A Football Memoir, With Tears

Toward the end of Tom Coughlin’s new memoir about Super Bowl XLII, when his New York Giants defeated the previously unbeaten New England Patriots in arguably the greatest upset in pro-football history, he recalls the immediate aftermath of that 17–14 victory. “The moments afterward are kind of a blur,” he writes. “The confetti rains down, you raise the Lombardi trophy at a midfield podium, and for the next few hours it’s like you’re in a dream world, being taken from one place to the next, carried along by your happiness. It took forever to get to the locker room; I never actually got the opportunity to give that one speech to all the guys where I could say, We are world champions.”