📖 Overview
Football: The Complete Factbook by David S. Neft serves as a reference work containing statistics, records, and data from professional football's early history through publication. The book chronicles team histories, player careers, championship games, and season-by-season information.
This compilation includes complete rosters, scores, standings, and individual player statistics organized chronologically and by team. Game summaries and box scores provide details of notable matchups throughout football's development.
The reference material spans both the NFL and rival leagues like the AFL and AAFC, documenting the sport's evolution across multiple professional organizations. Photos and appendices supplement the statistical content.
The book represents an effort to establish a standardized historical record of professional football, filling gaps in documentation from the sport's formative decades. Through data and records, it traces football's transformation from regional entertainment to national institution.
👀 Reviews
There are not enough internet reviews to create a summary of this book. Instead, here is a summary of reviews of David S. Neft's overall work:
Readers consistently highlight Neft's attention to detail and dedication to accuracy in sports statistics. Baseball researchers and historians cite The Sports Encyclopedia: Baseball as their go-to reference before the internet era.
Readers appreciated:
- Comprehensive statistical coverage that filled major gaps in sports documentation
- Clear organization and accessibility of complex data
- Annual updates that maintained relevance
- Cross-referencing capabilities between seasons and players
Common criticisms:
- Small print size making statistics hard to read
- High price points for annual editions
- Some statistical categories omitted to save space
- Physical books became outdated quickly
Limited review data exists online since most works were published pre-internet. On Amazon, The Sports Encyclopedia: Baseball averages 4.6/5 stars across different editions, though with fewer than 50 total reviews. Most reviews emphasize the books' value as reference materials rather than reading material.
One reviewer wrote: "This was the Bible for baseball stats before Baseball-Reference. Every serious fan owned a copy."
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Pro Football Chronicle by Dan Daly and Bob O'Donnell Documents year-by-year developments in professional football with game summaries, player profiles, and statistical records.
The Ultimate Super Bowl Book by Bob McGinn Details the complete history of the Super Bowl with game analyses, player interviews, and comprehensive statistics for each championship game.
Total Football: The Official Encyclopedia of the National Football League by Bob Carroll and Michael Gershman Chronicles every game, player, coach, and franchise in NFL history with statistical data and historical information.
The Football Book by Rob Fleder Presents NFL history through photographs, statistics, and documentation of defining moments from the sport's beginnings to modern times.
Pro Football Chronicle by Dan Daly and Bob O'Donnell Documents year-by-year developments in professional football with game summaries, player profiles, and statistical records.
The Ultimate Super Bowl Book by Bob McGinn Details the complete history of the Super Bowl with game analyses, player interviews, and comprehensive statistics for each championship game.
🤔 Interesting facts
🏈 The book compiles detailed statistics and information about professional football from 1920 to its publication date, making it one of the earliest comprehensive statistical records of the NFL
🏈 Author David S. Neft pioneered the modern sports encyclopedia format, developing new methods for organizing and presenting sports data that are still used today
🏈 The book includes play-by-play accounts of significant games, complete rosters, and individual player statistics that had never before been compiled in one volume
🏈 Neft worked with the Pro Football Hall of Fame while researching the book, helping to verify and establish many early football records
🏈 The compilation process involved interviewing hundreds of former players and coaches, and examining thousands of old newspapers to reconstruct accurate game details from football's early years