In 2002 ESPN rated football's shift to the modern T-formation offense as the second best sports innovation of all time-just behind baseball's free agency. The story behind the move to the T-formation is also the story of a season unparalleled in the annals of college football-the year Stanford's new coach, fresh from seven dismal seasons with the University of Chicago, deployed an out-of-favor offense to take a team of talented underdogs to a Rose Bowl victory. The Wow Boys (the title refers to the nickname the team earned at its very first game) chronicles Stanford's miraculous 1940 season,...

In the mid-1950s three unrecruited black basketball players, coached by a white former prison guard who had never before coached a college team, led a small Jesuit university in San Francisco to two national titles. The Dandy Dons describes for the first time how the unprecedented accomplishment of the Dons, led by coach Phil Woolpert and future hall-of-famers Bill Russell and K. C. Jones, paved the way for black talent in major college basketball and transformed the sport.
James W. Johnson traces the backgrounds of the coach and players, chronicles the heart-stopping games on the...