Semi-Tough

by Dan Jenkins, Sally Jenkins (Introduction)

Made into a hilarious and timeless film starring Burt Reynolds, Kris Kristofferson, and Jill Clayburgh, and recently named number seven on Sports Illustrated's Top 100 Sports Books of All Time, Semi-Tough is Dan Jenkins's masterpiece and considered by many to be the funniest sports book ever written. The novel follows the outsize adventures of Billy Clyde Puckett, star halfback for the New York Giants, whose team has come to Los Angeles for an epic duel with the despised "dog-ass" Jets in the Super Bowl. But Billy Clyde is faced with a dual challenge: not only must he try to run over a bunch of malevolencies incarnate, but he has also been commissioned by a New York book publisher to keep a journal of the events leading up to, including, and following the game. Infused with Dan Jenkins's characteristic joie de vivre and replete with cigarettes, whiskey, and wild women, Semi-Tough is an uproarious romp through a lost era of professional sports that will have any armchair quarterback falling out of his or her recliner in hysterics on a semi-regular basis.

Genres: Sports, Fiction, Humor, Football, Novels, Modern, American

317 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1972

About the author

Dan Jenkins was an American author and sportswriter, most notably for Sports Illustrated.

Jenkins was born and raised in Fort Worth, Texas, where he attended R.L. Paschal High School and Texas Christian University (TCU), where he played on the varsity golf team. Jenkins worked for many publications including the Fort Worth Press, Dallas Times Herald, Playboy, and Sports Illustrated. In 1985 he retired from Sports Illustrated and began writing books full-time and maintained a monthly column in Golf Digest magazine.

Larry King called Jenkins "the quintessential Sports Illustrated writer" and "the best sportswriter in America." Jenkins authored numerous works and over 500 articles for Sports Illustrated. In 1972, Jenkins wrote his first novel, Semi-Tough.

His daughter, Sally Jenkins, is a sports columnist for the Washington Post.

Reviews

[Jim · Rating 2 out of 5]

Definitely dated & the humor got really old pretty quick. Most of it wasn't that funny to start. This is the autobiography of a pro football player in the early 1970s that starts just before Super Bowl which is being played in LA between the Giants & the dog-ass Jets. Guess which team Billy Clyde Puckett is on? He's a self-admitted redneck from Texas, but that doesn't mean he doesn't like niggers or greasers so long as they play well. Football is far more important than anything else.

...but all I know is that Randy Juan Llanez got credit for going ninety-eight steps to their alumni stripe, and it was six more for our side. And if he's not the greatest little spook-spick I've ever
known then you can go browse through your taco huts and find one to top him.

I'm embarrassed that I made such a spectacle of myself when Randy crossed the goal line. I was running right behind him all the way. And I was so happy when he scored that I guess I must have looked like a dress designer the way I wrestled him down to the ground and hugged on him, celebrating.

Yes, that's pretty much how the entire book goes. If you don't laugh, I understand, but it had its moments, especially at the end.

I don't at all remember the ten-yard sweep where they tell me I flat ran over Dreamer Tatum, cunt on cunt. And he had to be helped off the field for the first time in his career.

On the plus side, the Super Bowl was pretty exciting & he didn't spare anyone or anything his blunted wit & there were plenty of targets.

You try not to get upset by anything you read, of course. Most of it is bullshit. But you read it. Any football player who claims he doesn't read the papers or the magazines about himself or his team is telling about as much truth, like Shake says, as a President or Senator.

To top it all off, it's a love story, although you won't really see that one coming until the very end. So it's pretty weird, quirky, & amazingly nasty. If it had been shorter, I wouldn't have minded.

[Wally · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've read this book before. Dan Jenkins is one of my favorite authors. The book club I just joined asked me to pick the next book and I couldn't resist. Very off-color, completely politically incorrect, and one of the funniest books ever written. Hope somebody likes it or I may never get to pick a book again. :-)

Finished. I am still amazed at how I laugh at this book. Jenkins humour is just hilarious to me. Part of it is the way he understands how athletes talk and act. I know that this book is a semi-parody, but there's enough truth and accuracy to real life to make his story ring true. The description of the Super Bowl is priceless especially half-time. The other thing I love is the way he captures how people interact when they're mad or being sarcastic. Full of incredible one-liners. I also love his conversations with Jim Tom Pinch his ghost writer. The descriptions of the high school basketball in Fort Worth are too funny. I hope you'all will send me your thoughts and impressions as you read the book and after you're finished.
Astronaut Jones-Wallace, tryin' one.

[Chris · Rating 1 out of 5]

I like Dan Jenkins. As a budding sportswriter growing up near Fort Worth, I found it impossible not to. He's funny, insightful and he's forgotten more about golf and football than most people learn in a lifetime. I'll be reading his tweets from the British Open this weekend, no doubt.

