The narrator-hero of Semi-Tough is Billy Clyde Puckett, star half-back for the New York Giants and unregenerate Texan. He and his teammates are preparing for the Super Bowl, and he has been commissioned to keep a journal for publication. It is a mark of Billy Clyde's intelligence that he sees the comedy of preserving the innermost thoughts of a football player for posterity even as he does it. Billy Clyde is profane, street smart, hard living, intelligent though hardly an intellectual, and possessed of a nature that is surpassingly sweet. His best friends are Marvin "Shake" Tiller, his teammate and childhood buddy, and Barbara Jane Bookman, every man's fantasy — gorgeous, rich, smart-mouthed, one of the boys. These three are one another's family; they live together, defend one another, love one another. In addition, there are Billy Clyde's teammates, his casual friends of both sexes, his opponents, Barbara...