Guide to Watching Football

Read the Guide to Watching Football

Want to know what everyone is cheering about? Learn to enjoy and understand the game with the football fanatic in your life. This book is the ultimate football guide for the novice fan. You will get answers to such complex questions as:

  • What is that yellow line on the field and why does it keep moving?

  • What down is it and why do I care?

  • What is a 'T formation'?

A Sportscaster's Guide to Watching Football will turn you into a football-watching pro, or at least, let you fake it. Read More...


"Originality, cleverness, and great stories which I thoroughly enjoyed."
--William N. Wallace
Pro Football Writer


"Mark's book will ease you into the complexities of football in an easy, funny way."
Roger Staubach
1963 Heisman Trophy Winner
Pro Football Hall of Fame
Dallas Cowboys all-pro quarterback


"I read A SPORTSCASTER'S GUIDE TO WATCHING FOOTBALL on my way to New Orleans for my media training session with the New Orleans Saints -- a terrific read -- especially enjoyed the "Timeouts" in particular the one with Gene Stallings and the rookie defensive back."
Kevin Sullivan
Former Media Director, Dallas Mavericks (NBA)
Former SR. VP, Communications, NBC Sports
Former White House Communications Director
Owner, Kevin Sullivan Communications, Washington


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A Sportscaster’s Guide to Watching Football by Mark Oristano

In sportscaster Mark Oristano's Guide to Watching Football, learn to enjoy—and understand—the game with the football fanatic in your life.
Synergy Books, $15.95, August 2009, ISBN#: 9780982160114

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Mark Oristano

About Mark

I was a fourteen-year-old confirmed baseball fan, growing up in a New York City suburb. And one fall Sunday in 1966, with nothing to do, I flipped on the TV, where the hometown New York Giants were in Dallas playing this team called the Cowboys. Early on, the Dallas quarterback, Don Meredith, threw a short pass to Bob Hayes, whose name I knew because in the 1964 Tokyo Olympics he won the hundred-meter dash and the title "World's Fastest Human." Read More...