{"product_id":"slow-getting-up-a-story-of-nfl-survival-from-the-bottom-of-the-pile-isbn-9780062108029","title":"Slow Getting Up: A Story of NFL Survival from the Bottom of the Pile","description":"\u003cp\u003eNate Jackson’s \u003cem\u003eSlow Getting Up\u003c\/em\u003e is an unvarnished and uncensored memoir of everyday life in the most popular sports league in America—and the most damaging to its players—the National Football League.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAfter playing college ball at a tiny Division III school, Jackson, a receiver, signed as a free agent with the San Francisco 49ers, before moving to the Denver Broncos. For six seasons in the NFL as a Bronco, he alternated between the practice squad and the active roster, eventually winning a starting spot—a short, tenuous career emblematic of the average pro player.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eDrawing from his own experience, Jackson tells the little known story of the hundreds of everyday, \"expendable\" players whose lives are far different from their superstar colleagues.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFrom scouting combines to training camps, off-season parties to game-day routines, debilitating physical injuries—including degenerative brain conditions—to poor pensions and financial distress, he offers a funny, and shocking look at life in the NFL, and the young men who risk their health and even their lives to play the game.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e | \u003cp\u003eOne man's odyssey into the brutal hive of the national football league\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis is not a celebrity tell-all of professional sports. \u003cem\u003eSlow Getting Up\u003c\/em\u003e is a survivor's real-time account of playing six seasons (twice as long as the average NFL career) for the San Francisco 49ers and the Denver Broncos.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAs an unsigned free agent who rose through the practice squad to the starting lineup, Nate Jackson is the talented embodiment of the everyday freak athlete in professional football, one of thousands whose names go unmentioned in the daily press. Through his story recounted here—from scouting combines to preseason cuts to byzantine film studies to glorious touchdown catches—even knowledgeable football fans will glean a new, starkly humanized understanding of the daily rigors and unceasing violence of quotidian life in the NFL. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFast-paced, lyrical, and hilariously unvarnished, \u003cem\u003eSlow Getting Up\u003c\/em\u003e is an unforgettable look at the real lives of America's best twenty-year-old athletes putting their bodies and minds through hell.\u003c\/p\u003e | \u003cp\u003e“A tremendously authentic, inside-the-locker-room view is unveiled with Jackson’s myriad stories, clever wit, skillful prose and perfect dose of sophomoric humor.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eSan Jose Mercury News\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Fantastic.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eJonathan Mahler, Bloomberg\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“The best football memoir ever.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eRolling Stone\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Excellent.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eNew Republic\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Excellent...busts through pro football’s prevailing mythology...Nate Jackson gives us the game warts and all, but never in a drag-ass, woe-is-me way. A really fine book. Man can write.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eBen Fountain, author of Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Simply the best book by a former player about life in the NFL that you will read. Maybe the best book period about life in the NFL that you will read.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eStefan Fatsis, author of A Few Seconds of Panic: A Sportswriter Plays in the NFL\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“\u003ci\u003eSlow Getting Up\u003c\/i\u003e tells the whole truth about the NFL. Painfully honest and remarkably funny, it’s far and away the best ‘insider’ book about pro sports since Jim Bouton’s \u003ci\u003eBall Four\u003c\/i\u003e.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eScott Raab, author of The Whore of Akron\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“That screaming you hear coming across the sky? It’s a wobbly spiral…\u003ci\u003eSlow Getting Up \u003c\/i\u003e is everything you want football memoirs to be but never are: hilarious, dirty, warm, human, honest, weird.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eDwight Garner, New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“The book the world has been waiting for.  “Ball Four” for the football world is here at last.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eTom Junod, via Twitter\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“It’s all here—the life-long love of a brutal game, the inevitable injuries, the drugs, more injuries, more drugs, the women, still more injuries—and it’s all told by the kind of jock you never knew in high school:  defiant, honest, smart, painfully self-aware.  Jackson’s also funny as hell, page-after-page funny.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eEsquire\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Harper","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44889189384421,"sku":"NP9780062108029","price":26.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780062108029.jpg?v=1730230713","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/slow-getting-up-a-story-of-nfl-survival-from-the-bottom-of-the-pile-isbn-9780062108029","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}