nicholasgrantgarcia's review
3.0
It’s inspiring that these two washed up walk-ons thought they could write an interesting book about the 2020 Notre Dame Fighting Irish football team, and actually got it published. But, like that very team, they fell short of championship-level play, and even bowl-win-level play.
While at times very interesting, like when they highlighted changes due to COVID, media coverage, team meetings, and the intricacies of signal-calling, as well as irrational and contradictory COVID policies, it was, at other times, interminably dry. To quote “13 Going on 30”, starting the inimitable Jennifer Garner, “no one needs a play-by-play.” They included one, of every game. You can use the ESPN app for that content. It’s much more fascinating to get a behind-the-scenes look at the team, which, to their credit, they did offer from time to time. It just needed to be more often.
Halfway through the book, I found myself skimming the recaps. These authors should read “The Breaks of the Game”, “Instant Replay”, and Mark Titus’s “Don’t Put Me In, Coach” to get a better grasp of how to portray a season. Play-by-plays are few, and intriguing stories about people and their interactions are much more common. For instance, the story the authors shared about Salerno burning a starter at practice was great. More of that was necessary. These authors threw a few of those in, but they were still lacking.
It wasn’t really a coherent story, it was much more of a general summary of the season. That’s well and good, since it’s one of the only summaries of the 2020 college football season available, but it still made it very boring at times.
Finally, I left the book not really knowing much about the authors, their histories, their hopes and dreams, or their lives. It felt like they kept the reader at arm’s length, making the story ultimately forgettable. This is a decent book, but it could’ve been so much better.
While at times very interesting, like when they highlighted changes due to COVID, media coverage, team meetings, and the intricacies of signal-calling, as well as irrational and contradictory COVID policies, it was, at other times, interminably dry. To quote “13 Going on 30”, starting the inimitable Jennifer Garner, “no one needs a play-by-play.” They included one, of every game. You can use the ESPN app for that content. It’s much more fascinating to get a behind-the-scenes look at the team, which, to their credit, they did offer from time to time. It just needed to be more often.
Halfway through the book, I found myself skimming the recaps. These authors should read “The Breaks of the Game”, “Instant Replay”, and Mark Titus’s “Don’t Put Me In, Coach” to get a better grasp of how to portray a season. Play-by-plays are few, and intriguing stories about people and their interactions are much more common. For instance, the story the authors shared about Salerno burning a starter at practice was great. More of that was necessary. These authors threw a few of those in, but they were still lacking.
It wasn’t really a coherent story, it was much more of a general summary of the season. That’s well and good, since it’s one of the only summaries of the 2020 college football season available, but it still made it very boring at times.
Finally, I left the book not really knowing much about the authors, their histories, their hopes and dreams, or their lives. It felt like they kept the reader at arm’s length, making the story ultimately forgettable. This is a decent book, but it could’ve been so much better.
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