Like a Rose: A Celebration of Football

More than 30 years ago, acclaimed author and Chicago Sun-Times sports columnist Rick Telander was drafted out of Northwestern University by a Kansas City Chiefs team filled with future Pro Football Hall of Famers and coached by the legendary Hank Stram. Telander recently found the tattered, spiral-bound journal he kept while in that training camp and, after re-reading the entries he kept until being cut from the team, was amazed and moved by the life lessons he took away from that once-in-a-lifetime experience and how they can be applied to people’s lives today.

In Like a Rose: A Thoughtful Celebration of Football, Rick Telander reproduces his training-camp journal, following each entry with his views today on how those unique events and the heartbreak of not being able to fulfill his NFL dream helped propel him into a life as one of the country’s most highly respected and well-known sportswriters. Telander, whose other books include Heaven is a Playground, ranked as the 15th best sports book of all-time by Sports Illustrated, hopes to show how a game some see as being violent can instead offer lessons that people from any walk of life can understand. He also promises to explain the poignancy behind the enigmatic title, Like a Rose.

Like a Rose also includes an in-depth interview with Rick Telander that will take readers Beyond the Book. This very candid, personal interview will give fans even more insight into the life lessons Rick has learned from the game of football.