You’d be forgiven for not knowing that the long, rich history of women playing American tackle football extends all the way back to 1896—a five-on-five scrimmage in New York City that was cut short by police, ostensibly for the players’ own safety. In fact, you’d be forgiven for not knowing much at all about women playing American tackle football. In a landscape where women’s sports have historically constituted a single-digit percentage of sports media coverage, pickings are slim. That’s where the 2021 book *Hail Mary: The Rise and Fall of the National Women’s Football League* comes in. The authors, sports journalists Frankie de la Cretaz and Lyndsey D’Arcangelo, set out to give generations of rough-and-tumble women athletes their due. And they succeeded, painting a brightly colored picture of not just the little-known football league of the subtitle, but the past, present, and future of women in the sport more broadly.…