Well, it's the offseason. The Reds suck, Cleveland is currently doing poorly at two sports simultaneously, and you've watched the Sugar Bowl and National Championship games so many times that the once endlessly deep well of happiness those games brought to you is now bone dry. Network TV is a wasteland, and Game of Thrones only has two episodes left. Despondent and weary, you turn to the one place for sports-related entertainment that you had hoped to avoid: that archaic form of rune divination known as "reading."
Lucky you, because there just happens to be a whole crapton of football reading material to choose from! And, even better, now that Urban Meyer is coming out with a book of his own (presumably about hard work and effort and never giving up, but hell maybe it's about travelling through the French countryside on a tandem bike, I'm no psychic), now is the perfect time for you to brush off your Speak & Spell and bump up your Lexile score to the 4th grade so you can tackle the fine literature already written by some of the best coaches in college football.
But man, so many choices, how to pick which ponderous tome to marvel at first? That's where I step in. I've compiled this semi-exhaustive collection of works by some of the more recognizable coaches in college football, along with their descriptions and some Amazon reviews of the fine work that their ghostwriters put in, to help you pick which book to pick up at your local book retailer or library or weird uncle's "sports den" which is really just an unfinished basement with a folding chair and coffee table.
Bobby Bowden
Bobby Bowden "wrote" a book about life, the universe, and everything sometime in the early 90s that is literally just him rambling about whatever was on his mind on that particular day. It's basically just like watching an episode of The Andy Griffith Show if The Andy Griffith Show was 250 pages long and said "dad-gum" every other sentence. I say "wrote" because Bowden just sat down with a guy and talked, with the actual writer making Bowden sound as Petticoat Junction-y as possible.
Unfortunately, the writer was not able to prevent Bowden from spilling some of his deepest, darkest secrets, as we see here:
Truly chilling stuff, almost on par with Bowden's story about accidentally taking three penny-candies instead of two at Uncle Jim's family drugstore, or when Bowden counseled a player to get a haircut before a big date (they're now married with five kids, wow!), or the time that he ran an old gypsy woman over with his car and she convinced the NCAA to restore Joe Paterno's wins just before dying.
Art Briles
Briles' book is a pretty generic Coach Book in that it talks about how awesome he is, his philosophies on life, love, faith, football, and chapters titled
- You Can Change Attitude, Not Talent
- Finding Your Passion
- Everyone Is A Captain
- I'm Gonna Kill You, Bob Bowlsby
It's apparently pretty standard stuff, but since I haven't personally read it, I feel that the Amazon reviews might be pretty instructive. Let's check them out:
YES, BUT WAS IT REDUNDANT?
Mike Leach
Mike Leach is known for his book that he did with Bruce Feldman, which got Feldman shadow banned from the internet for a while, but Leach is a smart guy (he's a lawyer!) and has written books about a number of different subjects. Recently he's published a book about Geronimo with a bomb-ass bibliography, a political techno-thriller, and of course the highly anticipated Practical Flow Cytometry in Haematology Diagnosis: 100 Worked Examples, coming out later this summer!
Gus Malzahn
Back in 2003, Malzahn wrote a little-regarded screed called The Hurry-Up, No-Huddle: An Offensive Philosophy, which no one read because it was dumb. No one read this thing and paid even the slightest bit of attention to the philosophies expounded upon therein, probably because a sped up game would naturally lead to more injuries for players and cheapen the game to the point where it'd hardly even be worth playing.
It was illegal to possess this book in any form in any of the states within the Big Ten footprint until 2013 or so, when it started mysteriously started appearing on bookshelves in the Woody Hayes Athletic Center. Weird.
Brian Kelly
Kelly, an amateur financial planner and former monetary advisor to the fine nation of Sri Lanka, is big into Bitcoin, which is unsurprising since Notre Dame seems to be all about things that start out great, but then collapse in on themselves with increasingly diminishing returns. Add in a dash of ignoring that something has gone horribly, horribly wrong, and you've got yourself a recipe for a story that will appeal to fans of the Fighting Irish from all walks of life!
Nick Saban
I'm not really sure how a Nick Saban book would turn out. My initial guess would be a combination between the Necronomicon and Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan, but neither of those writings probably explain a whole lot about a coaching philosophy that can win a trillion national championships but then turn around and hire Lane Kiffin.
In any event, I think the idea of Saban, literary man, to be fascinating. Granted, the likelihood that any of these coaches (save Leach and Malzahn) actually contributed more than an abbreviated grunt and nod to the content of these books is pretty slim, but I do wonder what kind of dark horrors that Saban could conjure up on the page if he ever allowed himself the time to do anything but coach collegiate football.
Still, like all of these books, the content and authorship is pure speculation on my part, so once again I turn to Amazon for guidance:
Whew, that's a relief! Dark horrors abound, it's now on my wish list.
Frank Beamer
If my name were Frank, and I was writing a book about myself, I would title it exactly what Beamer titled his book, Let Me Be Frank. Since we are clearly two kindred spirits, I am positive that he's going to be just as irreverant and topical as I try (and usually fail) to be. Maybe something experimental, like the work of a Murakami, or stripped down yet elegant, like a Hemmingway. Or maybe he goes in a totally different direction, and surpris-
My favorite comedy in television is and will always be The Andy Griffith Show, not only for Don Knotts' hilarious exploits but also for the underlying lesson Andy would convey in that half hour...
DAMMIT, FRANK BEAMER.
I'm not a great writer, but I do have some advice for Urban as he (and more likely some other dude) writes his book: do something interesting. If you want to write a book filled with nothing but rambling stories about the 2014 football team, that's great! But they had better be good stories, because if I have to read another sentence about a player prostrating himself before his coach as he listens to an admonition to straighten up and fly right, I'm going to go insane. If you want to write a book about your outlook on life, that's great too, but try and make it more substantive than "always have confidence and stay humble and be yourself and don't be afraid of change and try your best."
Here's what I suggest: make it about one very small part of the season. Go in-depth. Show us the inner workings of the Woody Hayes Athletic Center, a place most of us have never seen. Write down as much detail you remember about a pivotal part of 2014, and then talk to other people about it and compare notes. A narrative history about work and football during a crucial moment will get you my 25 bucks. A corn-pone hagiography probably will not (I'll still read parts of it in Barnes and Noble, though).
And for the love of God, please do not talk about Andy Griffith.
