Michael MacCambridge

Michael MacCambridge has written about movies, music and popular culture, but he is best known as one of the nation's foremost authorities on pro and college football. His 2004 book 'America's Game: The Epic Story of How Pro Football Captured A Nation' was published by Random House, and named by The Washington Post as one of the most distinguished works of non-fiction in 2004. The book also won the Nelson Ross Award given by the Professional Football Researchers Association, for outstanding achievement in pro football research and history. The paperback version was published by Anchor Vintage in 2005. In 2016, Chris Willis of NFL Films put it at the top of his list of "The Top 100 Pro Football Books of All Time." In 2012, MacCambridge wrote 'Lamar Hunt: A Life in Sports,' the official biography of the American sportsman inducted in the pro football, international tennis and national soccer halls of fame. His first book was 'The Franchise: A History of Sports Illustrated Magazine,' which was named as a New York Times Noteworthy Book, and described by the Boston Globe as "one of the great sports-book reads of all time." In 1999, he was the editor and a contributing writer for the New York Times bestseller 'ESPN SportsCentury,' a retrospective of sports in the 20th Century that included original essays by David Halberstam, Joyce Carol Oates, Roy Blount, Jr., Gerald Early, and others. In 2005, MacCambridge edited the critically-acclaimed 'ESPN College Football Encyclopedia,' hailed by Sports Illustrated as "the Bible" of the sport. In 2009, MacCambridge co-authored 'More Than A Game: The Glorious Present and Uncertain Future of the NFL,' with Brian Billick, the Super Bowl-winning former head coach of the Baltimore Raves. Also in 2009, MacCambridge was one of the contributing essayists to 'A New Literary History of America,' by Greil Marcus and Werner Sollors. MacCambridge's freelance work has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Sports Illustrated, GQ, and many other publications. From 1988-95, he was a columnist and critic at the Austin American-Statesman, writing about movies, music and popular culture. He earned a Master's degree from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University in 1986. A year earlier, he received his B.A. from Creighton University in Omaha. His latest book, the biography 'Chuck Noll: His Life's Work,' was published in October 2016. The father of two children, Miles and Ella, he lives in Austin, Texas.