Book Review: Goodfellows

Goodfellows: The Champions of St. Ambrose. Written by Rick Gosselin. Foreward by Tony Dungy. Introduction by Jim Schwartz. August Publications.

Rick Gosselin is the pro football writer for the Dallas Morning News and you heard his voice on bobgretz.com last year when we did podcasts. He’s the best pro football reporter in the newspaper business. Goose has the remarkable distinction of being respected not only by his peers, but the people he covers in the NFL.

But he stepped away from the pro game to write this book about his grade school and high school alma mater in Detroit. St. Ambrose was a tiny Catholic school in the big city, but for a period of time it was one of the best football programs in the state of Michigan.

Anybody who has any connection or identification with Detroit will love this book. But you don’t have to know the difference between Hamtramck and Gross Pointe to enjoy the story that Rick lays out for us about this little school that could. Anyone who loves the game and its roots on the high school level will love Goodfellows.

In some ways it’s like Hoosiers, except the sport is football. St. Ambrose was a parish school, grades one through 12th that sat on the city line between Detroit and Gross Pointe Park. The high school always had 400 students or less. Graduating classes were less than 100 students and half of those were girls.

St. Ambrose did not have its own football field. It did not have a practice field. The locker room in the school’s basement was carved out between two classrooms. The coaching office for the football teams was a converted coal bin.

Yet over a span of nine years (1959-67), St. Ambrose had a 64-8-3 record, winning five Catholic League titles, five Detroit city titles and four state championships. Four of those nine seasons were unbeaten and two others had a single defeat.

The program produced five football All-Americas and numerous players who went on and played on the Division 1 college level at places like Michigan, Michigan State, Nebraska, Wyoming and other places. From that era, two St. Ambrose players made the NFL, in Tom Beer and Gary Nowak.

The school’s two most successful head coaches also ended up in the NFL. Tom Boisture built the foundation of the St. Ambrose program and he won a pair of Super Bowl rings as the player personnel director of the New York Giants. His replacement was George Perles, who went on to be the defensive line coach and defensive coordinator of the Pittsburgh Steelers teams that won four Super Bowls in the 1970s. Perles eventually landed as head coach at Michigan State.

There are other familiar football names weaved into the narrative, men like former Chiefs great Fred Arbanas, former Colorado coach Bill McCartney, former Michigan coach Lloyd Carr, NBA great Dave Debusschere, former NFL QB Gary Danielson and many more.

The book is named after what was the annual city league title game in Detroit, featuring the winner of the Catholic League against the winner of the public school league. Proceeds from the game went to the Old Newsboys Goodfellow Fund, a Detroit charity.

In 1959, St. Ambrose made its first visit to the Goodfellow Game. Played at what was then Briggs Stadium (it was later renamed Tigers Stadium) on a Friday night in November, nearly 39,000 showed up to watch St. Ambrose play Cooley High. Here’s where the Hoosiers comparison comes in. Cooley had 3,474 students. St. Ambrose had 396, with only 140 boys. Cooley’s offensive and defensive line averaged 216 pounds. St. Ambrose averaged 184 pounds. Cooley’s running back at 210 pounds was bigger than any St. Ambrose blocker.

St. Ambrose won 13-7.

High school football has always been the lifeline for college and pro football. There are so many great stories and traditions on the schoolboy level, and Rick pulls the curtain back on this remarkable story from the motor city.

Here’s what new Detroit Lions coach Jim Schwartz wrote in the book’s introduction:

 ”If you played high school football, you will love this book. If you grew up in Detroit, you will love this book. If you grew up in the ’50s and ’60s, you will love this book. It will bring back wonderful memories of a different time and place in our society and culture. “

Goodfellows can be order directly from the publisher at this link, or on Amazon.com at