveland Browns. This section is nice, but I would have liked a little more for each game. The future information was nice because it did help describe how 1970 was a high or low point for many of the league's teams.
The book then moves to a brief recap of each playoff game leading up to the Colts and Cowboys meeting in Super Bowl 5. The way Schulta describes the lead up to the game is great. Both teams are trying to shake off ghosts of their past failures, and they're acutely aware of it. The Colts needed redemption for Super Bowl 3, while the Cowboys had come to be known as "Next Year's Team". The game though was a massive let down, with many writers lamenting the lack of AFL-NFL rivalry heat going in, and neither team having played very well through the playoffs. The game did turn out to be a dud, which would have major implications for the future for the league and many of the players involved.
Schultz ends the book with some thoughts on how the 1970 season affected the league going forward. Fresh in the minds of league officials was the mess that was Super Bowl 5, which lead to a lot of rule changes to help offenses move from the simple ground games that had dominated for so long. 1970 had started with a labor dispute, which Schultz pointed out set the stage for players to continue to win more concessions from owners in future years. Broadcasting took a big step forward in 1970 with Monday Night Football starting to hit a stride, and it continues into this day.
The book is good, but its fairly short. I enjoyed it overall, but would have loved to have some more emat for each game and get some more player interviews and insights.
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