Peter's Memoir Looks Heroiny

Was poking around online today and noticed that we now have a cover shot for Jason Peter's upcoming memoir detailing his ultimately fruitless chase of the dragon.

Look interesting or just menacing?

Here's what PW had to say:

"Peter, a star at the University of Nebraska’s storied football program in the late 1990s and a first-round NFL draft pick, details his short, frenzied life as a drug user and veteran of the treatment center circuit. It started with painkillers in college, which turned into a full-blown addiction as he battled an array of injuries that ended his career by his late 20s. With plenty of money and time available, Peter’s partying escapades eventually led him to freebasing cocaine and turning his upscale New York City apartment into arguably the world’s most expensive heroin retreat, complete with a live-in junkie stripper girlfriend. Avoiding self-help urgings and self-congratulations, Peter (who is now clean) and O’Neill have crafted an unflinching look at the dark side of a life devoted to pleasure. Peter’s recollection of his college glory days is a little overbearing, but the book’s power lies in his honesty in detailing the depths of his despair from seeking the next high."

A live-in stripper? I can believe that. World's most expensive heroin retreat? Even with the "arguably" qualifier, I'm almost certain that the world's most expensive heroin retreat was always, and remains to this day, Nikki Sixx's shaving kit, but either way I'm intrigued.

The book is out July 8, but I'm going to see if I can corral an advance copy to get us through these long off-season months.

And in case you're interested, Peter's co-author on this book, Tony O'Neill, is a recovered crack and heroin addict as well. His website includes the following blurb for the book from author Jerry Stahl:

"HERO OF THE UNDERGROUND gives us a portrait of red-blooded jock as monster dope fiend. It's a savage, unsparing, eye popping ride through the dark soul of big money, endless drugs, American manhood, and our national past time--self destruction. Ex-Cornhusker Jason Peter writes like a soulful badass, and we're lucky he lived to tell the tale. Had Hunter Thompson been a football player, instead of a fan, this is the book he'd have written. Flat out, mash-your-face-in-the-dirt-amazing."

You can pre-order the book right here and purchase the domain name soulfulbadass.com right here.

HiPlains Bookshelf - Huskerville

Even for an admitted college football junkie like myself, this bowl season sans-Nebraska has been significantly less interesting. There hasn't been that one day, be it a late December night or a more traditional post-New Year's slot, that's possessed any sort of anticipation. Without knowing that Nebraska would have their chance to stack up sooner or later the rest of the bowls became merely games, contests to be viewed at your convenience rather than out of interest.

Thus it was somewhat surprising that my 2007 Husker highlight of the year emerged from that same Holiday fog...on HBO.

A few days ago I sat down to watch the Hatton-Mayweather fight, drawn in by the British Invasion of Hatton supporters that Las Vegas had experienced the week leading up to the fight. In his opening comments to the telecast, longtime HBO boxing commentator Jim Lampley said the following regarding the fervent support of the Hatton backers (emphasis mine): "Hatton's ability, like the Nebraska football team, to travel his audience across a long distance has added an air of excitement all week."

The fact that this is my highlight is certainly a reflection of the disappointing year for the Cornhuskers (which started for me exactly one year ago in the Cotton Bowl), but it's also a reflection of what I find most interesting about being a Nebraska fan: cultural relevance. To describe what he and countless other media members had seen all week in Vegas, Lampley chose the Nebraska fans as the most fitting comparison, as a parallel that would resonate with the fans of boxing, and sports in general, who were tuning in for the biggest fight of the year.

It felt good to be recognized in that manner. It was a moment of relevance in a season seemingly devoid of such moments. Losing, after all, isn't altogether unbearable. Irrelevance is.

Luckily, I won't have to wait nearly as long to find my Husker highlight of '08. In fact, I think I've already found it in Roger C. Aden's Huskerville: A Story of Nebraska Football, Fans, and the Power of Place. In the author's own words this book is "...a Nebraskan explaining just why...there is no place like Nebraska."

