The paperback of A Few Seconds of Panic is out this weekfrom Penguin Books. It’s got a snazzy new cover, with five — count ‘em, five — pix of me kicking in Ford Field in Detroit. There’s a shorter subtitle, A Sportswriter Plays in the NFL, ditching my height, weight and age, which will always remain unchanged, as far as I’m concerned. And there’s a new afterword, updating the whereabouts of some of my main characters, as well as the Broncos’ tumultuous offseason.

I’m very proud of this book, both the reporting and writing. As I said in a Q&A last week on Westword, Denver’s alt-weekly:

Yes, hilarity ensues when I become just the second writer in league history allowed to join a team for training camp (after George Plimpton in 1963). But putting on the pads was always just a means to an end — to understand and describe the hidden reality of life in the NFL. Because, and only because, I was willing to eat with the players, lift with the players and humiliate myself in front of the players, those Broncos came to respect and trust me. Then they were not only willing but eager to open up to me about what it feels like to play this physically and psychologically brutal and operationally dysfunctional sport. Here’s a response that I received from an ex-Bronco that you won’t find on the book jacket: “You so eloquently captured the mind-fuck that is the NFL.” I couldn’t ask for a better endorsement than that.

I hope to be doing some media and events around the new, cheaper model of the book, and will update accordingly here.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 3rd, 2009 at 1:31 pm and is filed under Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.