A very interesting book that changed my perspective on the history of the sport. Gwynne's summary of the history of the forward pass in the first half of the book puts a new spin on the ground game/air game conflict within football. Also, this book shows a little how badly we tend to treat our coaches, whether they deserve it or not.

The book's main weakness was its inability to account for the lack of National Championships run by Air Raid offenses in recent years, or why a pure Air Raid offense, such as Mumme's, has never been adopted by powerhouses like Alabama, Stanford, or Oregon. It also left me more interested and less informed about why collegiate football remains so much more conservative in their tactics while professional teams tend to experiment. ( )

THE PERFECT PASS by SC Gwynne is the story of a man, Hal Mumme, with a vision of how football should be played, not how football was stuck in the "if it works, don't change it" approach. Gwynne chronicles Hal's rise from a tiny school where his radical ideas are forming, all the way to his short stay in Division 1-A football at University of Kentucky.
Hal Mumme's theory of pass first, pass a lot, and then pass some more was a hard concept for the sports world to understand at first. Gwynne does a good job of explaining that Mumme's vision, coupled with the near constant job he had of taking a nothing and/or a joke football program and turning them around. Along the way, Gwynne diagrams and educates the reader on Mumme's theories while not making it overwhelming or complicated. Gwynne also made clear that while the new way Mumme coaches football is different and rather successful and changed football on all levels, that is still was always getting tweaks and always could get better. The name of the book, THE PERFECT PASS, really is what Mumme and all of football was and is trying to achieve, but while Mumme got close, I felt like this book indicated that perhaps that isn't possible.
Any football fan would enjoy this book. It's well balanced between education on process and the narrative on Mumme and it was a pleasure to read.
Thank you to Scribner, S.C. Gwynne, and Netgalley for a copy of this book in exchange for a honest review! ( )