Instant Replay

Praise

“The best behind-the-scenes glimpse of pro football ever produced.”
—The New York Times

“An unprecedented look into the gritty world of professional football. . . . Still the gold standard of sports biographies.”
—Sports Illustrated

“A classic for its insights into the game and its people, [written] with wit and without scandal or obscenity. . . . A landmark work.”
—Los Angeles Times
 
“Groundbreaking. . . . Candid. . . . An uncommonly frank account.”
—Chicago Tribune
 
“The first great professional sports diary.”
—The Boston Globe

“The gold standard for football memoirs. . . . This modern sports classic is a smart, funny and literate diary of the Packers’ successful quest to become the first team to win back-to-back Super Bowl victories.”
—The Plain Dealer
 
“This seminal, as-told-to diary . . . changed the way sports readers expected their heroes to sound. No more of this Grantland Rice purple prose. Schaap gave us the tough jock sounding like a real—and witty and introspective and profane—human being.”
—Chicago Sun-Times
 
“A must read. . . . An insightful look at the sometimes-maddening methods of Lombardi and the love-hate relationship the players had with the legendary coach.”
—Green Bay Press-Gazette
 
“An honest, hilarious and insightful diary, with Lombardi alternately serving as the hero and the villain, the lovable leader and the soul-crushing ogre.”
—San Jose Mercury News
 
“This was the book that started it all—for athletes telling their stories, for sportswriters going in depth, for great athletic tales being bound between the covers. Dick Schaap’s classic is timeless. Required reading for anyone who loves sports or sportswriting.”
—Mitch Albom

“One of the great sports books of all time.” —Billy Crystal

“Kramer detailed the 1967 championship season in an understated, respectful tone, but showed a keen eye for details the fan would never glimpse.”
—The Baltimore Sun
 
“One of the rarest of things—a sports book written in English by an adult.”
—Jimmy Breslin
 
“Daring stuff for its time, revealing how athletes really act, talk and think back when such candor was taboo.”
—Charlotte Observer
 
“A no-holds-barred diary. . . . One really gets a sense of the physical, mental and emotional agonies players can go through in a season.”
—Orlando Sentinel
 
“[Kramer is] observant, honest, sensitive and a bone-crusher at right guard.”
—The Oregonian
 
“The ultimate football diary. . . . Detailed and dramatic. . . . Kramer’s description of his decisive block against Jethro Pugh at the goal line in the waning seconds [of the Ice Bowl] . . . is as fresh and raw as the minus-15-degree weather at kickoff.”
—Tampa Tribune
 
“In my life as a writer and reader, there are only a few books that I’ve read over and over again for the sheer pleasure of the experience. Jerry Kramer’s Instant Replay is the only sports book among them. I loved it when I was a teenage, and I love it still today.”
—David Maraniss, author of When Pride Still Mattered