Clouds over the Goalpost
Gambling, Assassination, and the NFL in 1963
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Narrated by:
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Noah Michael Levine
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By:
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Lew Freedman
About this listen
A season that the NFL would never forget.The pro football season of 1963 was dominated by the unexpected. In April, months prior to the beginning of play, it was revealed that two All-Star players, Paul Hornung and Alex Karras, were gambling on the sport and would be suspended from play for at least a year. Even worse, in May, one of the league’s bigger-than-life personalities, Big Daddy Lipscomb, was found dead, with police saying he perished from a heroin overdose, something those who knew him best still dispute.
As play began in September, the Pro Football Hall of Fame opened its doors in Canton, Ohio, the same town where the National Football League was founded in 1921 and inducted its first class. Also, the war for players and prestige raged with the upstart American Football League trying to obtain equal footing in the public eye.
On the field, it was to be the year the Chicago Bears, and their aging owner-coach George Halas knew glory once more, fighting off the latest dynasty of Green Bay Packers led by Vince Lombardi in a season-long chase for the Western Division title. Yet even that was overshadowed by the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. While the nation mourned and other sports leagues suspended activity, the NFL played on with its regular season that sad weekend - a choice commissioner Pete Rozelle later called the worst mistake of his tenure.
Clouds over the Goalpost is filled with controversy not only on the field, but off it as well. From the various suspensions to an exciting championship game between the Bears and Giants, 1963 was a year that the NFL would never forget - for both the good and the bad.
©2013 Lew Freedman (P)2013 Audible Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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As author Lew Freedman tells it, 1963 was a year that saw the good, the bad, and the ugly in professional football. In fact, some might say the good (an exhilarating championship game between the Bears and Giants, the opening of the Pro Football Hall of Fame) was overshadowed by the bad and the ugly, which included star players banned for gambling, the mysterious death of beloved player Big Daddy Lipscomb, and of course the assassination of JFK. Drawing on source material and interviews with players, veteran sportswriter Lew Freedman delves deep into the background of each story from this remarkable year, while Noah Michael Levine's smooth, rich voice is well suited to the dramatic, detailed tales he offers up.
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12 is the propulsive story of this gritty comeback. It's a drama that unfolds in the locker room, the court room, and under the brightest lights in all of sports - the Super Bowl. Now for the first time, listeners will have an exclusive look into Tom Brady's experience and the NFL's shocking strangle-hold on their players. With unprecedented access to Brady himself, his teammates, and his lawyers, we will see just how a football legend went up against one of the largest corporations in the world to stage the greatest comeback in NFL history and emerge a god of the gridiron.
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He didn't do it
- By Rigid on 08-03-18
By: Casey Sherman, and others
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Saban
- The Making of a Coach
- By: Monte Burke
- Narrated by: Barry Abrams
- Length: 12 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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As the head coach of the University of Alabama's football team, Nick Saban is perhaps the most influential - and controversial - man in the sport. Unpredictable in his professional loyalties, uncompromising in his vision, and unyielding in his pursuit of perfection, the highest-paid coach in college football has changed the face of the game. His program-building vision has delivered packed stadiums, rabid fans, legions of detractors, countless NFL draft picks, and a total of four championships.
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Narrator is awful.
- By kenneth on 08-12-15
By: Monte Burke
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Ten-Gallon War
- The NFL's Cowboys, The AFL's Texans, and The Feud for Dallas' Pro Football Future
- By: John Eisenberg
- Narrated by: Jim Vann
- Length: 10 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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In the 1960s, on the heels of the “Greatest Game Ever Played”, professional football began to flourish across the country - except in Texas, where college football was still the only game in town. But in an unlikely series of events, two young oil tycoons started their own professional football franchises in Dallas the very same year: the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys, and, as part of a new upstart league designed to thwart the NFL’s hold on the game, the Dallas Texans of the AFL. Almost overnight, a bitter feud was born.
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Magnamonious?
- By steve finkelstein on 03-01-21
By: John Eisenberg
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War Room
- The Legacy of Bill Belichick and the Art of Building the Perfect Team
- By: Michael Holley
- Narrated by: Mirron Willis
- Length: 12 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Bill Belichick is one of the titans of today's game of football. Now, sports commentator and best-selling author Michael Holley follows three NFL teams - the New England Patriots, Kansas City Chiefs, and Atlanta Falcons - from training camp 2010 through the Super Bowl and into the April draft, opening a new window into Belichick's influence on the game. This one-of-a-kind exploration takes football fans behind the scenes of the most popular sport in America, with unprecedented insider access to the head coaches, scouts, trainers, and players.