In my own words it's the type of sports book that comes along all too infrequently. It's very easy to put together a coffee table book of great moments for a given team or to trot out another athlete biography co-written with the newspaper columnist of the day, but books that actually examine the culture of sport and ask questions and seek answers are few and far between. Two of my favorites books to take that approach recently have been Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer and To Hate Like This is to be Happy Forever and, not surprisingly, both are quoted frequently in Aden's book, but they're about Alabama football and North Carolina basketball respectively. Now we Nebraskans have just such a book of our own.

Aden, a Scottsbluff native and professor of communication studies at Ohio University, set out in 1998 to begin answering some of the bigger questions surrounding Nebraska football: Why does it mean so much to the state? Is there a connection between our state's history and our team's history? Are Nebraskan unique in their love for their team?

These are all questions that have fascinated me since moving out five years ago and they're also all impossible to answer empirically. Aden doesn't attempt to do that, but he does provide a ton of evidence and offer the reader, like himself, the opportunity to form their own opinion based on those findings. The book is made up largely of personal interviews and correspondence questionnaires with Nebraska fans throughout the country including Jon of Corn Nation (who tipped me to the book) and Darren Carlson from his pre-Big Red Network days. Readers familiar with HuskerPedia or any of the various message boards will probably recognize quite a few more names. Collectively, it's an academic approach but never at the expense of entertainment.

Sure, after reading page after page of Nebraskans' views of themselves you should probably ask yourself "don't Tennessee or Penn State or Notre Dame fans feel many of these exact same things?" Of course they do, but that's no the point. Huskerville is more of a personal journey than a defense of individuality. Conveniently, once you read the book and undertake your own personal journey you'll be much better equipped to defend your individuality. Voila!

So what's my estimation of Husker Nation, excuse me Huskerville, after reading the book? Nebraskans love Cornhusker football because it represents the clearest, most concise and most recognizable summation of the values they hold dear as natives of the state.

Make sense? It didn't to me either a few days ago and this was a question I asked myself constantly. Now I feel much more confident in not only my answer but also the notion that the same connection isn't experienced just anywhere.

If Huskerville had been written about Indiana basketball or Florida State football I would have read it, liked it and ended up ultimately envious that it wasn't my team that was being explored.

Thanks to Aden we no longer have to feel that way. Nebraska fans the world over should be proud that this book is about, and by, them.

Happy New Year, everyone.

Hi-Plains Bookmobile

Jon from Corn Nation was nice enough to offer me the opportunity to contribute some book reviews to his site and , sharing his love for college football books, I agreed.

You can find the review of Clay Travis' Dixieland Delight right here.

HiPlains Bookshelf - Opening Day Edition

Today is officially opening day--sorry, any day that includes the Cardinals as my only viewing option hardly feels like baseball season--and, like the girls in sundresses and guys in sandals I've seen recently just because we've topped 55-degrees, everyone can pretend it's summer even thought it's still damn cold and mostly miserable outside. Such is the power of baseball.

But if you're not at the park today and seeking more than Baseball Tonight can offer alone, you're in luck. In anticipation of Opening Day, publishers have been trotting out baseball books for the past couple of months and there are a couple of new ones worth your time.

As a whole, baseball writing often represents the best in the genre. Something about the old-fashioned Americana nostalgia of it brings the best writers to the sport and the best out of writers who cover all sports. Below are my thoughts on two new titles and two relatively new classics, but there are number of interesting titles I have yet to read and you can find links to their Amazon pages in the sidebar.

Fantasyland - Sam Walker

In the first-person, fan-obsessed tradition of Blythe and Simmons, Sam Walker, a scribe for the Wall Street Journal, tackles fantasy baseball as a first time owner in the "most competitive" league in the country, Tout Wars.

While the rest of Walker's league is made up of professional fantasy baseball writers (still, the oddest profession to me), the author goes for a mix of science and personal survey, actually going on the road and utilizing his WSJ access to meet Jacque Jones, Bill Mueller and a handful of others.

The actual story of Walker's season, while fun, isn't nearly as interesting as the cast of characters who populate Tout Wars. These are the people who inform the people who beat you senseless every year.

