Sunday, January 6, 2019

Review of "Spirals"

Reading this book helped me with a couple of online reading challenges in which I am participating.  It is also going to be posted in a new Facebook group dedicated to books and literature on college football and it even has helped me with a resolution to review books in which I was sent a copy, but never got to read for months.  To top it off, I really enjoyed this book on a family's college football legacy. Here is my review of "Spirals."


Title/Author:
Spirals: A Family’s Education in Football” by Timothy B. Spears
Tags:
Football (American), college, family, Dartmouth, Minnesota, Yale, memoir
Publish date:
October 1, 2018
Length:
184 pages
Rating: 
5 of 5 stars (outstanding)
Review:
It is very common for the love of a sport, whether as a player or as a spectator, to be passed down from generation to generation. The Spears family is no different as three generations of Spears men played college football.  The eldest, Clarence “Doc” Spears, was a guard for Dartmouth and also became a Hall of Fame college coach, most notably at the University of Minnesota where he was the first college coach of the legendary player Bronko Nagurski.  Then Doc’s son Bob was the captain of the Yale football team in the 1950’s and grandson Timothy would also play for Yale, as an offensive guard in the 1970’s. Timothy went into academics after Yale and he shares his family’s football legacy in this excellent book.
Doc Spears’ story is certainly the most colorful of the three as his legacy as coach at Minnesota, while impressive on the field, is also clouded by his controversies off the field, especially his clashes with the university president. This led to him taking the same position at a rival school, Wisconsin.  However, as he does with his father and himself, Timothy Spears writes about much more than just the football careers of the three Spears men. For each man, their family bonds and their academics are just as important and these passages will bring out the most emotional response from a reader.
This is best illustrated when each of them is in college. For Timothy, his reflections on his life on campus but away from football is both humorous and touching.  His description of the times he would smoke marijuana made me laugh, but then I felt bad for him when his parents confronted him on it.  Bob’s injuries during his football career at Yale, plus his own health issues (the book begins with the death of Timothy’s mother and his dad’s dementia when trying to process it) make for some of the more heart-tugging moments. Then, of course, there is Doc – his presence in the book feels very royal, like we are reading about a monarch or a king.  His story was my favorite of the three.
Timothy writes that he didn’t want to just write about himself, his father and his grandfather in chronological order because the reader would then miss out on seeing how the generations intertwine and truly received their educations through football as well as in the classroom and on other parts of the campus. He accomplishes this as the reader will learn much about what it truly means to be either a COLLEGE football coach (in the case of Doc) or to be a true student-athlete, in the cases of Bob and Timothy.  This is a terrific book for any college football fan, especially as it covers multiple eras of the game.
I wish to thank University of Nebraska Press for providing a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.
Book Format Read:
Hardcover
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