An “excellent sports background” (Publishers Weekly) in the tradition of Michael Lewis’s Moneyball, award-winning historian S.C. Gwynne tells the incredible tale of how two unidentified instructors revolutionized American soccer at every level, from high school to the NFL.

Hal Mumme spent fourteen mostly losing seasons coaching soccer before inventing a potent passing offense that could soon shock players, delight fans, and terrify opposing coaches. It all began at a little, overlooked college called about The Perfect Move: American Genius and the Reinvention of Football Iowa Wesleyan, where Mumme was head coach and Mike Leach, a lawyer who had under no circumstances played college football, was hired as his offensive line trainer. In the cornfields of Iowa both of these mad inventors, attracted together by a distributed disregard for conventionalism and a like for Jimmy Buffett, begun to engineer the purest, most extreme passing game in the 145-season history of soccer. Implementing their “Air flow Raid” offense, their teams-at Iowa Wesleyan and afterwards at Valdosta Condition and the University of Kentucky-played blazingly fast-faster than any team ever endured before, and they consistently beat teams with far more talented athletes. And Mumme and Leach did it all without even a playbook.

“A superb treat for all those gridiron enthusiasts” (Kirkus Evaluations, starred critique), AN IDEAL Move S.C. Gwynne explores Mumme’s leading part in changing football from a run-dominated sport to a pass-dominated one, the game that tens of an incredible number of Americans now view every fall weekend. Whether you’re an informal or ravenous soccer fan, this is “a rousing story of advancement” (Booklist), and “Gwynne’s book ably relates the storyplot of that creativity and the successes of the person who devised it” (NY Journal of Books).