Slow Getting Up: A Story Of NFL Survival From The Bottom Of The Pile (2013) - Plot & Excerpts
He's a good writer, really funny, and not a douchebag. Immediately makes it the best athlete memoir I've read. Gives insight on the details I wanted to know: what does it feel like for a low-ranked prospect on the day of the NFL draft? How do you get an agent? How much do you have to eat? What do the athletes do when they are injured? What do they do at night in the hotels when they're traveling? How do they interact with the groupies after the games? How does it feel to be tackled by a 300-pound man? How does your body recover from daily choreographed violence?Like many memoirs, it suffers from having no narrative arc. It's a collection of episodes accumulating into a 8-year NFL career. But lives don't have narrative arcs, and the episodes are interesting enough by themselves.Recommend you borrow from your library. It's good, but not worth the cost of a new book. If you enjoy nfl football, but like me, had no idea what all goes on behind the scenes, this is a real eye-opener. I also love books about how things really work - engaging tell alls, like kitchen confidential about how kitchens work... there are a lot of these being written now. This one is about the NFL.It's also very well written and I love how it destroys the stereotype of the dumb jock. The player who wrote this (and yes, I do believe he wrote it, and it wasn't ghost written as some haters have claimed) has a wonderful voice as an author, his prose moving from literal and linear to fanciful and metaphorical with tiny touches of magical realism thrown in to emphasize the emotion of the moment. Great stuff.This isn't a fiction, it's a memoir of his time in the NFL as one of the many unsung players, the ones who aren't the multi million dollar stars of the team that are household names. The countless men who are among the top athletes in the country but aren't *quite* the best or are injured too many times, who work hard and put themselves at huge risk for the game they love. But it's also fairly damning of the way the nfl works and it now makes me a bit queasy to see the big hits and wonder about the nfl brand machine and the motivation of the giant corporations called teams.Only reason it wasn't 5 stars is I kind of wished there was a bit more denouement at the end, I guess I'm a sucker for a happy ending and I wanted his story to have a happy end, an uplifting note about the future. But in real life, the author is younger than me, and still finding his happy ending. I guess I just hoped he'd found it already because I liked him so much through his writing. May he be successful in his new career.
What do You think about Slow Getting Up: A Story Of NFL Survival From The Bottom Of The Pile (2013)?
A quick read that gives an interesting behind-the-scenes view if the NFL.
—HH1102
Fun read and a great perspective. Far better than most sports memoirs.
—ReaderRabbit
The story was interesting but his writing was subpar and juvenile.
—Diana
