A fun nonfiction read about women and football. For serious fans only who want to hear about the women’s movement through one sport.

On the heels of last year's successful Hail Mary: The Rise and Fall of the National Women's Football League, I questioned whether we needed another book already about women's football. In short: yes, we do. Guinan takes a look at the NWFL through the lens of one team, the Toledo Troopers. We meet the players, the coaches, and the owners who all had different reasons for wanting the league to succeed. The players' backstories are particularly interesting.

This would be a good recommendation for readers who enjoy history, sports, or a good story.

What did reading We Are the Troopers mean to me? It offered me a glimpse into a world I knew nothing about. I don’t mean football, as I have been an avid football fan most of my life. I mean a women’s professional league. In some ways, I found myself jealous of these women who were able to play and make a difference in the community around them. I want to think that I know a few women who would have played if things were only slightly different when the league formed.

We Are the Troopers tells the story of only one team from the league. But the Troopers were the most dominating team. Linda Jefferson, the league’s best player, had numbers that many of her male counterparts in the Football Hall of Fame wish they could have: 150 career touchdowns, 9,250 yards in seven seasons, with 12.1 yards per carry.

Who should read We Are the Troopers? Do you love sports? Football? Reading about unknown aspects of history? Do you appreciate stories like A League of Their Own? Then you should read this book! You won’t be disappointed.

In the 1972-73 season, there were two professional football teams who went undefeated. One is very familiar to sports fans, the Miami Dolphins who remain the only NFL team to do so in the Super Bowl era. The other one is one that may not be as familiar – the Toledo Troopers. They played in the Women’s Professional Football League (WPFL) and while the league only lasted a few short years and didn’t gain the popularity of the men’s version, those who were a part of the Troopers felt a lasting impression. The stories of some of those people are captured in this book by Stephen Guinan.

There has been a book published on the history of the WPFL and this one covers some of that history. That includes the vision of Sid Friedman who saw potential viability for women’s football given the social climate of the time when the Equal Rights Amendment was passed by Congress and more exposure and compensation was available for female athletes. This was also an era when more professional sports leagues were formed in men’s football, hockey, and basketball. Given all these, Friedman saw a possible windfall.

However, the Troopers already existed at the time the WPFL started (1974) as there were several professional women’s football teams loosely organized. The success of the Troopers made them the premier franchise of the league and amazingly, during their existence between 1972 and 1979, they lost only 4 games and won or shared 7 professional championships. This was recognized in the Pro Football Hall of Fame as well, calling the Troopers the “winningest team in the history of professional football.”

It was a combination of coaching and talented players that gave the Troopers this stellar record and those people are the strength of this book. The best profiles are those of coach Bill Stout and the most accomplished athlete to wear a Trooper uniform, Linda Jefferson. Jefferson’s story is very noteworthy in that not only was she a star for the Troopers, but she was also honored as the female athlete of the year in 1975 by women’s Sports, a magazine published by tennis legend Billie Jean King. Other players for the Troopers such as quarterback Lee Hollar and Beverly Severance get their due as well as coach Carl Hamilton. There are many aspects to their stories, especially Stout and Jefferson, that a reader will learn much about them.

For serious football fans, there is a lot of game action in the book, especially of important playoff and championship games. At times, it reads like a play-by-play recap book and while good, it is not the best aspect of this book. That is reserved for the personal stories and just finally giving the Toledo Troopers the recognition and respect they richly deserve.

I wish to thank Hachette Books for providing a copy of the book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

WE ARE THE TROOPERS, by Stephen Guinan, is about the female football team Toledo Troopers, who won seven championships in the 1970's and portrayed the changing view of women in sports. While their are plenty stories of heroism, sacrifice, loyalty, and athletic success, those women on the Toledo teams (and all of the teams they played against) of the 1970's really just wanted to play football, not to change the perspective of women in sports. By just playing, though, they were a critical part of the explosion of women in sports.
Guinan first introduces the reader to Bill Stout, the owner/coach of the Troopers for the first seven years. A former football player himself, Guinan describes him as a man looking for a purpose and finds one in woman's football. It seems clear early on that the team never would have happened without Bill Stout. Guinan introduces the players over the first few years and tries to endear the reader to as many of them as possible. The sheer volume of players is too big to follow them all and I found myself only able to keep straight of a handful at a time. As the season progress, certain key games are highlighted and others are just mentioned and a lot of the league administration is covered as well. Guinan artfully blends player stories, game highlights, and league events which keeps the reader's attention throughout. There is a list of Troopers players and coaches at the end of the book and I wish I could have found it sooner in order to keep everyone straight.
A fascinating tale of a super successful football team, a struggling league, female sports equality, and a reminder that there is a place for everyone to be athletic and competitive with one another. WE ARE THE TROOPERS is a fun read and a must for sports book fanatics.

