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When David Halberstam stops writing about sports–God delay the day–he will go down as one of the great English-language sportswriters of all time. Rarely does a writer on serious topics, and he writes on sport as a most serious enterprise, excel in such varied genres as political history (‘The Best and the Brightest’) and sport.
This first deployment of the author’s considerable skills on American football is the literary equivalent of a successful Hail Mary pass. Offered late in the game with but perhaps one chance to win the battle, a high-risk throw is tossed into the air with the hope that somebody down there might make the unlikely victorious grab.
The reader does.
Bill Belichick, the now-legendary head coach of the New England Patriots teams that dominated the NFL at the midpoint of the new century’s first decade, comes under Halberstam’s gaze. This cerebral, obsessively disciplined anti-celebrity with his passion for building a team on good value from the ground up is not at first glance a compelling subject for a professional biography. Yet Halberstam’s gift is for discerning just how a key persona decided to move against the grain of a profession’s received wisdom without necessarily calling attention to his methodological heresy.
Quietly building up ‘Belichick University’ while traversing the serial failures that are the calling card of professional coaching and coaches, Coach Belichick built a different kind of team and did the Thing that can almost not be imagined: he changed the NFL.
As he tells the story, quickly convincing his reader that it is a fascinating tale that merits his readers attention even as civil wars, terrorist alarm, and global warming conspire to argue that sport is an irrelevance, Halberstam scatters observations and knowing turns of phrase that leaders of any profession are likely to find invaluable.
Even if you thought the Patriots were a missile defense system, read this book.
Canter Bridge 
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