Before the Super Bowl, even before the NFL, there was Red Grange. Catapulted into the public eye in 1924 by scoring four touchdowns in twelve minutes for the University of Illinois, the "Galloping Ghost" went on to a trailblazing career as a professional player, Hollywood idol, and broadcaster. He ranked with Babe Ruth and Jack Dempsey in the 1920s as one of the heralded figures in America's "golden age of sport."

Grange's spectacular performance as a college player coincided with football's evolution into a rallying point of university life boosted by post-World War I money, cars, roads, stadiums, and mass media. John Carroll depicts the life and career of the soft-spoken pioneer who helped lift pro football above its reputation as "a dirty little business run by rogues and bargain-basement entrepreneurs." A reluctant folk hero, Grange stood as a symbol of older, rural American values: an unpretentious self-made individual making a mark in a society increasingly controlled by machines, vast corporations, and stifling bureaucracies. His story is an essential element in understanding how football became central in American culture.