World Football League Book - Mark Speck

Wiffle
The Wild, Zany and
Sometimes Hilariously
True Story of the
World Football League

Mark Speck

The decade of the 1970s was a unique, fascinating, depressing and exciting period all at the same time. It was a turbulent time that saw many history-making events, and some wild and crazy fads and fashions come and go. A lot of things associated with the 1970s, such as bell bottom, leisure suits, Jimmy Hoffa, pet rocks, lava lamps, mood rings, Nehru jackets, and disco, music, didn't survive that turbulent decade. Neither did the World Football League. Just as the decade itself, the WFL was at once unique, fascinating, depressing, and exciting. It was a slick, mod, hip alternative to the established entity, the National Football League. It featured the Dickerrod, King Corcoran, bouncing checks, yellow footballs, court orders, magenta and orange uniforms, color-coded pants, Papergate, and singular team nicknames that one scribe said made the WFL sound more like a listing of Indian folklore than a football league. But, also like the decade itself, while the league did not survive the 70s, the wild, zany and hilariously true stories associated with the WFL survive to this day. It has never ceased to amaze and entertain. As Alex Hawkins, color commentator to the WFL's Game of the Week broadcasts so aptly said, "The whole thing was so bizarre that you just had to love it.

All of these stories have been chronicled in "WIFFLE", a book that can be best described as a 50-yard-line ticket to a real-life Theater of the Absurd.

Mark Speck has been researching pro football for the last 26 years. He has written numerous articles for the Professional Football Researchers' Association publication, The Coffin Corner, and has contributed his time and efforts to several football encyclopedias and the official WFL website. He has also worked as co-author of the World Football League Encyclopedia with Tod Maher, and has authored a book on the 1974 Florida Blazers entitled ...and a Dollar Short, for which he won the PFRA's 2011 Nelson Ross Award for "outstanding achievement for pro football research and historiography". When he is not researching pro football, Mark works full-time as a quality assurance specialist for the nonprofit organization Able2 in Elmira, New York. Mark lives in Horseheads, New York, with his still very understanding and patient wife Elise, and their Pug.

ISBN: 9781937943240 - 364 Pages - Hardcover - $45.00

Price: $45.00

Shipping: $5.00

*NOTE: Mention the World Football League Web site and the shipping cost will be waived.

Orders can be made by phone (201) 387-1529 or send a check to:

St. Johann Press
ATTN: Dave Biesel
P.O. Box 241
Haworth, New Jersey 07641