Rating: 
Summary: Easy-to-use overkill of NFL stats and info
Review: .
Rating: 
Summary: Total Football--a Football Library in a Single Volume
Review: Total Football crams an entire library of pro football knowledge into a
single book.
For the first time ever, you'll find complete statistics for all 17,037 men who have played in the NFL. You'll also find essays on the history of the game, championship teams, significant games, and great players.
Total Football, the first official NFL encyclopedia published in more than a decade, has expert articles on the evolution of strategy through the years, team histories, the 300 greatest players, football families, players who enjoyed great public careers after football (such as U.S. Supreme Court Justice Byron White), and the most complete lists of team rosters, awards, and the draft ever published.
This nearly inexhaustible wealth of material has been gathered over the years by the NFL, the Pro Football Hall of Fame, the Pro Football Researchers Association, and football's foremost writers and historians. The heart of Total Football is the Player Register, with statistics provided by the Elias Sports Bureau, the NFL's official statistician since 1961, and supplemented by research from David Neft and Bob Carroll. If it's about football, you'll find it within these 1,664 pages. It's the perfect gift for yourself or for someone you know who loves the game.
A COMPLETE FOOTBALL LIBRARY IN A SINGLE BOOK
The most complete book of its kind ever created, Total Football is crammed with stories, scores, and statistics from 77 years of NFL action. Fans on all levels will find material here from the human side of the game to strategy to statistics.
An army of writers, editors, and researchers from the NFL, the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and the Pro Football Researchers Association details the growth of the game from a meeting in a Canton, Ohio, Hupmobile showroom into America's Passion. Get the inside scoop on:
* Every Super Bowl and Championship Game
* Stories, scoring, and statistics * The 300 Greatest Players From Herb Adderley to Steve Young
* The Birth of Monday Night Football
* How the NFL and television prospered
together
* The Playbook Detailed diagrams and explanations of more than 50 plays
* The 25 Greatest Regular-Season Games Including the Hail Mary Pass and
the Heidi Game
* Two-Sport Stars Such as Jim Thorpe, Otto Graham, Bo Jackson, and Deion
Sanders
* The Evolution of Strategy From the Notre Dame Box to the Zone Blitz
* Lore & Legends Why Tony Dorsett's 99-yard run happened on a busted play!
* Year-by-Year Team Rosters When did your favorite player join your
favorite team?
* PLUS The most complete compilation of yearly all-pro teams, every selection in the 60-year history of the draft, a coaches register, an officials roster, and a complete history of official NFL rules
*************************************************
TOTAL FOOTBALL'S CO-EDITORS:
BOB CARROLL is the founder and executive director of the Professional
Football Researchers Association (PFRA) and edits the group's
newsletter, The Coffin Corner. His many sports books include Pro
Football: When the Grass Was Real and Baseball Between the Lies, and he
was a contributor to Biographical Encyclopedia of American Sports:
Football (1988).
MICHAEL GERSHMAN was editor-in-chief of Total Football Online for AT&T
Interchange and wrote Diamonds: The Evolution of the Ballpark, winner of
the Casey Award as the best baseball book of 1993. A PFRA member, he
also is a co-editor of Total Baseball and a founding partner in Total
Sports. DAVID NEFT is a co-author of The Sports Encyclopedia: Pro Football,
which has appeared in 15 editions, and also co-wrote The Scrapbook
History of Pro Football. Neft served as editor-in-chief for the first
edition of The Baseball Encyclopedia and is vice president of research
for the Gannett Company, Inc. JOHN THORN edited The Armchair Quarterback and co-authored The Hidden
Game of Football and The Football Abstract with Bob Carroll and Pete
Palmer. A long-time member and past president of the PFRA, Thorn also is
a co-editor of Total Baseball and a founding partner in Total Sports.
Rating: 
Summary: Total Football - A Total Mess
Review:
Total Football is one big mess. Take a look at the Player Register - how do do find anyone?! You
have to know that Joe Smith's first name is William - so he ends up between Walt and Wilson Smith! Then those stats - could they possibly be
in a worst looking, jumbled format?1
Good info - horrible format.
I think I'll check out The Pro Football Encyclopedia.
Rating:
Summary: This baby has it all!
Review: Any facts which is not listed in Total Football 2, is not worth to know! Here you have it all, all managers, all players, all probowlers and so on. You even get every score of every NFL game ever! The only thing that is not in the book is every pre-season result! But if I shall say a word that describes this book, it would be: Touchdown!
Rating:
Summary: Very, Very Good, But Not Great...
Review: Being an avid Football fan, Total Football is a dream come true. It gives me fast reference to players and their statistics, positions, high schools, and even hometowns. However, there is one glitch that keeps popping up. After referencing through the book many times, i finally realized that a player must have played in a game in order to have been given credit for being involved in football that year. Therefore, a player could have been not played in a game, or sat out the season on injured reserve, and the book does not give him credit for playing at all. If a player was on a team's roster, but missed the year because of an injury, that should be noted. With the way Total Football is, I wouldn't know if a player was injured for the year, on the roster but didn't see action, or just sat out the year. To me, that's a big deal.
