Jeff Pearlman has 6 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 5 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4.8★ across 41 ratings. The most-rated is Three Ring Circus.
Three Ring Circus
Summary
The story of the Lakers dynasty from 1996 through 2004, when Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal combined - and collided - to help bring the Lakers three straight championships and restore the franchise as a powerhouse. In the history of modern sport, there have never been two high-level teammates who loathed each other the way Shaquille O’Neal loathed Kobe Bryant and Kobe Bryant loathed Shaquille O’Neal. From public sniping and sparring, to physical altercations and the repeated threats of trade, it was warfare. And yet, despite eight years of infighting and hostility, by turns mediated and encouraged by coach Phil Jackson, the Shaq-Kobe duo resulted in one of the greatest dynasties in NBA history. Together, the two led the Lakers to three straight championships and returned glory and excitement to Los Angeles. In the tradition of Jeff Pearlman’s best sellers Showtime, Boys Will Be Boys, and The Bad Guys Won, Three-Ring Circus is a rollicking deep dive into one of sports’ most fraught yet successful pairings.
©2020 Jeff Pearlman (P)2020 Recorded Books
Football for a Buck
Summary
The United States Football League was the last football league to not merely challenge the mighty NFL but also to cause it to collectively shudder. It spanned three seasons, featured as many as 18 teams, secured multiple television deals, drew millions of fans, and launched the careers of legends - but then it died beneath the weight of a particularly egotistical and bombastic owner, a New York businessman named Donald Trump. In Football for a Buck, Jeff Pearlman draws on more than 400 interviews to unearth all the salty, untold stories of one of the craziest sports entities to have ever captivated America. From 1980s drug excess to some of the most enthralling and revolutionary football ever seen, Pearlman transports listeners back in time to this crazy, boozy, audacious era of the game. He shows how fortunes were made and lost and how, 30 years ago, Trump was a scoundrel and a spoiler. This is sports as high entertainment - and a cautionary tale of the dangers of ego and excess.
©2018 Jeff Pearlman (P)2018 Dreamscape Media, LLC
Boys Will Be Boys
Summary
They were America's Team - the high-priced, high-glamour, high-flying Dallas Cowboys of the 1990s, who won three Super Bowls and made as many headlines off the field as on it. Led by Emmitt Smith, the charismatic Deion "Prime Time" Sanders, and Hall of Famers Troy Aikman and Michael Irvin, the Cowboys rank among the greatest of all NFL dynasties. In similar fashion to his New York Times best seller The Bad Guys Won!, award-winning writer Jeff Pearlman chronicles the outrageous antics and dazzling talent of a team fueled by ego, sex, drugs -and unrivaled greatness. Rising from the ashes of a 1 - 15 season in 1989 to capture three Super Bowl trophies in four years, the Dallas Cowboys were guided by a swashbuckling, skirt-chasing, power-hungry owner, Jerry Jones, and his two eccentric, hard-living coaches, Jimmy Johnson and Barry Switzer. Together the three built a juggernaut that America loved and loathed. But for a team that was so dominant on Sundays, the Cowboys were often a dysfunctional circus the rest of the week. Irvin, nicknamed "The Playmaker," battled dual addictions to drugs and women. Charles Haley, the defensive colossus, presided over the team's infamous "White House," where the parties lasted late into the night and a steady stream of long-legged groupies came and went. And then there were Smith and Sanders, whose Texas-sized egos were eclipsed only by their record-breaking on-field performances. With an unforgettable cast of characters and a narrative as hard-hitting and fast-paced as the team itself, Boys Will Be Boys immortalizes the most beloved - and despised - dynasty in NFL history.
©2008 Jeff Pearlman (P)2008 Tantor
Gunslinger
Summary
A towering figure on the field for two decades and destined for the Hall of Fame, Brett Favre was one of the game's last cowboys, a fastball-throwing, tobacco-chewing gunslinger who refused to give up without a fight. This peerless quarterback guided the Green Bay Packers to two Super Bowls and one championship win, shattering countless NFL records along the way. Gunslinger tells Brett Favre's full, definitive story for the first time, drawing on more than 500 interviews, including many from the people closest to Favre. Jeff Pearlman charts Favre's journey, from his rough rural childhood and lackluster high school football career to landing the last roster spot at Southern Mississippi to a late-night car accident that nearly took his life. Favre clawed back, getting drafted into the NFL, first to Atlanta, then to Green Bay, where he restored the Packers to greatness and inspired a fan base as passionate as any in the game. Yet he struggled with demons: addiction, infidelity, the loss of his father the day before he honored him by playing the greatest game of his career, and ultimately a fraught, painfully prolonged exit from the game he loved.
©2016 Jeff Pearlman (P)2016 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books
Showtime
Summary
The New York Times best-selling author of Sweetness delivers the first all-encompassing account of the 1980s Los Angeles Lakers, one of professional sports’ most-revered - and dominant - dynasties. The Los Angeles Lakers of the 1980s personified the flamboyance and excess of the decade over which they reigned. Beginning with the arrival of Earvin “Magic” Johnson as the number-one overall pick of the 1979 draft, the Lakers played basketball with gusto and pizzazz, unleashing their famed “Showtime” run-and-gun style on a league unprepared for their speed and ferocity - and became the most captivating show in sports and, arguably, in all-around American entertainment. The Lakers’ roster overflowed with exciting all-star-caliber players, including center Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and they were led by the incomparable Pat Riley, known for his slicked-back hair, his Armani suits, and his arrogant strut. Hollywood’s biggest celebrities lined the court and gorgeous women flocked to the arena. Best of all, the team was a winner. Between 1980 and 1991, the Lakers played in an unmatched nine NBA championship series, capturing five of them. Best-selling sportswriter Jeff Pearlman draws from almost 300 interviews to take the first full measure of the Lakers’ epic Showtime era. A dazzling account of one of America’s greatest sports sagas, Showtime is packed with indelible characters, vicious rivalries, and jaw-dropping, behind-the-scenes stories of the players’ decadent Hollywood lifestyles. From the Showtime era’s remarkable rise to its tragic end - marked by Magic Johnson’s 1991 announcement that he had contracted HIV - Showtime is a gripping narrative of sports, celebrity, and 1980s-style excess.
©2014 Jeff Pearlman (P)2014 Blackstone Audio
Sweetness
Summary
At five feet 10 inches tall, running back Walter Payton was not the largest player in the NFL, but he developed a larger-than-life reputation for his strength, speed, and grit. Nicknamed “Sweetness” during his college football days, he became the NFL’s all-time leader in rushing and all-purpose yards, capturing the hearts of fans in his adopted Chicago. Drawing from interviews with more than seven hundred sources, acclaimed sportswriter Jeff Pearlman has crafted the first definitive biography of Payton. Sweetness at last brings fans a detailed, scrupulously researched, all-encompassing account of the legend’s rise to greatness. From Payton’s childhood in segregated Mississippi, where he ended a racial war by becoming the star of his integrated high school’s football team, to his college years and his thirteen-year NFL career, Sweetness brims with stories of all-American heroism and covers Payton’s life on and off the field. Set against the backdrop of the tragic illness that cut his life short at just 45 years of age, this is a stirring tribute to a singular icon and the lasting legacy he made.
©2011 Jeff Pearlman (P)2011 Blackstone Audio, Inc.