Some time ago, I read Hail Mary, a book about the National Women’s Football League, something I never knew existed until I found that book. It annoyed me that I never knew about women’s football. I knew all about women’s baseball, tennis, golf and more and had learned all about Title IX in school. So why hadn’t I learned about women in football? Maybe that’s because there are still some people out there who believe women don’t have a place in such a rough tumble sport. Well, I’m not one of those people, so when I found a book about the winningest team in the now defunct NWFL, I decided I would learn more about them.
It all begins with a memory of the author, Stephen Guinan, seated in a high school cafeteria, innocently talking to another high school student who pronounced proudly that his father was the winningest coach in football. What would at first be a confusing introduction for the author would go on to become a cultivated friendship with the Toledo Troopers waterboy, Guy Stout, son of the team’s coach, Mike Stout. In becoming friends with Guy, Guinan would meet the team’s coach (who would become the head of the NWFL) and the members of the all-women squad who only ever lost one game in their nine-season history.
We then are introduced to the players and their world. Guinan lets us know that these were ordinary women – housewives, secretaries, factory workers, mothers, college students, etc., - who had a love for sports. Some of them had never had the opportunity to take advantage of the Title IX rules as they were passed after they graduated from school. Some only had the opportunity to play tennis or softball, never being given an opportunity to play such a physical sport that was deemed too physical for women to play.
The women who would make up the team known as the Toledo Troopers were tough. They had to be. After all, most people – men and women both – couldn’t believe that anyone would allow a woman to play football, much less tackle football. They didn’t have much in the way of uniforms at first, and what they did have doesn’t even come close to the standards of the sport today. They played through concussions, broken bones, sprained ankles, torn ACLs, etc., all for the love of the sport.
Guinan takes us every step of the way, from the gimmick thought up by a talent agency founder named Sid Friedman, through the takeover of the Troopers and their incorporation status, through the hardships that faced both the coach and the players, through their final tragedy and eventual disbandment. He even goes so far as to let us know what many of the players are doing now. Guinan’s writing is such that I actually cringed with every hit described in every game discussed. I could feel the players’ anguish when they lost players or even on that fated day against the Dolls in which they acquired their only loss. Reading about each and every player on the team the way Guinan described them made me want to meet these pioneers.
The women of the Toledo Troopers are not just pioneers, they are heroes, for they taught others that women can do anything they set their minds to. We Are the Troopers is a well-written and engaging ode to these women who made history on the gridiron and in the hearts of every little girl who wondered to what heights they could soar.

I was given an advance copy of this book, and I'm really glad I got the chance to read it. This is a fun, sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes joyous, always fascinating story that needed to be told.

While women have always had to struggle to gain acceptance in almost any given sport, there are some that carry stigma more than others. Football is one of them- the violent, tough aura of the sport seems to be at odds with some people's expectations of a what a woman should be like. Particularly in the 1960's, when the Troopers are created (just a few years before Title IV). And yet by the time you're finished with this book, Stephen Guinan has shown you that the women who played football, like people of any gender and any sport, gained so many positive things from playing. The Troopers- and the women's football league- don't last, but the players become leaders, innovators, and confident women.

Guinan never panders in this book- there's never any sense of, "look, it's WOMEN! Playing FOOTBALL! Crazy, huh?' He tells their story in the engaging, well-researched way of a veteran sports reporter. He also tackles the tough subject of their coach- a man who struggled with the relationships, jobs, and interactions in his life but was excellent at football and coaching- in a calm, clearsighted manner that allows the reader to see all facets and make their own conclusions. I was glad to learn the names and lives of the winningest team, and I recommend that everyone else should too.