Reviewed by Nicole Laskowski

Before John F. Kennedy, Jr. was assassinated, before the Big Mac, before the race riots exploded in Detroit, before athletes were superstars, there was a man who asked himself a simple question: What would it be like for the average Joe, or in this case the average George, to play football professionally?

The answer to this question is in the pages of acclaimed writer George Plimpton’s ground-breaking book, Paper Lion. During the summer of 1963, Plimpton, one of the first modern practitioners of participant-observation journalism, became a rookie for the Detroit Lions. He traveled from the east coast to Michigan where he spent four weeks at the Lion’s training camp learning how to call plays and take snaps. He ran formations, dressed in thick layers of padding and tried to tackle his opponents. He played cards with the coaches, played pranks on the players, bunked in the dormitories and debriefed in the locker room. Finally, Plimpton dressed in a Honolulu blue jersey adorned with the silver number zero and ran a series of plays as quarterback in a scrimmage match.

Throughout his book, Plimpton delves into the grueling physical aspects of this sport, and through intimate conversations with many of his teammates, he also captures the mental training these players undergo. But, because he immersed himself so deeply into this culture, Plimpton also captures a sense for who these players are. He listened to their stories, learned about their backgrounds and became one of them.

Reading this classic work of literary nonfiction today, the reader sees that Plimpton not only captured a sense for what football was like in 1963, but what the world was like back then. This text is as much a historical read as it is a look into the sport. The book itself was a model for many such works that followed.

Less than a week before Plimpton passed away in September 2003, Detroit held a 40th reunion at their new stadium for the ’63 team. All of the players were invited, including number zero, just an average Joe who one summer was a superstar to the city of Detroit.