Sports Biography

From Muhammad Ali to Wayne Gretsky, the sports biography is the story of our greatest athletic heroes. All sports have "greats": boxing, hockey, soccer, gymnastics, golf, football, tennis, extreme sports, and many more. For every great athlete, there's a great story, and sports biography is the way those stories are passed on through the generations.

A sports biography, by definition, is story about a sports figure told in third person. Sports biographies tend to differ from promotional autobiographies or exposés in that they aren't typically used as a platform, or "tell all," book, while autobiographies like Jose Canseco's steroid expose, Juice, can do exactly that.

Sports biographies can also include anthologies of periods in time or eras in a particular sport. For example, there are many books dedicated to the biographies of Negro League baseball players, women in sports, and Olympic teams and athletes. Historical college teams like Notre Dame and Alabama also have extensive biographies written about them.

The Other Side
Sport biographies aren't always about the best and brightest in sports, however. They can also tell stories about the worst teams or players. Author Scott Fowler details the 2003 record-setting worst season in NFL history with Tales From the Carolina Panthers Sideline. This book explores in detail what it was like for the team to go 1-15 in the regular season, setting an NFL all-time low record and being ruthlessly nicknamed the "Cardiac Cats."