Crazy '08 - Cait Murphy

This book's sub titular claim, "How a Case of Cranks, Rogues, Boneheads, and Magnates Created the Greatest Year in Baseball History," is pure hyperbole, but Murphy's tale of the 1908 season is a fascinating historical record.

While baseball was certainly a force in the early-20th century, people actually did gather around electronic scoreboards to "watch" the game just like that Miller High Life commercial by the hundreds, this book exposes how the sport still ran by the seat of it's pants. One umpire with three game balls per game, whiskey at the park, World Series ties due to darkness, crowds ringing the outfield. It definitely was professional baseball, but it ran like your average coal-town team.

There's an added bonus for Cubs fans as Chicago was a veritable dynasty during the time, winning more games in a five-year span than any team ever and that record still stands. "Whoever heard of the Cubs losing a game they had to have?" Frank Chance asks in the book.

Well, Frank, only 90-years worth of heavy-heart fans. Painful irony defined.

The Numbers Game - Alan Schwarz

If you've read Moneyball, this is the logical next step. An exhaustive look at the passionate link between baseball and statistics, Schwarz leaves no bag untouched. Strat-O-Matic Baseball, Retrosheet, SABR and Bill James, the evolution of the box score, the book literally touches on everything.

Perhaps the best baseball book I've read in the past five years. Well worth your time and $13.95.

Three Nights in August - H.G. Bissinger

I was a bit skeptical about Bissinger's second act in the sports book realm after the stunning success of Friday Night Lights, but this microscopic look at one series between the Cubs and Cardinals provides a pretty good look into the mind of Tony LaRussa and the clubhouse chess games that make up the American pasttime.

As enjoyable as it might be for Cubs fans to revel in the glory in Crazy '08, it's equally painful to hear LaRussa scheme for Wood and Prior back when they were world beaters ready to kick down the door to the Hall of Fame.

Didn't quite work out that way, and now LaRussa's the manager of the defending world champions. An excruciating, but necessary reminder of the way things were.

Play ball. Drink beer. Eat hot dogs. Baseball is here.

Weekend Reader

Some fresh and not so fresh links to keep you entertained before the Final Four and after, during that long, lazy Sunday before Monday's title game...

--Yesterday I expressed excitement, and confusion, over the fact that Chuck Klosterman was blogging from the Final Four in Atlanta. Gawker.com (Deadspin's daddy) has a significantly more vitriolic take on Chuck's blog-bash in his initial post. While their post is interesting enough on it's own, the comments might be even better.

I wondered how bad the Chuck-lash currently was, but it seems as if he, to borrow from Malcolm Gladwell, reached his tipping point a few years ago. There were people in the comments claiming to hate him from the moment he started at SPIN, and others who cited Killing Yourself to Live as the last straw.

Now, Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs still sells remarkably well, so if I had to estimate said tipping point, it seems like somewhere between Cocoa Puffs and Killing Yourself so circa-2005. That seems fitting. This was also the year Maria Carey was "Emancipated" to the delight of 10 million music fans.

--So Oprah has officially endorsed Cormac McCarthy's The Road as her latest book club pick and, despite protestations to the contrary in today's Boston Globe, it still seems like a dark, edgy pick to me. Maybe I'm wrong, but I would guess that the majority of Oprah's disciples hadn't read McCarthy's post-apocalyptic opus. Stories about cannibalism and a father-son struggle to survive in a world gone dark aren't exactly mom approved, so I'm sticking to my guns.

I have yet to read the book, but it's on my queue now. (Does this make me a disciple?) In the meantime, Oprah's omnipresent reach has resulted in a media blitz for all things McCarthy which is good news for us. The New York Times has made available one of the few interviews with the reclusive author and you can find it here.

Now that that's out of the way, I should probably provide some sportswriting since that's sort of what I typically do around here.

--The Tim Tebow Bill? In Alabama? After you get done reading that (and stop ogling the accompanying photo), the college big-rig race that I mentioned a few days ago is still getting submissions. Browse around on The Wizard of Odds to see the latest entries. (Congrats to the site for starting a legitimate Internet phenomenon with that initial post.)