That's why it absolutely pains me to pan this book. Maybe I'm just being prudish. Maybe I've become oversensitive. Maybe I didn't live through the free-wheeling late '60s and early '70s and just don't get it. But to say this book is dated is an understatement. I just read a travel book by Paul Theroux written in the late '70s, which holds up far better than this one.

The story, which can be best described as "Porky's at the Super Bowl," might just win the Michael Richards Award for most ethnic slurs, although homophobic slurs aren't far behind. The characters are mostly overplayed Texas stereotypes.

Now it's clear Jenkins tells this story tongue-in-cheek, but the irony gets lost in the n-words. Carl Hiaasen, who can also tell a wonderfully crass tale, sends up his characters more clearly and gives a better plot.

I take no joy in this. I can understand why Jenkins is one of the best sportswriters of the 20th century. But I can't understand why this was a best-seller.

[Vic · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s been awhile since I’ve read this book, but I do remember how it made me laugh. It’s a quick read, and a book set in the 70s. I also read North Dallas Forty by Peter Gent, a similar book, but a little more serious on social problems of the day.

[P.S. Winn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Humor on and off the field in a bit off-color look at the world of football. You don't have to like football to find this book amusing and fascinating, but if you are a sport's fan, even better.

[Jensine’s-Bethna Wall · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF (Page 180) as I just couldn’t get past the language and lack if plot … a novel very much if it’s time about American Football and how those men were. I couldn’t see the the funny side at all !

[Ronnie · Rating 2 out of 5]

"I told 'em I thought I knew where they could lick theyselves some wool, so here we are. By God, there's some here, too, ain't they?"

More soft porn and fart jokes than football, this one is occasionally humorous but has way more winces than laughs, and you have to have at least semi-tough skin to stay with it. I want to say it didn't age well (understatement), but it's difficult to imagine it would've seemed cool even when it was fresh off the press in 1972. Narrator Billy Clyde Puckett is presented as sort of a crude, only semi-literate racist dolt who thinks a lot of himself despite having no self-awareness. Ironically (or just ridiculously), he says his reason for "writing" the book ("writing" = talking into a tape recorder) is to potentially "have a healthy influence on kids":

Not to get too serious about it, but it might be true what Jim Tom says. That my ideas on football and relationships between athletes could help change the minds of several little old Southern motherfuckers whose families have taught them to hate niggers, hebes, Catholics and whores.

He's sort of an equal-opportunity asshole, a star running back and team captain for the NY Giants, who are about to play the "dog-ass" NY Jets in the Super Bowl, but that's only the story's conceit; you don't actually get to the big game until page 252 and meanwhile have to wade through a lot of truly bad country music lyrics and sentences such as "Thirteen-year-old nymphomaniacs ought to be eat more," and pretty much every time he mentions having a "young Scotch" or chasing "wool" or admiring Barbara Jane's "lungs"--all of which happens a lot, as if on a scratched record--you kind of want to hit him or Jenkins upside the head to stop the repeat. I really like the novel's opening sentence, but things go downhill quickly from there, and it becomes a semi-tough read.

First line:
"I guess by now there can't be too many people anywhere who haven't heard about Billy Clyde Puckett, the humminest sumbitch that ever carried a football."

"But about ten seconds after Jim Tom married her, Earlene went out and got herself some fat arms, a big butt and turned dumber than a fundamentalist preacher."

[Frank · Rating 3 out of 5]

Originally read this back in 1973. I remember at the time, back when I was in the military, I thought this book was hilarious. Well, on rereading, I guess my tastes have changed. The book was filled with racist and sexist language and remarks that now seems embarrassing. The book is told by Billy Clyde Puckett, who plays for the New York Giants, and who tells of his exploits before, during, and after meeting the New York Jets in the Superbowl. One of the reasons I reread this was because of the recent Superbowl comeback by the Patriots over the Falcons and indeed, a similar comeback occurs in this book. But the book really is not about the game but about the various shenanigans of the players and their cohorts. I guess it is still funny in many aspects but I would only mildly recommend this.

[Wyatt Hamilton · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is called Semi Tough, written by Dan Jenkins. Semi-Tough is Dan Jenkins's masterpiece and considered by many to be the one of the funniest sports book ever written. The book cover the escapades Billy Clyde Puckett, an elite running back for the New York Giants. His team has come to LA for an epic duel with the despised Jets in the Super Bowl. He is faced with 2 challenges, not only must he try to beat a team of punk Jets, but he has also been asked by a book publisher to keep a journal of the events leading up to, throughout, and following the game. This is a stellar, well written, and comical novel. It made me keel over with laughter on multiple occasions. The mix between adult humor and sports parody perfectly combines to make one of the funniest books I have ever read.I would recommend this book to males that enjoy partying and sports. I think is book is well worthy of five stars.