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Narrator choice - HUH?
- By Ryan Mullaney on 03-25-18
By: Michael Holley
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The Best Game Ever
- Giants vs. Colts, 1958, and the Birth of the Modern NFL
- By: Mark Bowden
- Narrated by: Phil Gigante
- Length: 6 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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On December 28, 1958, the New York Giants and Baltimore Colts met under the lights of Yankee Stadium for that season's NFL Championship game. Football was still greatly over-shadowed by the country's favored pastime - baseball - but the 1958 championship proved to be the turning point for pro football.
On the field and roaming the sidelines were 17 future Hall of Famers, including Colts stars Johnny Unitas, Raymond Berry, and Gino Marchetti, and Giants greats Frank Gifford, Sam Huff, and assistant coaches Vince Lombardi and Tom Landry.
The Best Game Ever is a brilliant portrait of how a single game changed the history of American sports.
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What about the other team?
- By Smalls on 11-29-08
By: Mark Bowden
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Play by Play
- Calling the Wildest Games in Sports - From SEC Football to College Basketball, the Masters and More
- By: Verne Lundquist
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner, Verne Lundquist
- Length: 11 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Verne Lundquist's remarkable broadcasting career has placed him at the center of major sporting events in America for more than 50 years, from Jack Nicklaus' final victory at the 1986 Masters to Tonya Harding's attack on Nancy Kerrigan at the 1994 Olympics to the Auburn-Alabama shocker of 2013. In his first memoir, he replays highlights from his career, taking sports fans behind the scenes of some of the most dramatic moments in modern sports history.
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Decent Sorry, Bit Boring
- By Allena on 08-20-24
By: Verne Lundquist
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The Yucks
- Two Years in Tampa with the Losingest Team in NFL History
- By: Jason Vuic
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 7 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Long before their first Super Bowl victory in 2003, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers did something no NFL team had ever done before and that none will ever likely do again: They lost 26 games in a row. It started in 1976, in their first season as an expansion team, and it lasted until the penultimate game of the 1977 season, when they defeated Archie Manning and the New Orleans Saints on the road. It was the beginning of a new streak for a team that had come to be called "The Yucks".
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Fun Listen
- By Dan Junevicus on 08-10-24
By: Jason Vuic
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When the Game Stands Tall
- The Story of the De La Salle Spartans and Football's Longest Winning Streak
- By: Neil Hayes
- Narrated by: J. P. Linton
- Length: 14 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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By 2002, The Streak - a historic 13-year run of consecutive wins by the Spartans, a high-school football team from Concord, California, that couldn't be beat - was still going strong. In this revised edition of When the Game Stands Tall, author Neil Hayes, who had unrestricted access to the De La Salle team, writes from the inside about the games, the players, and their visionary coach, Bob Ladouceur, who managed to amass the highest winning percentage in football history (.995) through standing for something greater than winning.
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Great story and message but PAINFULLY detailed
- By AudioAddict on 03-21-15
By: Neil Hayes
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Pistol
- The Life of Pete Maravich
- By: Mark Kriegel
- Narrated by: Lloyd James
- Length: 12 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Pistol is more than the biography of a ballplayer. It's the stuff of classic novels: the story of a boy transformed by his father's dream and the cost of that dream. Even as Pete Maravich became Pistol Pete, a basketball icon for baby boomers, all the Maraviches paid a price. Now acclaimed author Mark Kriegel has brilliantly captured the saga of an American family: its rise, its apparent ruin, and, finally, its redemption.
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Extremely Good!
- By steve on 12-12-12
By: Mark Kriegel
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The Perfect Pass
- American Genius and the Reinvention of Football
- By: S. C. Gwynne
- Narrated by: Santino Fontana
- Length: 8 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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New York Times best-selling, award-winning historian S. C. Gwynne tells the incredible story of how Hal Mumme and Mike Leach - two unknown coaches who revolutionized American football in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s - changed the way the game is played at every level, from high school to the NFL. Hal Mumme is one of a handful of authentic offensive geniuses in the history of American football. In 2015 ESPN Magazine, the nation's leading sports magazine, called him the single most influential football coach in the last quarter century.
