I played four years of college football and I’m pretty sure I only suffered one concussion. It was in September of 1989, I was a senior and we were playing at Auburn. It was a tremendous thrill being on the same field that Bo Jackson ran wild on during his Heisman Trophy year, and in the same stadium where a majestic bald eagle soared through the sky at every game, delighting the 88,000 fans that gather there for every game. And let me tell you, I was taking in all the sights and sounds and enjoying every second of playing in a legendary stadium against a national power. Now, the problem was, I was doing that as I was running a crossing pattern through the Auburn secondary, and a free safety hit me so hard that by the time I made it to the huddle for the next play, I was so woozy I couldn’t stand still and got called for a false start. Coaches’ love when you do that, they really think it’s funny.
That would not be the first time an Auburn football team has caused me to lose sleep and not be able to see straight. It happened again this week, as we put the finishing touches on our brand new championship sports book on the Auburn Tigers that I believe without a doubt is the best book we’ve done in three years.
It’s called: War Eagle! The Auburn Tigers, led by Cam Newton, win the 2011 BCS Championship and dominate college football in historic fashion!
Once again, we have the first championship sports book on the shelves across the state of the National Champion, and we literally have the book for sale all over Alabama today, less than 3 days after the game.
We obviously had written and produced a book on Oregon and Auburn, and had both ready to be finished on Monday night. All we needed was someone to win the game. As soon as it ended, we started picking the photos from the game that we’d use on the cover and in the photo gallery. The clock was ticking— and it was time to get to work. I sat down on my couch in our loft in Minneapolis and fired up my laptop. Keep in mind, our place where we were staying for a little while would be considered a tight squeeze for a married Keebler Elves couple. We had four people–including two kids, including my son Dash, who if I woke up I guarantee you he’d coax me into watching the West Coast version of SportsCenter and he’d be simultaneously banging away on the Ipad. Oh, I forgot to mention, he’s 1- year old.
So I had to stay quiet, and finish the 7 hours of work without:
Falling asleep
Waking everyone up
Late night turned into early morning. Things were coming together, but there was still a lot to do. Write the final game story. Accumulate all the stats and sidebar notes. Decide what photos to use in the photo gallery. And most importantly— find the right shot to use on the front cover. Since I had put Cam Newton’s name in the title, I had to have a clear, focused, tight shot of him and his smile. I figured there would be dozens to choose from. I was as wrong as you could possibly be. I kept refreshing the sight where our photos are uploaded, and the selection was mediocre at best. There was not a single shot of Cam and the crystal championship trophy. Not one. Maybe it was because he had to get x-rays after the game and he didn’t have time to hold it up before he went to the locker room. I wasn’t sure, all I knew is if I didn’t get a good photo of Auburn’s star on the cover I’d piss off an entire fan base, my partners with the book, and most importantly, Charles Barkley.
I was fighting it around 4:30 am. Since I had been up until 4:00 a.m. the previous night as well, I was tired. I was also getting ticked off. Where are the good Cam Newton photos? Doing an artist rendering for the cover shot wasn’t going to work. Using a photo from his Junior College championship game the year before was another bad idea. Finally we went to Getty Images, found the perfect photo for the cover and got it all wrapped up and finalized at the printer by 6:30 am.
Here it is: For Sale now:
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