[David Ward · Rating 5 out of 5]

Semi-Tough by Dan Jenkins (Da Capo Press 1972) (Fiction). This is an uproarious novel about three best friends, two of whom are totally irreverent pro football stars. Jenkins creates some unforgettable teammates. When I was fourteen, I thought this was the funniest book ever written. This brings back great memories. My rating: 7.5/10, finished 1972.

[Gerald Heath · Rating 4 out of 5]

A 1970’s football book about a couple of Texas buddies who make it to the Súper bowl. It was fun forty years ago, and it still is, but it shows it’s age. It as always raunchy, but the racist and misogynistic humor wouldn’t fly today. I doubt it could get published.

[Jon · Rating 4 out of 5]

For several decades, I owned a copy of Semi-Tough, and its follow-on novels, Dead Solid Perfect and Life Its Ownself. It was just one of those light hearted tales that stuck with me, and prompted me to read it over and over. Recently, while going through my library, though, I couldn't find it or any of Jenkins' books, so I must have loaned them out to someone who needed them worse than I - or they would have returned them, right?

So this...review...will be from memory.

By the way, there was a movie called Semi-Tough that starred Burt Reynolds, Kris Kristofferson, and Jill Clayburgh, I think. It wasn't nearly as entertaining as the novel, though one scene really cracked me up - the one with the Motorman's Friend. Other than that, it was a snoozer for me.

Semi-Tough is the story of the weeks leading up to the Super Bowl from the point of view of Billy Clyde Puckett, quarterback from Fort Worth, Texas, starring his two best and oldest friends, Marvin "Shake" Tiller, wide receiver, and the only girl who ever really "got" them, Barbara Jean Bookman, whose daddy is in the "oil bidness".

This novel meanders along a crooked path, making fun of racial prejudice, the NFL, Texans, the oil bidness, and what passes for high society in Forth Worth. Bill Clyde's team has to play "the dog-ass Jets" for the championship, and there's no love lost between the squads. Having been written in 1972, it's well seasoned with sex, drugs and rock and roll - or perhaps rockabilly country western. By today's standards, the novel is pretty tame, and would only be offensive to the stridently politically correct, I suppose.

If you run across a copy, pick it up and read it...or send it my way. Mine is still AWOL.

[Eve Fisher · Rating 1 out of 5]

Once upon a time I thought this book was funny. And it does have a lot of good dirty jokes in it. But I was thinking about it today, at lunch, and for the first time I realized how horribly sexist it is. Not the constant screwing of everything that moves - but here are these two football buddies – Shake Tiller and Billy Clyde Puckett - and Shake’s girlfriend, Barbara Jane Bookman. Barb is the daughter of the richest man back in Fort Worth, Texas. She's described – by both guys – as almost perfect, sexy, beautiful, flawless body, smart, and always knows how to be “one of the guys”. Barb, the ultimate fantasy girlfriend, who never sleeps with anyone but Shake, but is always cool with everything the boys do, whether getting blow-jobs in a bathtub by a hired hooker or drinking themselves silly or spending the pre-Superbowl night at a party where there’s drinks, drugs, and endless girls, and of course Barb never worries about get STDs or anything like that. Just cool with the guys. And in the end, after putting up with all Shake's adolescent crap, she's still dumped by Shake, who literally leaves her to Billy Clyde. Well, it's a happy ending, because she and Billy Clyde get together - but damn. Nasty role model for young women.

[Erin Haight · Rating 4 out of 5]

I doubt this book could get published today. Racial slurs get tossed around like candy and I felt genuinely uneasy through the first 40 pages or so. It’s remarkable how inured one can get to it through repetition, though. Something to pay attention to, kids. But with that, this was a very fucking funny and oddly moving book. Despite the over-the-top presentation the broad strokes of this book feel true, affirming Jenkins’s long familiarity with the locker room and its inhabitants. And despite the craziness and the mores that definitely were beyond the pale even in the sexual revolution 1970s, the central roles, Billy Clyde, Shake, and Barbara Jean, feel deeply sympathetic and lived-in. The plot doesn’t matter much to the tale, but I still really cared about its resolution and want to know what happened to these people after the end of the book, which is the joy and sadness of the best yarns. If you can stomach the casual racism and sexism, you’ll find something pretty good inside and find that at the end of the book, the characters haven’t changed, but how you feel about them has.