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The Perfect Pass
- By Little Pecan on 09-29-16
By: S. C. Gwynne
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Boys Will Be Boys
- The Glory Days and Party Nights of the Dallas Cowboys Dynasty
- By: Jeff Pearlman
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 13 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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They were America's Team - the high-priced, high-glamour, high-flying Dallas Cowboys of the 1990s, who won three Super Bowls and made as many headlines off the field as on it. Led by Emmitt Smith, the charismatic Deion "Prime Time" Sanders, and Hall of Famers Troy Aikman and Michael Irvin, the Cowboys rank among the greatest of all NFL dynasties.
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This is a football book right?
- By Aaron on 12-07-09
By: Jeff Pearlman
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That First Season
- How Vince Lombardi Took the Worst Team in the NFL and Set It on the Path to Glory
- By: John Eisenberg
- Narrated by: Pat Young
- Length: 10 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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John Eisenberg's That First Season is the seldom-studied prequel to a phenomenal football career for Vince Lombardi and the Packers, drawing on exhaustive new research and interviews to tell an incredible ensemble tale of a team, a town, and their leader. The once-vaunted Green Bay Packers were a laughingstock by the late 1950s. They hadn't fielded a winning team in more than a decade and were close to losing their franchise to another city. They were in desperate need of a savior, and he arrived in a wood-paneled station wagon in the dead of winter from New York City.
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Narrator should refund his fee
- By Brian W. Barton on 08-20-18
By: John Eisenberg
What listeners say about Clouds over the Goalpost
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- S. Ryan
- 03-07-22
Excellent story
While the writer did a spectacular job the narrator should have spent a little time looking up correct pronunciation for some of the names like Hornung, Savannah and others.
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- Dennis
- 03-16-22
check out this book
this book was a good read but it was sad one having a lot of tissues ready when you listen or read
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- Jason
- 11-13-23
Decent Book about the NFL in 1963
This book reviews the year 1963 in the NFL. It gives a decent account t of the highlights of the season. It is a pretty good book. I would recommend it if you are interested in the NFL during this time period.
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- Daniel Braden
- 05-04-17
Great content, Terrible Narrator
Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?
I would love to recommend this book but the narrators inability to property pronounce a majority of the main character's names is insulting to the audience. For anyone who is even remotely familiar with sports or the NFL this should never be an issue. The author/publisher must have found one of the few people who cannot properly pronounce Paul Hornung's name. It is so distracting from the storyline that it is nearly impossible to enjoy the content of the book. I understand audiobooks are a newer technology but it is insanity how not one person caught this throughout what I'm guessing is multiple steps in the audio process before this is release.
What was one of the most memorable moments of Clouds over the Goalpost?
The narrators inability to properly pronounce multiple names.
What didn’t you like about Noah Michael Levine’s performance?
He has clearly never followed, researched, inquired, prepared for his job in pronouncing names of relatively famous athletes. For someone who's job it is to properly read/pronounce names/places/things this should be the first thing Noah should prepare for. Also, a terrible job by any editor to not stop Noah and give him the proper pronunciation of multiple names.
Could you see Clouds over the Goalpost being made into a movie or a TV series? Who should the stars be?
No
Any additional comments?
If someone is going to produce/narrate a sports book; please get one person who has an ounce of sports background. It is insulting to the readers who have an interest in these items.
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4 people found this helpful
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- speedgolf
- 12-25-20
The narration comes close to ruining the book
Just some of the names mispronounced at times: Hornung, Halas, Lambeau, Baugh. I could almost understand getting the name of a backup running back wrong, but some of the most famous names in football? Another annoyance is how the narrator described a team's record. It' should be 9, 2, and 1-not 9 to 2 to 1.
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3 people found this helpful
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- M. Suppelsa
- 07-06-21
Great subject, writing/narration lacking
First, as a narrator, would you not learn the pronunciation of every person in the book? The horrible mispronunciation of famous, legendary athletes was at first astonishing, then comical.
The writer selected a remarkable subject. Great effort but I found the writing often cliche and silly.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Patrick
- 11-02-15
A story with heart
The reader used a few unusual name pronunciations. The story was really enjoyable and informative, providing much insight into the pro-football mind.
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- Franklin Newman
- 01-10-21
Great Early Football Stories
I really enjoyed the early history of the AFL and NFL and the wild stories of 1963. Well done.
Frank Newman
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- Anonymous User
- 06-15-24
Good story ruined by a narrator who’s never followed football
Loved the story, hated the narrator. Cringed every time he mispronounced a name. Found myself googling names that he was trying to pronounce.
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- Amazon Customer
- 08-11-21
Can we get a reader who can correctly pronounce the names of the people involved?
Couldn’t stomach the mispronunciation of the names by the reader. I tried, but made this book unreadable.
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