On Self-Promotion, Mingled With Random Thoughts

1. I'll be on Marketplace this afternoon, talking to host Kai Ryssdal, who has one of the greatest voices in the modern history of National Public Radio. Local stations and further information here. (Update: Here's the interview.)

2. F this. Seriously, I have no reason to believe that Tony Dungy isn't a far better human being than me, but he's a football coach, and in football, men bleed and break bones and do irreparable damage to their bodies in the name of a particularly American sort of glory. If I played in the NFL, I'd want my coach to swear, because when I'm playing center and some 340-pound defensive lineman inserts a sweaty fist under my facemask and jabs my eye with his sausage-sized finger, I'm going to swear, as well. And I understand that the NFL has to put up some kind of stern public face about this, but my hope is Roger Goodell is sitting at his desk in Valhalla laughing about this in the same way Pete Rozelle laughed at Jim McMahon when he put on that homemade headband, even as he kept throwing fines in his direction. Because the only thing worse than a football being associated with vile profanity is football being associated with Emily Post.

3. I did an interview with the NFL Gridiron Gab blog, which you can find here.

4. I don't know why Fantasy College Football isn't a more popular pastime. If fantasy sports are all about attaining new heights of nerderation, there is nothing quite so geekish as spending twenty minutes researching the top wideouts of the Sun Belt conference. Every year, come mid-to-late August, I find I've missed football even more than I did the season before.

5. Dan Wetzel of Yahoo!, whom I happen to believe is one of the four or five best general sports columnists in America, gave an extremely generous endorsement* of Bigger Than the Game in his summer reading column. (That Steelers book looks great, as well.) If you're not familiar with Dan's work, I recommend this amazing obit on Don Haskins (he also wrote Haskins' autobiography), and this masterful piece of deadline journalism on last year's BCS Championship game.

*One other selfish request: If you have read the book, and you're the type of person who doesn't mind writing Amazon reviews, my lonely page would certainly welcome them.