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.
In similar fashion to his New York Times bestseller The Bad Guys Won! about the 1986 New York Mets, in Boys Will Be Boys, award-winning writer Jeff Pearlman chronicles the outrageous antics and dazzling talent of a team fueled by ego, sex, drugs-and unrivaled greatness. Rising from the ashes of a 1ndash;15 season in 1989 to capture three Super Bowl trophies in four years, the Dallas Cowboys were guided by a swashbuckling, skirt-chasing, power-hungry owner, Jerry Jones, and his two eccentric, hard-living coaches, Jimmy Johnson and Barry Switzer. Together the three built a juggernaut that America loved and loathed.
But for a team that was so dominant on Sundays, the Cowboys were often a dysfunctional circus the rest of the week. Irvin, nicknamed “The Playmaker,” battled dual addictions to drugs and women. Charles Haley, the defensive colossus, presided over the team’s infamous “White House,” where the parties lasted late into the night and a steady stream of long-legged groupies came and went. And then there were Smith and Sanders, whose Texas-sized egos were eclipsed only by their record-breaking on-field performances.
With an unforgettable cast of characters and a narrative as hard-hitting and fast-paced as the team itself, Boys Will Be Boys immortalizes the most beloved-and despised-dynasty in NFL history.

The United States Football League was the last football league to not merely challenge the mighty NFL but also to cause it to collectively shudder. It spanned three seasons, featured as many as eighteen teams, secured multiple television deals, drew millions of fans, and launched the careers of legends–but then it died beneath the weight of a particularly egotistical and bombastic owner, a New York businessman named Donald Trump. In Football for a Buck, Jeff Pearlman draws on more than four hundred interviews to unearth all the salty, untold stories of one of the craziest sports entities to have ever captivated America. From 1980s drug excess to some of the most enthralling and revolutionary football ever seen, Pearlman transports listeners back in time to this crazy, boozy, audacious era of the game. He shows how fortunes were made and lost and how, thirty years ago, Trump was a scoundrel and a spoiler. This is sports as high entertainment–and a cautionary tale of the dangers of ego and excess.

A towering figure on the field for two decades and destined for the Hall of Fame, Brett Favre was one of the game’s last cowboys, a fastball-throwing, tobacco-chewing gunslinger who refused to give up without a fight. This peerless quarterback guided the Green Bay Packers to two Super Bowls and one championship win, shattering countless NFL records along the way.Gunslinger tells Brett Favre’s full, definitive story for the first time, drawing on more than five hundred interviews, including many from the people closest to Favre. Jeff Pearlman charts Favre’s journey from his rough rural childhood and lackluster high school football career to landing the last roster spot at Southern Mississippi to a late-night car accident that nearly took his life. Favre clawed back, getting drafted into the NFL, first to Atlanta, then to Green Bay, where he restored the Packers to greatness and inspired a fan base as passionate as any in the game. Yet he struggled with demons: addiction, infidelity, the loss of his father the day before he honored him by playing the greatest game of his career, and ultimately a fraught, painfully prolonged exit from the game he loved.

The New York Times bestselling author of Sweetness delivers the first all-encompassing account of the 1980s Los Angeles Lakers, one of professional sports’ most-revered–and dominant–dynasties.

The Los Angeles Lakers of the 1980s personified the flamboyance and excess of the decade over which they reigned. Beginning with the arrival of Earvin “Magic” Johnson as the number one overall pick of the 1979 draft, the Lakers played basketball with gusto and pizzazz, unleashing their famed “Showtime” run-and-gun style on a league unprepared for their speed and ferocity–and became the most captivating show in sports and, arguably, all-around American entertainment. The Lakers’ roster overflowed with exciting all-star-caliber players, including center Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and they were led by the incomparable Pat Riley, known for his slicked-back hair, his Armani suits, and his arrogant strut. Hollywood’s biggest celebrities lined the court, and gorgeous women flocked to the arena. Best of all, the team was a winner. Between 1980 and 1991, the Lakers played in an unmatched nine NBA championship series, capturing five of them.

Bestselling sportswriter Jeff Pearlman draws from almost three hundred interviews to take the first full measure of the Lakers’ epic Showtime era. A dazzling account of one of America’s greatest sports sagas, Showtime is packed with indelible characters, vicious rivalries, and jaw-dropping behind-the-scenes stories of the players’ decadent Hollywood lifestyles. From the Showtime era’s remarkable rise to its tragic end–marked by Magic Johnson’s 1991 announcement that he had contracted HIV–Showtime is a gripping narrative of sports, celebrity, and 1980s-style excess.

The first definitive biography of Chicago Bears superstar Walter Payton

At five feet ten inches tall, running back Walter Payton was not the largest player in the NFL, but he developed a larger-than-life reputation for his strength, speed, and grit. Nicknamed “Sweetness” during his college football days, he became the NFL’s all-time leader in rushing and all-purpose yards, capturing the hearts of fans in his adopted Chicago.

