“The Bouncing Football: Life Lessons on the Gridiron” by Rodrigo Barnes is now available for purchase
“Wherever you are, your job is to do your job. Success in any particular instance might depend on the flip of a coin, and there’s no guarantee that your talent and skills will take you where you want to go. There are too many factors in life and too many people acting on their own likes and dislikes to guarantee success.”
– an excerpt from book
He questioned the system and paid the price…
Author Reputation Press is honored to publish “The Bouncing Football: Life Lessons on the Gridiron” by Rodrigo Barnes. This masterpiece is a frank look into the hard-knock life of a black man from his childhood in Waco, Texas, up through his National Football League career and beyond. This inspiring and life-changing book is now available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and the ARP website.
Rodrigo Barnes’ “The Bouncing Football: Life Lessons on the Gridiron” is highly acclaimed by Toby Berry of the US Review of Books, who acknowledges that “his book is awakening and thought-provoking. It will assuredly help any reader understand what it was like growing up as a black youth in America during the fifties and sixties. It is a poignant book describing generational trauma and healing amidst the backdrop of sports.”
Rodrigo Barnes was born in 1950 in Waco, Texas. He is a former American football linebacker in the National Football League for the Dallas Cowboys, New England Patriots, and Oakland Raiders. He played college football at Rice University.
44 years ago, he played for the Dallas Cowboys for a single season as a middle linebacker. During his rookie season in 1973, the 23-year-old from Waco was a backup to a fading legend, Lee Roy Jordan, and was traded by October of 1974 before he vanished from pro football altogether just two years later. His official Rice University biography, penned upon his induction into that school’s hall of fame in 2011, notes that his career was cut short by injuries. But that is not the whole truth.
Rodrigo Barnes was, he has long believed, punished for being an outspoken black man in an industry controlled by white men. He was banished for being “a radical at a time when radicals weren’t popular” the beloved Cowboys’ wide receiver Drew Pearson once said. It might be tempting to say that before there was Colin Kaepernick, there was Rodrigo Barnes, a man exiled from the game he loved. There may be a certain truth to the comparison. Both men sacrificed their pro football careers to protest the treatment of black men in America.
The author’s autobiography is horrific in some parts, but Barnes doesn’t seek pity. He simply says how it was, what he did about it, and how his outlook evolved. He navigated the years with style, grace, and grit.
“The Bouncing Football: Life Lessons on the Gridiron” by Rodrigo Barnes is now available for purchase via ARP Bookstore: https://authorreputationpress.com/products/the-bouncing-football-life-lessons-on-the-gridiron.