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This classic doesn't rock

Sporting News, The, Oct 25, 2004 by Matt Crossman

Paper Lion is the Seinfeld of sports books: It's a book about nothing. George Plimpton goes to training camp with the Detroit Lions in 1963, and nothing happens. The book starts out well enough; its first 100 pages or so are fascinating, and you'll agree, up to then, with the reviewer's blurb on the back of my copy: "You'll wish it was six times longer." The rest is excruciatingly boring. You'll wish it were half as long.

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Large chunks of the book read like thinly veiled disappointment that Alex Karras was suspended at the time and not in camp. It's as though Plimpton wrote a book about The Three Stooges the week Curly was on vacation. Plimpton offers several interesting anecdotes about the wacky defensive lineman, enough to make you wish you had been a gaffer or something on Webster. Karras is by far the best character in the book, and he's not even really in it. Plimpton should have tried out again--when Karras was back---and written about that.

This classic doesn't rock

Sporting News, The, Oct 25, 2004 by Matt Crossman

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