Rating: 
Summary: this is the football encyclopedia we've all been waiting for
Review: Bob Carroll, et al, have written the football encyclopedia we've all been waiting for. Finally, we get register entries for every player (17,000+) who has ever set foot on a professional gridiron. No more having to ferret through confusing team entries. For the first time player interception return yardage is included in the statistics presented. It is no accident that David Neft, co-editor of The Football Encyclopedia jumped ship to this massive (1,664 page) Harper Collins publication. The icing on the cake is that Harper Collins is offering a special purchase price to introduce the work. In addition to the all inclusive player register, the work includes a roster of officials, team histories for all franchises existing and defunct, chapters on the greatest coaches and players, football families, the hall of fame, all-pro selections, awards and honors, super bowls, . . . You get the idea. Its all here. This is the one football encyclopedia which belongs on the bookshelf of every red blooded fan. Truly an 11 on a scale of 1 to 10
Rating:
Summary: It's OK
Review: Don't expect to find a football book you can use exclusively from the rest. This is a good supplement to books like "The Pro Football Encyclopedia" (by Maher/Gill). If you're into statistics this is one of the best to have. Whereas "Pro Football Encyclopedia" has players longest gains, which this book doesn't, this book gives you kickoff and punt return stats for all players, the encyclopedia doesn't. This book is mainly about the NFL. I bought it for the statistics. It's also a good book to use if you want to find out more about a specific player (statistically speaking). Chapters like "The 25 Most Memorable Regular Season Games" and "The 300 Greatest Players" etc.. are not what I got this book for. I would prefer a book that leaves out author's opinions. I've seen games I'll never forget that I knew wouldn't make the list and also players. Although these chapters are somewhat interesting along with others I could live without half this book easily but like I said, it's a good season by season individual stat book that has information other books don't. It mainly depends on what you're buying this book for. There are statistics here excluded from other books but there are stats left out that ARE in other books, like blocked punts for instance, which may not seem to matter to most, but it all depends on what you're buying it for. It has stats other books don't, that's what I bought it for.
Rating:
Summary: Good reference
Review: Don't expect to find a football book you can use exclusively from the rest. This is a good supplement to books like "The Pro Football Encyclopedia" (by Maher/Gill). If you're into statistics this is one of the best to have. Whereas "Pro Football Encyclopedia" has players longest gains, which this book doesn't, this book gives you kickoff and punt return stats for all players, the encyclopedia doesn't. This book is mainly about the NFL. I bought it for the statistics. It's also a good book to use if you want to find out more about a specific player (statistically speaking). Chapters like "The 25 Most Memorable Regular Season Games" and "The 300 Greatest Players" etc.. are not what I got this book for. I would prefer a book that leaves out author's opinions. I've seen games I'll never forget that I knew wouldn't make the list and also players. Although these chapters are somewhat interesting along with others I could live without half this book easily but like I said, it's a good season by season individual stat book that has information other books don't. It mainly depends on what you're buying this book for. There are statistics here excluded from other books but there are stats left out that ARE in other books, like blocked punts for instance, which may not seem to matter to most, but it all depends on what you're buying it for. It has stats other books don't, that's what I bought it for.
Rating:
Summary: Some people want magic
Review: For those of you who are looking for every NFL player - even those who never played a game - I suggest rubbing a magic bottle and hoping for a genie, because that'll be the only way you'll find that information. It simply doesn't exist.
While some bellyache that the statistical information isn't organized and re-printed 30 different times in every discernable way, they don't understand that this book is almost 2000 pages long. Repeating all of that information AGAIN would involve hundreds, if not thousands, of additional pages.
Total Football II is by far and away the most complete statistical reference there ever was. No, there are no indexes of high schools or longest punt returns or pre-season, third-stringer touchdown records, but please! This book contains every important stat available.
The articles are written by people with centuries of cumulative years of experience covering and writing about the NFL. Even though your favorite game may not be listed, I can assure you that you probably haven't seen as many as the great writers who created this book did. Keep that in mind before you criticize them for not including Billie Joe Tolliver in their 300 greatest players segment.
Rating:
Summary: Some people want magic
Review: For those of you who are looking for every NFL player - even those who never played a game - I suggest rubbing a magic genie, because that'll be the only way you'll find that information. It simply doesn't exist. While some bellyache that the statistical information isn't organized and re-printed 30 different times in every discernable way, they don't understand that this book is almost 2000 pages long. Repeating all of that information AGAIN would involve hundreds, if not thousands, of additional page. Total Football II is by far and away the most complete statistical reference there ever was. No, there are no indexes of high schools or longest punt returns or pre-season, third-stringer touchdown records, but please! This book contains every important stat available. The articles are written by people with centuries of cumulative years of experience covering and writing about the NFL. Even though your favorite game may not be listed, I can assure you that you probably haven't seen as many as the great writers who created this book did. Keep that in mind before you criticize them for not including Billie Joe Tolliver in their 300 greatest players segment.
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