John’s Blog

I’ve always liked Lewis’ books — Moneyball, his most recent, was just terrific. This book is about a poor black kid in Memphis who happened to grow up, find an affluent white sponsor, enroll in an almost exclusively white Memphis evangelical Bible school, and play starting left tackle for Ole Miss in his freshman year, and will almost certainly be one of the top 10 draft picks next year for the NFL. Oh, and when he was sixteen, he was 6′5″ and 330 lbs. Yikes.

Anyway, interesting & inspirational story, if a little full of hyperbole here & there. Also tells why the left tackle, a position that nobody ever notices, is the second highest paid position in professional football. No joke. They make more than running backs. Crazy.

Interesting book for the human interest story, and a little bit for the football economics. But not as great as Moneyball.

Glibly called “Freakonomics meets ESPN,” this book is neither as fun to read nor as provocative as Freakonomics (or, for that matter, ESPN). But they bring up a lot of interesting things, like how scoring (especially in the NBA) is a horrible indicator of value to a team, how quarterbacks in the NFL are woefully inconsistent from season to season, and how Stanford basketball is the most wondrous and underrated sport to behold.

Okay, not that last bit. But worth reading for fantasy nerds like me.