[Chris Hemingway · Rating 2 out of 5]

I heard about this book through Quentin Tarantino, which I would usually take as a good sign. I almost DNFed it several times though. I made it to the end though. To be fair, QT had said he read it as a youngster and it made him think that 'if this is how books are written, then I could do this.' I really don't have much to say about it, someone in the reviews described it as 'Porkies at the Super Bowl,' and I guess that about sums it up. If you you were triggered watching Gran Torino, this one is going to kick your nuts out your asshole, male or female, won't matter. I'm assuming this was a pretty honest reflection of many of the locker rooms of the '60s and '70s however. There is also some decent humour to be found among the detritus of bigotry. Sex, drugs, and football.

[Nate Deprey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Semi-Tough has a language problem. While it feels and is a totally modern and smart take on professional football culture. The catch is that our tour guide, Billy Clyde Puckett, a running back for the New York Giants recording his thoughts into a tape recorder during the week leading up to a super bowl against the "dog ass Jets," is a casually sexist, racist, homophobic and entitled as any character, let alone narrator, I have encountered in fiction. And yet through Puckett's oblivious narration, Jenkins is able to bring the reader an unvarnished view of pro football that the NFL has spent a half century trying to hide from the public.

[Jeff Mayo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sportswriter Dan Jenkins wrote for Sports Illustrated when he wrote this book about pro football. This is a fictional account of a wide receiver and a running back who womanize, drink, and party in the days leading up to the Super Bowl. The jokes are dated and probably weren't funny when this was published 47 years ago. The narrative is probably true to the era, and it was a big hit as a novel in 1972 and a movie in 1977. I had heard this was MASH about football, and if you have read MASH, that rings true. It isn't as good as MASH, but it is a quick read that you don't need to know anything about football to understand. .

[Mike Collins · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'll Be a Sumbitch

Bought the hardback in 1972 as a Christmas gift for my father. Read it while living in a fraternity house at Carolina (North...there's only one) before I gave it to him and tried not to bend the pages. My guys would come into my room at night and I'd read passages to them...they'd be howling. Try to read Semi-Tough once a year and it always amazes me how much of my thought processes, how much of my attitude about life, comes from this book. Y'all come back now...ya heah!

[Josh · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh.

This book didn't nearly match its reputation. Admittedly, this is partially due to the decades that have passed since it was published, but the voice (which must have felt much more ambitious/original in 1972) feels a bit stale and the characters bleed into one another. Jenkins may have been the transcendent talent that his reputation claims, but this book--at least in 2019-- does not do anything to back that idea up.

[Edward Champion · Rating 1 out of 5]

I decided to pick up this book out of morbid curiosity because Quentin Tarantino insisted that this book was "hilarious" in CINEMATIC SPECULATION. Well, that was a huge mistake! This book is not funny at all. It is nothing more than racist garbage - with liberal sprinklings of epithets throughout -- and completely unfunny jokes (such as a flatulent lineman). It is worthless trash designed for worthless people. Fuck Dan Jenkins and his white supremacist bullshit.

[Jim Krotzman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Semi-Tough is a quick summer read about two star football players but not much football. It mostly describes their drinking and womanizing. The book is a description of the two weeks leading up to the Super Bowl.

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a pretty fun look at the NFL in the 1960s. It very much reflects the time period.
Also note - this book is told from a first person account and written at an earlier time, so some may not be comfortable with the language.

[Scott Slesinger · Rating 1 out of 5]

More than Semi-Outdated

Book is so outdated to be an uncomfortable read. I can’t think of any novel I have read that was so unfunny, sexist and racist. Jenkins was none of those; but if this was so completely tongue and cheek when it was written, it fails today.

[Emg · Rating 2 out of 5]

Almost decided to stop reading it after the first twenty pages - crude, sexist, racist, blatant - but put myself into a 1970's mind frame and began to accept it for what it was. Thank heavens times and attitudes have changed (though not enough)

[L. · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is an old book written in old slang. Add to that some sports slang and I had no idea what anyone was saying. I'm not asking for Shakespeare but some Just Plain English once in awhile would have been appreciated.

[Alexander Lord · Rating 4 out of 5]

My first book of 2024.

Great read, very intriguing; however maybe not as funny as made out to be.

Nonetheless, great book.

I've come out learning that reading fiction isn't so bad. Its good for the brain, keeps me smart, whilst being enjoyable.

[Josh Wallace · Rating 4 out of 5]

A hilariously gritty and self-aware dive into the life of a football superstar. The book combines sharp wit with a candid look at the opulent world of the super-rich and powerful, delivering a uniquely entertaining read.

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Had it's funny moments but definitely had to read with an open mind knowing that the book was written in 1972 with that time frames mentality of how people acted, how women were treated and the racial biases.

[EJ · Rating 5 out of 5]

funny and irreverent. a throwback for sure

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Funny and nails Texas football, warts and all.