Fall Guy

Fall Guy is the only book I have ever read twice. Once as an 18 year-old experiencing several of Ben Elliot's thrills and spills and then again twenty years later. Today's struggles remain strangely similar to Cronley's depiction of 1970s football... between a school in Oklahoma and a school in Texas. The easiest-to-read, funniest-to-recall book in this family's collection. In fact, this family owns two copies.

This is the author's first book and one of his best. His story about the trials and tribulations of Ben Elliot, a superstar high school football player who goes away to the big state university is almost too true to be as funny as it is, and maybe too funny to be as true as it is. There are a lot of Ben Elliots out there, athletes who go away to college with the world at their doorstep only to discover they're just another high school hot shot. Fall Guy came out while other books with a football theme -- Semi-Tough by Dan Jenkins, North Dallas Forty by Pete Gent -- were hitting the best seller lists. This book was largely neglected by the wider public, which is too bad. It's as funny as Jenkins' book and as hard hitting as Gent's. This is one of those sports books that will appeal to people who aren't sports fans because it is ultimately about a young man and how things fall apart when the thing that defined him is taken away. Everybody loves him when he's scoring touchdowns, but when he gets hurt, to hell with him. Cronley went on to write several outstanding books (Funny Farm, Screwballs, Quick Change, Let It Ride, Walking Papers)and this is as good as any of them. Ben Elliot will never make the football hall of fame, but this book should.