On Any Given Sunday

By Pat Toomay

Book Overview

On any given Sunday, one team can beat another...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 091765711X
• ISBN13: 9780917657115
• Release Date: September 1984
• Publisher: Donald I. Fine, Inc.
• Length: 287 Pages
• Weight: 1.36 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Football how it used to be

I "discovered" Pat Toomay as a writer quite by accident. I had just watched North Dallas Forty and my mind travelled back to fun childhood memories of watching the Oakland Raiders play each week. We lived in Atlanta (and were Falcons fans EVEN then) but there was something magical about the Raiders: Stabler, Matuszak, Biletnikoff and even Madden and Al Davis. Mr. Toomay's articles brought back great memories of a game that "used" to be -- for better or worse. Also, memories of when teammates continued to play together for many years so they were YOUR team and you didn't have to take pre-season to learn all the new players. So I bought both "The Crunch" and On "Any Given Sunday" and was SO happy reading both books! I only wish Mr. Toomay would write more ... because playing during those times and experiencing it all, he has first hand knowledge AND conveys the feelings, frustrations, and love of the game to all football fans -- whether it's fiction or non-fiction. Any football fan will love his books ... older fans because of how it "used" to be. Younger fans because it's important to know the history of the game and Mr. Toomay -- through both books -- makes it so. I hope you enjoy these books as much as my friends, family and I have (I bought a lot of copies as gifts!)

From John Seabrook, writing in Sports Illustrated:

When it comes to fiction by and about defensive ends, I'll admit I'm a rookie. Pat Toomay's novel On Any Given Sunday caught me off guard. The prose is vivid, the dialogue rings true and the plot, though porous in places, usually holds water. But more surprising is the psyche of Toomay's main character. The author was a member of Dallas' Doomsday Defense who spent 10 years messing up the other team's Sunday afternoons. You would expect Toomay's fictional persona, Washington lineman Brad Rafferty, to be equally fearsome, or at least aggressive. But no, Brad is a 250-pound paranoid, in and out of uniform. Is Toomay making this up or are defensive linemen really this, well, defensive? Brad's anxiety seems too pervasive to be wholly invented-but the reader must figure it out for himself. The puzzle is well worth the price of the book. Brad is haunted by that biggest bogey in sports fiction, the fixed game. At least Brad suspects a fix-he can't prove it. His suspicions light first on the officials, but spread to include his coach, teammates and girl friend. Come the play-offs against Chicago, Brad feels he alone can defend the integrity of the game. "The game" has two meanings in this book. First, it is football, and by the end of the book, Brad's vision of football is definitely warped. Take his description of the scrimmage line: "The creature snapped to life, burst apart, shattering into a tumult of armor-clad fragments that tore in a vicious assault against its own midsection..." But the game is also a metaphor. We all play the game, Toomay suggests, be it sports, business, law. We all need rules, bounndaries and a clock to live by. We try to control the game through our actions. But in fact, as Brad realizes, the game controls us. We're all hunkered down in a figurative goal-line stand.Well, maybe not all of us. But if you've ever wondered how the world looks through a face mask, On Any Given Sunday is for you.