Joe Zagorski is a US Army veteran, a former schoolteacher, a former park ranger, and a former sportswriter for two newspapers in Pennsylvania. He is a member of the Pro Football Writers of America (PFWA) and the Pro Football Researchers Association (PFRA). He has written five previous books, each of which deals with pro football's past.The Library Journal ranked Zagorski's first book, The NFL in the 1970s: Pro Football's Most Important Decade, as one of the top ten football books in America in 2016. The Milwaukee Record ranked his second book, The Year the Packers Came Back: Green Bay's 1972 Resurgence, as one of the top Christmas books for Packers fans in 2019. A year later, his third book, America's Trailblazing Middle Linebacker: The Story of NFL Hall of Famer Willie Lanier, recounted the exploits of the first fulltime African American middle linebacker in pro football history. Zagorski's fourth book, a retrospective of the 1973 Buffalo Bills entitled The 2,003-Yard Odyssey: The Juice, the Electric Company, and an Epic Run for a Record, was released in 2024. Zagorski's fifth book, a biography of former Philadelphia Eagles free safety Bill Bradley entitled Free Spirit at Free Safety: The Incredible (But True!) Football Journey of Bill Bradley, was also released in 2024.In 2021, Zagorski won the Pro Football Researchers Association's Ralph Hay Award for Lifetime Achievement for Pro Football Research and Historiography. In 2023, Zagorski won the PFRA Bob Carroll Memorial Writing Award. Zagorski is also a contributing writer for the website Pro Football Journal and the administrator for the Facebook page, "The NFL in the 1970s." He began that Facebook page several years ago, and it now has over 40,000 followers. He also wrote a screenplay in 2021 titled Town Teams.Zagorski was born and raised in Pottstown, Pennsylvania. He currently lives in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
