Biography Sports Coaches

America's favorite sportswriter teams up with Red Auerbach, the most successful and admired coach in basketball history, to tell the best stories of a legendary life.

Known for decades as one of the NFL’s most iconic and spectacular playmakers, Deion Sanders remains college football's most intriguing newsmaker. In just three years, he has become the most talked about coach by recruiting elite players to moribund programs and reviving the spirit and pride of forgotten fanbases by winning. Along the way, he’s changing how we think about college sports while rejuvenating whole communities with the national attention that follows him and the fresh commerce a winning culture ignites.

John Madden is synonymous with football. He was the television face and voice of the nation’s most popular sport, the namesake of its best-selling sports video game, and the man with the highest career winning percentage of any NFL coach. Despite his international fame, there was a side of Madden known only to those who listened to morning radio broadcasts in the San Francisco Bay Area. That’s where Madden grew up, lived, and died. It's where for decades he found joy in a daily chat with his hometown radio station: a chance to unwind, tell stories, and impart his own brand of wit and wisdom.

Pulitzer Prize-winner David Halberstam's best seller takes you inside the football genius of Bill Belichick for an insightful profile in leadership. Bill Belichick's thirty-one years in the NFL have been marked by amazing success - most recently with the New England Patriots. In this groundbreaking audiobook, David Halberstam explores the nuances of both the game and the man behind it. He uncovers what makes Bill Belichick tick both on and off the field.

In Full Out, “the Bill Belichick of cheerleading” (The Cut) Coach Monica Aldama shares how she built one of the most successful and beloved cheerleading programs in the country. Her uncompromising brand of discipline and consistency goes far beyond the mat - showing how the principles of building a winning team apply to personal goals, the corporate world, parenting, and all aspects of life.

When Coach Joe Kennedy started offering a prayer on the field after each high school football game, the school district tried to shut him down, launching a seven-year legal battle that went to the Supreme Court—twice. In June 2022, he won. Average Joe is the story of an unlikely champion of religious freedom. A former atheist, Kennedy never imagined he’d lead the defense of Americans’ First Amendment rights. He certainly didn’t intend to be at odds with his wife, who was the school district’s personnel director.

In John Wooden: The Inspiring Life and Leadership Lessons of One of Basketball's Greatest Coaches, you will learn the inspirational story of arguably the greatest coach of the 20th century, John Wooden. Few coaches carry the same esteem as Wooden, known for not only being a highly effective coach, but also a mentor and friend to his players. Wooden consistently led by example by inspiring his players to build strong habits both on and off the court.

In Pat Riley: The Inspiring Life and Leadership Lessons of One of Basketball’s Greatest Coaches, you will learn the inspirational story of one of the greatest basketball coaches and executives ever, Pat Riley. Whether it was as a player, coach, or executive, Pat Riley has created a huge legacy for himself with all the franchises of which he has been a part. Since 1995, he has led the Miami Heat organization.

What would one call taking teens with no evident running talent and putting them through breakneck training combined with mantras from rock n' roll, techniques from Kenya, and philosophy from Australia, and turning them into champions? Is it revolutionary? Or just plain crazy? Bill Aris has heard both, but one thing is indisputable. Everything Aris does with his runners - male and female - is new and extraordinary, and he has created a new American running dynasty.

Inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1997, Don Shula remains the winningest coach of all time with 347 career victories and the only undefeated season in NFL history. But before he became the architect of the Dolphins dynasty, Shula was a hardworking kid selling fish on the banks of Lake Erie. As acclaimed sports biographer Mark Ribowsky shows, Shula met serious resistance at home when he asked to play high school football, but when his parents finally relented, they discovered that their son had an unmatched mind for the game's strategy and a stomach for its brutality.

Learn the inspiring story of the San Antonio Spurs' legendary coach Gregg Popovich! In Gregg Popovich: The Inspiring Life and Leadership Lessons of One of Basketball's Greatest Coaches, you will learn the inspirational story of one of basketball's premier coaches, Gregg Popovich. Popovich has steered the ship for the San Antonio Spurs franchise to multiple championships and perennial playoff contention.

An irreverent, hilarious insider's look at big-time NCAA basketball, through the eyes of the nation's most famous benchwarmer and author of the popular blog ClubTrillion.com (3.6m visits!). Mark Titus holds the Ohio State record for career wins, and made it to the 2007 national championship game. You would think Titus would be all over the highlight reels. You'd be wrong.

In this New York Times best seller, College football’s most colorful, endearing, and successful pioneer, Steve Spurrier, shares his story of a life in football - from growing up in Tennessee to winning the Heisman Trophy to playing and coaching in the pros to leading the Florida Gators to six SEC Championships and a National Championship to elevating the South Carolina program to new heights - and coaching like nobody else.

In Stoops's journey from player to struggling graduate assistant to legendary head coach, it becomes clear that his dedication to football is about far more than the sport itself. Big Game Bob, as he is known by adorning Sooners, made a name for himself not only by rebuilding the OU football program and leading the team to multiple conference championships but also by adhering to a strong set of principles at a time when corruption was rampant across the NCAA.

In 1971, a small-town high school baseball team from rural Illinois playing with hand-me-down uniforms and peace signs on their hats defied convention and the odds. Led by an English teacher with no coaching experience, the Macon Ironmen emerged from a field of 370 teams to become the smallest school in Illinois history to make the state final, a distinction that still stands. There, sporting long hair, and warming up to "Jesus Christ Superstar", the Ironmen would play a dramatic game that would change their lives forever.

Do you have the “Championship Mindset”? Patty Gasso sure does. Perhaps you have heard the name Patty Gasso, and you want to learn more about the impact this incredible coach has had on women’s sports. Or maybe you don’t know much about this softball champion, but you want to discover the amount of sacrifice and dedication that is required to become an elite-level champion.

Bill Walsh, Joe Gibbs, and Bill Parcells dominated what may go down as the greatest decade in pro football history, leading their teams to a combined eight championships and developing some of the most gifted players of all time in the process. In interviews with more than 150 players, coaches, family members and friends, Guts and Genius digs into the careers of three men who overcame their own insecurities and doubts to build Hall of Fame legacies that transformed their generation and continue to impact today's NFL.

Legendary University of North Carolina basketball coach Dean Smith tells the full story of his fabled career and shares the life lessons taught and learned over 40 years of unparalleled success as a coach and mentor.

Keanon Lowe was working as an offensive analyst for the San Francisco 49ers when his childhood friend and former high school teammate suddenly died from an opioid overdose. Keanon dropped everything–including the plum NFL job he had been working towards since childhood–leading him to a position as football coach at a struggling high school back in his hometown. At the time, Parkrose High School was in the middle of a 23-game losing streak–they were the ultimate underdogs.

Vince Lombardi and Tom Landry could not have had two more divergent personalities. Yet, while working for the New York Giants of the mid-to-late ’50s under head coach Jim Lee Howell, the pair formed what stands, to this day, as the greatest set of coordinators on one team. Given their personalities, one might have likened Howell’s job to that of Dwight Eisenhower as the general struggled to control the egos and politics of his allied subordinates during WWII. But for some reason, Lombardi and Landry worked almost seamlessly, and as a result, the Giants rose to the top of the NFL.