After retiring from football, he earned his PhD at Stanford and became a professor of English and later Associate Dean of the College of Liberal Arts at Oregon State University.[3] His academic work has centered on American sports nonfiction in multiple media.
Works
Dreaming of Heroes: American Sports Fiction, 1868–1980 (1982)
Sporting with the Gods: The Rhetoric of Play and Game in American Literature (1991) ISBN9780521391139
Reading Football: How the Popular Press Created an American Spectacle (Cultural Studies of the United States) (1998) ISBN9780807847510
King Football: Sport and Spectacle in the Golden Age of Radio and Newsreels, Movies and Magazines, the Weekly and the Daily Press (2001)
Bowled Over: Big-Time College Football from the Sixties to the BCS Era (2009) ISBN9780807833292
The End of Autumn: Reflections on My Life in Football (2009)[1]ISBN9780252076695
Brand NFL: Making and Selling America's Favorite Sport (2010) ISBN9780807831427
The Art of Football: The Early Game in the Golden Age of Illustration (2017) ISBN9780803290693