CLICK HERE for more info on GOOD PROSE: THE FOOTBALL LIFE OF F. SCOTT FITZGERALD

F. Scott Fitzgerald was one of America's great novelists. But behind The Great Gatsby and some of his most memorable fiction was a lifelong passion few readers know about: football. Fitzgerald dreamed of football stardom, idolized its heroes, obsessed over Princeton football and remained an "audience, amateur statistician and foiled participant" for the rest of his life. And this was football at the center of American sports: Princeton, Yale and Harvard were the juggernauts of their age, much as the SEC is today.

GOOD PROSE uncovers this remarkable and largely forgotten story, bringing together Fitzgerald's best football fiction and writing with correspondence, analysis, legendary players (Ted Coy, Sammy White, and Hobey Baker), and coaches (Walter Camp, John Heisman and Fritz Crisler), great sportswriters of the era (Grantland Rice, Ring Lardner, and Heywood Broun), and the photographs, programs, traditions and artifacts of the game he loved. Football evoked Fitzgerald's dreams and disappointments, his heartbreak and triumph, and shaped some of his greatest characters and stories. The players remained young. Fitzgerald did not. But football gave him a way back.