I read this book about a year ago and forgot to do the review. The main part begins with the man who started Piggly Wiggly Clarence Sanders. He was a wealthy man and decided to start a football team wanting to get into the National Football League. The league which just began officially in 1920 and Sanders wanted to be part of the league. He did this by starting the team Memphis Tigers and paying his own team members. He also used former college and pro players.
He would begin to schedule games against pro teams. These games though would be schedules after their season was over and for the pro teams, they looked at them as exhibitions. Some of the star players for the pro teams would play for Memphis because he would pay more than the pro team. Sanders would also do a write up like his team was the better team and should be allowed in the league. When his team beat the Bears and then Sanders did his normal write up, he went after the wrong owner. Halas said it would be different for Sanders's team to play the Bears in Chicago and other places since he plays all of his games in Memphis. He would later travel to Chicago to play the Cardinals and he would also travel around to nearby towns.
Later they would try to join the AFL which in the thirties was the first league to take on the NFL. These teams and league would fail because of the depression. What you have though is a story of a man who loved Memphis and football just like Halas, Lambeau, and the other owners who loved their towns and their teams. Here you get a look at the old football and business of the depression and how it affected one man’s business to the point he lost Piggly Wiggly. Overall a good book and a good surprise.

I had trouble finishing this book. It was difficult for me to follow, but instead of leaving a negative review, I just wanted to mention this here and thank the publisher and author for providing a copy of the book. Best of luck in your future endeavors.

I had to read the whole introduction until I got the wordplay of the title "Tigers by the River". The first part of the book takes the reader a few generations back into earlier West Tennessee, and the author's great-grandfather connections into that era. The writing inspired me to have a look at some of the mentioned locations in Memphis on the internet, both pictures of the past and the street view of the present, and then found myself drawn deeper into the story.
The focus of the book is on the difficult ups and downs of a Memphis home team at a time when professional football was still trying to find its feet. The later part of the text describes details of that struggle in a number of games. Readers who are football fans will enjoy this insight.
The appeal to me was the cast of characters. I read it not so much as a history book, but much more as a story about individuals emerging from the horse and buggy era, people whose accomplishments are the result of their grandiose self-presentation, but aided by an energetic, inventive nature that might just get things done. Surprisingly, we learn that the mercurial originator of this particular football team also was trailblazer for our modern grocery supermarkets.
So we hear an engaging background story of glorious victory and crashing defeat, in addition on the rise and fall of a team, young college age players whose own hopes for glory were sometimes rewarded or failed, from the view of their era. The book carries the mark of very detailed research into news articles, and includes a number of pictures. All in all, an enjoyable and informative book even if football is not the prime motivator for reading it.

Professional football has a long, but somewhat unusual history in the US. For many years, not only was it a weak competitor to professional baseball, but couldn’t even manage to outdraw college=or even high school- football. The Memphis Tigers were a professional team, and this book tracks their history from their founding through the years of the Great Depression. Along the way, Wylie Graham McLallen gives us not only a view of early pro football, but also a nice cross-sectional look at life in the American heartland.

=== The Good Stuff ===

* In many ways, the game was already taking on some of its familiar aspects. You can see the rise of the forward pass and more high-scoring offenses, but also the development of league play, competitive bidding of player salaries, “luxury” box seating, egotistical owners and the occasional scandal.

* I enjoyed reading of professional football when it was a much more informal game. Teams were scheduled on short notice, player rosters made up at the last minute, games often cancelled because the opposing team got a better offer, or the World Series was underway, or a particularly good high-school football game was scheduled. Players were not full-time professional athletes, and might be found bagging groceries, building houses or selling cars during the week or off-season.

* The book touches on some characters who would become famous in football history. The Memphis Tigers cross paths with the likes of George Halas, Bronco Nagurski and Curly Lambeau, and we see these men begin to develop the NFL out of the chaos of early pro and semi-pro football.

* McLallen spends part of the book describing how football mixes in with Depression-era America. The team fights to draw attendance, and one game draws 48 fans at 85 cents each. Meanwhile Notre Dame and Army drew over 80,000 fans to a single game in Yankee Stadium. The book also discusses early efforts at using “civic pride” to finance a sports team, as grocers and department stores sponsor and support the loses of the Tigers over the years.


=== The Not-So-Good Stuff ===

* Much of the book is made up of game summaries. While these do give a flavor for how the game was played, they take up quite a bit of the book, involve many players that I had never heard of, and just sort of run together in a forgettable “three yards and a cloud of dust”.

* There is little of the “big picture”. The reader is left to his own devices to make any connections between modern football and its roots, and there is not much discussion of the business or marketing strategy behind the game. In short, much of the book is a recitation of events rather than any sort of analysis or conclusions.

* The book could have been improved by adding more historical context. For example, there is much discussion of ticket prices and player salaries, but precious little to compare it to. How much did a movie ticket cost in Memphis in 1935? Or what was the salary of a pro baseball player? Or a stock clerk?


=== Summary ===

The book was fine for what it was, but I found myself wanting more of a high-level discussion of what was happening, both in the development of organized sports and in the country in general. Parts of the book that dealt with the specifics of game play were interesting, but too much of this content was indistinguishable and did not lead to any obvious conclusions. The discussion of life in depression-era Memphis was certainly interesting, and could have been expanded.

I suppose hard-core sports fans would be interested in the book, but I believe more casual fans of the game would grow bored with the level of detail and lack of analysis and high-level discussion.

Informative, insightful and engaging. This book is a must read for every football fanatic. I loved it and would recommend it to everyone