Dream Season: A Professor Joins America's Oldest Semi-Pro Football Team

By Bob Cowser Jr.

Book Overview

At age thirty, Bob Cowser, Jr., is a happy husband, father, and English professor in upstate New York. But he senses that something is missing from the good life. He finds himself craving the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0871139235
• ISBN13: 9780871139238
• Release Date: August 2004
• Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.3" x 0.8" x 5.8"

Customer Reviews

Great book about someone who actually fulfills their dream

I picked up this book with much intrigue, as I myself am a football junkie. This well-written, first-person account of joining a semi-pro football team is not only inspiring, but entertaining as well. Cowser (the "Professoer", as his teammates refer to him) describes his lifelong dream of playing football after his high school and college years, and how the idea to play in the nation's most storied semi-pro team was met with much resistance. As a husband, father, professor, and now semi-pro football player, Cowser learns to balance all the duties accompanied by each role, and at times, barely by the skin of his teeth. A great book not only for people who are interested in football, but for those who long to re-live a childhood dream. Well worth a read!

A Season to Fulfil a Dream

The one thing that Jonathan A. Gottschall, who reviewed Dream Season, and I agree on is that Cowser did point out the many different aspects of sociology of those that play the game of football. Even though Cowser was a professor, it did not stop him from wanting to fulfill his dream. Cowser brings to life the brutality and violence of the game. In the chapter "Building the Beast," Bob Cowser even went as far as to describe his own fears on the field and what others thought of him. The one idea that helps me understand a guy and his sport is truly pointed out in Bob Cowser's book. Men will do about anything to complete a dream or continue a dream. The men that Cowser talks about can be viewed as those that he looked up to and hoped to gain their respect in the game. His relationship with his wife is not talked about much. He talks briefly how she did have a way to fit into the community because she runs a well establish business. Whenever he talked about his wife, he shows a respect for her and her opinion. In the chapter "In Another Country," where he writes, "I knew many guys on the team had this issue with wives and girlfriends. Many had worked out elaborate systems whereby they'd earn this game-day time off. `me time' I had over heard Jamee Call term it...... Sadly Candace and I hadn't come to any such arrangement - she actually preferred I not take on any home improvement projects. `Better to cut a check than cut off a finger'." Cowser writes about how much he spent in getting his gear for the practice and that his wife only made a statement of how the extras that he got were excessive and unnecessary. I believe at this point that his wife may have regretted agreeing for him to pursue his dream. She may have hoped that he would have ended in a few weeks or a few months. She viewed him as the clean cut man she married and one who didn't like to get dirty. I can't see how Jonathan A. Gottschall states, "Cowser writes fearlessly, displaying his envy-his sheer pathetic envy-of football paying men. But we don't blame Cowser for his envy because we feel it too." Cowser is a man who pursued a higher education than those who did not have the chance or opportunity. I would say that a few of the men on the team would have showed envy towards him. I felt this was shown by the pet name they game him, "profess" or "professor." The one thing that was not mentioned and I believed should have been talked about is the obsession that Cowser had for the game. We see this in his spending and getting everything he needs and more. He talks about the past and his relationship with the game. The story that emanates from this book can be enjoyed by those who are truly into the sport of football. The obsession Bob Cowser has for the game can be depicted in my own life. Obsession can be overrated. But if one does not have an obsession, how can one obtain a dream?

A great book about life and football

For anyone who played the game and had it end way too early, or for anyone who ever had a crazy idea but was hesitant to act upon it, this is your book. Great writing, great stories, and great action. Cowser has a gift for storytelling and this book goes beyond the game played by men trying to re-capture their glories. It's about people doing what makes them happy and doing it to their best potential. Isn't that what life is all about anyway?

A Love Poem to Football

There is a lot to recommend in this book, which chronicles the stint of a creative writing professor (with soft "poet hands"), playing the manliest of positions (defensive and offensive line), in the manliest of games, for the nation's oldest semi-professional football team. Cowser writes with welcome simplicity and gripping forward momentum. I sat down with the book at 5:30 PM and hardly lifted my nose until, at 9:30 PM, I had read it straight through. It is not only the kind of book you CAN read in four hours, it is the kind that you WILL read in four hours-it keeps you turning pages. The book is one part sociology of football in a small, economically downtrodden northern town. It is a sociology of working class men-prison guards, fry cooks, soldiers, and used car salesman-who take on the real physical risks of smashing into other big, fast men. They do this for a host of different reasons-for fun, for the test, for local fame (I found myself almost idolizing the local folk hero running back Al Countryman--what a name!)-but none of them do it for the money, because there is none. The book is also one part self-exploration. Few men who have ever been seriously invested in playing sports will fail to hear echoes of their own fears, regrets and deeply secret wishes about what might have been. Cowser writes fearlessly, displaying his envy-his sheer pathetic envy-of football playing men. But we don't blame Cowser for his envy because we feel it too. And there's a difference between Cowser and us-he had the courage (and the bench pressing ability) to do something about it. Finally, for all of Cowser's riveting descriptions of the controlled savagery of football violence, Dream Season is above everything else a love poem-a poem to small town life, to the men he played with, to the wife who put up with him, and most of all to the game of football itself.

A Great Read

I hadn't planned on reading this book all in one sitting; it just kind of happened, and I wound up reading it late into the night. There's lots of stuff to like about this entertaining book. Even in the early chapters, Cowser seems aware of the fact that this experience (trying out and playing for the oldest semi-professional football team in America) will eventually be turned into a collection of essays. He cites Plimpton's Paper Lion and Agee's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men as inspirations for his endeavor. I would also add that, in many ways, his prose reads like that of a certain type of John McPhee. Not much of it, since this is a memoir and McPhee downplays his own presence in his narratives, but they tend to describe sports using clear language that even a novice such as myself can understand and appreciate. Evocative and explanatory, without condescension. I know next to nothing about football, but when I put this down I briefly felt like an expert, the way that A Sense of Where You Are and Levels of the Game briefly convinced me that I could play basketball or tennis. I was also struck by the way Cowser describes his relationship with his wife in certain sections of the book. He discusses the fact that his wife-a popular hairdresser in their small town-is known and loved by all, it seems, and he describes himself as a somewhat-reluctant figure in the stories she tells her friends and clients. It's not often that an essayist turns into a character in someone else's narrative, and it was interesting to read his own quasi-squeamishness about being put in the same position that he winds up putting his wife in by writing the book. Reflective, without calling a lot of attention to itself. All in all, this is a solid and entertaining read. I imagine that people with a passion for football will find a lot to identify with, but even those of us who have no interest in sports and are simply excited by good prose will take a lot away from Bob Cowser's book.