Drawing from interviews with more than seven hundred sources, acclaimed sportswriter Jeff Pearlman has crafted the first definitive biography of Payton. Sweetness at last brings fans a detailed, scrupulously researched, all-encompassing account of the legend’s rise to greatness. From Payton’s childhood in segregated Mississippi, where he ended a racial war by becoming the star of his integrated high school’s football team, to his college years and his thirteen-year NFL career, Sweetness brims with stories of all-American heroism and covers Payton’s life on and off the field. Set against the backdrop of the tragic illness that cut his life short at just forty-five years of age, this is a stirring tribute to a singular icon and the lasting legacy he made.

Award-winning Sports Illustrated baseball writer Jeff Pearlman returns to an innocent time when a city worshipped a man named Mookie and the Yankees were the second-best team in New York.
It was 1986, and the New York Mets won 108 regular-season games and the World Series, capturing the hearts (and other assorted body parts) of fans everywhere. But their greatness on the field was nearly eclipsed by how bad they were off it. Led by the indomitable Keith Hernandez and the young dynamic duo of Dwight Gooden and Darryl Strawberry, along with the gallant Scum Bunch, the Amazin’s left a wide trail of wreckage in their wake-hotel rooms, charter planes, a bar in Houston, and most famously Bill Buckner and the hated Boston Red Sox.
With an unforgettable cast of characters-including Doc, Straw, the Kid, Nails, Mex, and manager Davey Joshson-this “affectionate but critical look at this exciting season” (Publishers Weekly) celebrates the last of baseball’s arrogant, insane, rock-and-roll-and-party-all-night teams, exploring what could have been, what should have been, and what never was.

By the New York Times bestselling author of Showtime—the source for HBO’s Winning Time—the definitive biography of mythic multi-sport star Bo Jackson.

From the mid-1980s into the early 1990s, the greatest athlete of all time streaked across American sports and popular culture. Stadiums struggled to contain him. Clocks failed to capture his speed. His strength was legendary. His power unmatched. Video game makers turned him into an invincible character—and they were dead-on. He climbed (and walked across) walls, splintered baseball bats over his knee, turned oncoming tacklers into ground meat. He became the first person to simultaneously star in two major professional sports, and overtook Michael Jordan as America’s most recognizable pitchman. He was on our televisions, in our magazines, plastered across billboards. He was half man, half myth.

Then, almost overnight, he was gone.

He was Bo Jackson.

Drawing on an astonishing 720 original interviews, New York Times bestselling sportswriter Jeff Pearlman captures as never before the elusive truth about Jackson, Auburn University’s transcendent Heisman Trophy winner, superstar of both the NFL and Major League Baseball and ubiquitous “Bo Knows” Nike pitchman. Did Bo really jump over a parked Volkswagen? (Yes.) Did he actually run a 4.13 40? (Yes.) During the 1991 flight that nearly killed every member of the Chicago White Sox, was he in the cockpit trying to help? (Oddly, yes. Or no. Or … maybe.)

Bo Jackson isn’t Jim Thorpe.

He’s not Deion Sanders, either.

 No, Bo Jackson is Paul Bunyan.

 The Last Folk Hero is the true tale of Bo Jackson that only “master storyteller” (NPR.org) Jeff Pearlman could tell.

Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

The inside story of the Los Angeles Lakers from 1996 through 2004, when Kobe Bryant and Shaquille
O’Neal combined–and collided–to help bring the Lakers three straight championships and restore the team
as a powerhouse franchise

In modern sports, there have never been two superstar teammates who loathed one another the way Shaq loathed
Kobe and Kobe loathed Shaq. There was whispered–and outspoken–sniping and sparring. Taunts. Physical
altercations. The recurring threats of trades. This was warfare disguised as NBA basketball. And yet, despite eight years
of infighting and hostility, by turns mediated and encouraged by idiosyncratic coach Phil Jackson, the Shaq-Kobe duo
resulted in one of the greatest, most enduring, and ever-evolving teams in NBA history.

Just as Kobe and Shaq entertained huge crowds of fans at the Forum (and later Staples Center), so they also
provided a nonstop sideshow for their cast of supporting players–including Glen Rice, Robert Horry, Rick Fox, Karl
Malone, J.R. Rider, and briefly even Dennis Rodman–whose games often seem enhanced by their biggest stars as
they tried mightily not to pick sides.

With Kobe Bryant’s tragic death in 2020, Three-Ring Circus also serves as an extraordinary coming-of-age tale
about one of our era’s most revered athletes. Bryant’s competitiveness, insecurities, and inspiring growth as a player
come into full focus. As best-selling sportswriter Jeff Pearlman shows in this rollicking masterpiece of reporting, legacy
is never simple.