--The great thing about baseball previews is that there are so many of them. Don't like the placement of your favorite team, no worries, just find another one. After seeing far too many realistic evaluations that had the Cubs as low as fourth in the NL Central, I was delighted to find that One More Dying Quail has the Cubbies in the World Series against the Sawx.

I'm not so certain that could happen, but I like to dream. It feels like 2003 all over again. (Side note: How hard is the NL Central to handicap this year? A number of previews I've seen have the Brewers taking the pennant. Now, I like the Brewers team and honestly I'd be delighted if they did, but I'm not sold yet.)

--Don't forget that we have the first major Derby prep race of the year on Saturday, the Grade 1 Florida Derby. Problem is, you might have trouble finding it. No national coverage. Luckily, Left at the Gate has you covered.

HiPlains Bookshelf: March Madness Edition

Taking a break from the morning walk thru today due to the fact that I had a free pass to a pre-screening last night of Black Snake Moan and I didn't get to my usual reading. So rather than pretend I did and hustle something together, I'm going to debut something I've been wanting to do for a while: the HiPlains Bookshelf (handily linked in the sidebar.)

I'm entirely serious about compiling one of the greatest sports book libraries ever seen. I've got gold foil ex libri stamps from Barnes & Noble and a 20+ year head start.

The first edition is in celebration of us finally reaching March so we'll take a look at some of the best college hoops has to offer below.

And the movie? Let's just say that I probably owe my girlfriend one chick-flick after watching her squirm for 100 minutes. In other words, guys, it was good. Not great, but Samuel L. was unstoppable. As he says before ripping off the greatest gangsta rap blues song I've ever heard:

Ya'll ready for some shit?


Raw Recruits - Alexander Wolff & Armen Keteyian

Before Nike and adidas logos ever started showing up on the fronts of college jerseys, this book exposed their influence over college hoops and the recruiting game. Read about Chris Mills getting cash in the mail and see Rex Chapman's Puerto Rican-style nameplate necklace.

All you really need to know about this book is summed up by one of its central characters, Sonny Vaccaro, "It's a cesspool and we start the process."


A Season on the Brink - John Feinstein

My college coach was so much like Knight in this book that I swear he must have read it and made the conscious decision to fully model his coaching style on the reporting of John Feinstein. From his fondness for kicking kids out of practice to his deifying former players while denigrating the current squad to judgment clouding competitiveness, it was all there.

My favorite line from the book: "Daryl...do you know you haven't scored a basket inside since Jesus Christ was lecturing in Omaha?"

I don't even know what that means but I love it.



Fab Five - Mitch Albom

Still the only book, regardless of genre, that I've read twice in one week. Not only does it serve as a valuable reminder of when and how college basketball changed to what we see today (read about the equipment manager ordering the extra inches on the inseam and see the players buying black Nike socks at the mall!), the book is also proof that Mitch Albom was, at one time, interesting.

"What are you afraid of Jalen?"

"Death," Jalen said, "because I can't imagine the world without me in it."



To Hate Like This Is to Be Happy Forever: A Thoroughly Obsessive, Intermittently Uplifting, and Occasionally Unbiased Account of the Duke-North Carolina Basketball Rivalry - Will Blythe

I included the full-title above because it's a good indication that this isn't your typical sports book. In fact, I'm confident in saying that it's the best book I've read in the past year, no qualifier necessary.

Blythe is a former literary editor at Esquire and the book truly reads like sports literature. An entire book devoted to one man's hatred of Duke? Who wouldn't want to read that? Who wouldn't want to write 20,000 words slamming their personal rival?

"I am a sick, sick man. Not only am I consumed by hatred, I am delighted by it. I have done some checking into the matter and have discovered that the world's great religions and wisdom traditions tend to frown upon this."

It's about basketball. It's about obsession. It's the perfect book to get you through the three days between tournament rounds this month.

Up Next: Opening Day Edition