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Daily briefing, the ‘Holiday Book Guide’ edition

Ivan Maiselby: Ivan Maisel12/08/21Ivan_Maisel
KirkHerbstreit
Kirk Herbstreit has a good story to tell in his book. And he tells it well. (Chip Dillard/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

Ivan Maisel’s “Daily Briefing” for On3:

Buy now, thank me later

Three books for the college football fan on your list, and I will stipulate that the authors are press box friends and/or former colleagues. But trust me: The books are good.

“We Want Bama: A Season of Hope and the Making of Nick Saban’s Ultimate Team,” by Joseph Goodman (Grand Central Publishing). This is not the typical fly-on-the-wall biography of a season, and thank God for it. “We Want Bama” is a rollicking, ribald, rum punch of history, sociology and microscopic study of the genus Tidus Crimsonus, written by an al.com columnist. It would be merely gut-busting funny if it weren’t devastatingly and occasionally horrifyingly true. What saves “We Want Bama” from being a hipster screed is that Goodman’s love of state, culture and college football shines on every page.

“Haven’t They Suffered Enough?” by Beano Cook and John D. Lukacs (White Valley Press). If you miss Beano like I miss Beano, then thank Lukacs for picking up this ball and carrying it across the goal line. Beano, my former ESPN College Football Podcast partner, died in 2012, and he has a story to tell about what college football was like in the 1950s, when he got started as the Pitt sports information director, and of how sports television evolved from the 1960s through the 1990s. Lukacs made a smart choice in letting Beano be politically incorrect. Beano was nothing if not self-aware. He knew he could be the too-loudest voice in the room, but he loved people, loved honesty and punctured pomposity at every turn. I loved spending time with him again.

“Out of the Pocket,” by Kirk Herbstreit with Gene Wojciechowski (Atria Books). What sets this book apart from the genre of jock-turned-announcer books is that Herbstreit has a story to tell. The self-assured, good-looking quarterback grew up in a broken home. The trusted TV voice grew up too shy to speak in class. The I’ve-got-it-all celebrity started with nothing more than a chance behind a microphone in a Columbus radio station. Herbstreit worked hard to get where he is. There is substance here, well-delivered with the help of Wojciechowski, who writes at book length as elegantly as he writes his ESPN College GameDay features and essays.