The Game that Was by Myron Cope is a 253-page hardcover published first in 1970 by Thomas Y. Crowell Company, New York, this copy published in 1974. The dust jacket is covered in a removable plastic protective sleeve.  The inside flap is price clipped.  The cloth bound hardcover has some minor sun fading along the bottom.  Inside, the pages are clean and the binding is tight.  The condition is good.

Book Summary

Back in the days when the grass was real and the only dome above the field was the sky, there were pro-football players who "played sixty minutes of a game, convinced that to be removed, even because of injury, amounted to personal disgrace."  They frequently went without medical attention and sometimes without a paycheck.  They were the men who established pro football, and theirs was THE GAME THAT WAS.

To capture the flavor and spirit of those heretofore unrecorded yesterdays, Myron Cope spent a year visiting the men who passed, punted, and pummeled their way to football fame in those early days.  Many rare and timeless pictures, including selections from the personal photo albums of these football pioneers, accompany the text.

The players speak for themselves.  We have the gentlemanly phrases of Ed Healey, an "absolutely vicious" player; and the earthy language of Bulldog Turner, the "Raconteur of Cowhouse Creek."  The greats from the 1920s to the beginning of the TV era tell their stories:  Red Grange, who was once the nation's premier football player; Johnny Blood, who picked up his surname from a movie marquee; Old Haugsrud, who bought a football franchise for a dollar and ended up owning a million and a half in stock in the Minnesota Vikings; Don Hutson, the coolest man in the game; Marion Motley and Bill Willis, who broke the color line in pro football. 

These are men who played because they loved the game, and their recollections are rich--funny, poignant, believable, nostalgic--as they recall THE GAME THAT WAS.