In Bloody Sundays, award-winning sportswriter Mike Freeman delivers an eye-opening appraisal of football, capturing the complexities and controversies of America's new national pastime

With fascinating insights, Freeman goes beyond day-to-day newspaper journalism and ESPN highlights to take us deep inside the game and reveal the NFL in ways that will surprise even the most avid football fans. He travels to the sidelines and into the locker rooms to interview hundreds of players and coaches on their expertise. Breaking the game down to its three essential elements -- coaching, offense, and defense -- Freeman profiles in depth three of today's football elite: Jon Gruden, head coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers; Michael Strahan, defensive end for the New York Giants; and Emmitt Smith, the legendary running back.

Packed with football history and anecdotes, Bloody Sundays goes behind the scenes of the "secret society" of gay players who play in fear of their lives and careers. Freeman offers an exclusive and disturbing look at the life of a current player, the first time an active player addresses homosexuality and the warrior culture NFL.

Freeman also studies how the violence of the game ravages the bodies of players only too willing to suit up and endure extraordinary pain every Sunday, damn the consequences. There is also the matter of how teams are only too willing to look the other way if a player's off-the-field violence doesn't affect his on-the-field performance.

Bloody Sundays takes us into the owners' offices to look at the worst franchise in football, how teams spy on their players, and how intelligence tests determine whether or not a player will be drafted.

Part tribute, part exposé, Bloody Sundays is a vivid portrait of professional football, the men who strap on their helmets every Sunday, and the men who lead them.