Pete Rozelle

On Sept. 14, 2003, mere hours after the defending world champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers hoisted their Super Bowl title banner for a rowdy home opener at Raymond James Stadium, Brad Johnson threw a touchdown pass to Keenan McCardell as time expired to tie an...

To honor Sean Taylor, who was gunned down a year ago in the prime of his football career, his family and the Redskins made an interesting song choice while his highlights played on the video screen before Sunday's game against the Giants. It was "Big...

When it happened, John Mara was sitting in the television broadcast booth, cleaning up some papers and preparing to head down to the locker room after what appeared to be a routine win over the Eagles. He could not believe what he was seeing as the most...

Mum's the word, but you didn't hear it from them. Not from anyone in the National Hockey League, which is enjoying its first year of a don't-ask-we're-not-going-to-tell policy about injuries. Shhhhhh. Don't let anyone know about a "lower body injury,"...

T.R. helps make game safer Theodore Roosevelt loved sports, hunting and the outdoors, but he grew concerned about college football, which bore little resemblance to what the sport looks like today. One newspaper reported that 18 college players died in...

A Few Seconds of Panic A 5-Foot-8, 170-Pound, 43-Year-Old Sportswriter Plays in the NFL Stefan Fatsis Penguin: 340 pp., $25.95 George Plimpton, the longtime editor of the Paris Review, enjoyed a second literary career when he turned Walter Mitty-like...

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell is an interesting sort. He has the polish and charm of the boy commissioner Pete Rozelle but he also knows how to carry the water of team owners like Paul Tagliabue.Goodell was recently at the Chautauqua Institution......

One must be more than just a great coach or player to lay claim to the gridiron throne. To make our list of football titans, a legacy that has shaped and transformed the game we watch each fall is required. Note that the "reigns" do not cover a figure'...

1. Rutgers beat Princeton 6-4 in the first intercollegiate football game on Nov. 6, 1869. The teams had 25 players each. The ball could be advanced only by kicking or batting it with feet, hands or head. 2. The first rules for American football were...

George Halas not only witnessed the dawn of pro football. For 62 years he was pro football. What Halas did was hire Grange and Bronko and Healey, Musso, Bulldog and Atkins, Ditka, Butkus and Sayers, Luckman, Fortmann, Trafton, Payton, Hampton. The...

Perhaps Arch Ward had a prescient understanding of Chicago's appetite for football. Or maybe he was a curious sports fan who wanted to measure the talent differential between college football players, better known and more celebrated at the time, and...

Two weeks after his personal Super Bowl moment -- pulling the NFL back from the brink of a labor meltdown -- Paul Tagliabue has decided to walk away from the game. Tagliabue, the league's commissioner for more than 16 years, announced Monday he plans...