Duck.
For a few weeks each year, your friends and family get good at that.
It's not that you're a violent person. Really, it's not that at all.
The thing is, at some point, your team will do something boneheaded. A coach will make a bad decision. A ref will make a bad call and there you are, yelling and throwing peanuts or popcorn, foam bricks or crumpled paper at the TV. Nobody wants in the way, so they all DUCK.
This football season, distract yourself from a frustrating game with "The Football Uncyclopedia: A Highly Opinionated Myth-Busting Guide to America's Most Popular Game," a new book by Michael Kun and Adam Hoff. Keep it by your elbow, and you won't throw anything at the TV. You'll be too busy laughing.
So the game's in progress and you're sitting there, smug. You know everything there is to know about football because you've been a fan since the womb. Nobody can tell you anything you haven't already repeated twice.
But let's take, for instance, Tom Dempsey. Did Dempsey's handicap help him break a record that has been equaled once but never surpassed? Argue amongst yourselves, then read what Kun and Hoff say.
And you know that guy in the old soft drink commercial, the one with the little boy? Would you believe that guy's name is not "Mean Joe Greene"? No, seriously. It's in there, go look.
Okay, how 'bout this: Kun and Hoff say the last player selected in the NFL draft is not a bad player. They also say that all football players are not bad actors. And Raiders fans are not like other fans. Ditto for the Packers. And why with the humungous population it has can't Los Angeles keep a team?
Do you snicker about the name of the Bears great linebacker? Check out the "F" entries to see if there's a funnier name than his. Look at the "P" entries to see what your dad wants for Christmas. Oh, and don't forget to read the footnotes. How else would you learn who almost made a Terminator movie or what Playboy magazine has in common with the game?
If you're not watching football in your favorite TV-viewing spot, chances are you're catching it at your favorite watering hole. And if you're not watching football this weekend, you should be reading this book.
Browsing "The Football Uncyclopedia" is a little like spending pre-game at the bar with two fellow fans who love to argue football and talk trash. It's like watching a cable-sports show with a couple of average wiseguys as co-hosts. It's like football fact one-upmanship in book form.
Authors Michael Kun and Adam Hoff good-naturedly rib one another and they poke fun at plenty of players. They lay some myths to rest and add fire to a few others. You'll agree sometimes and sometimes not. but you'll laugh for sure.
If you're not a football fan, you won't like this book. Go find another one and leave this to the people who live for the game. "The Football Uncyclopedia" will quack them up.
The Minot Daily News - Aug. 26, 2008
Preparations for the 2008 pro football season are underway, with all 32 NFL teams in training camps. For NFL fans like me, optimism runs high this time of year. The inevitable setbacks, injuries, and eviscerating losses that each team experiences (are you listening Patriots fan?) during the grueling campaign remain over the horizon.
All too soon, passionate football fans will stand accused of taking the games way, way too seriously. That's why books such as The Football Uncylopedia, written by Michael Kun and Adam Hoff, are well suited to this time of the year. It's a compilation of football miscellanea that possesses qualities essential for enduring the NFL preseason: it's frivolous and entertaining.
Mind you, this tome boasts that it's "ideal for the bathroom of every pro football fan in America."
In The Football Uncyclopedia, alphabetical entries plunge the reader pell-mell into oddball facts, trivia, and rather scatterbrained associations. For instance, an amusing discourse on players' nicknames is found under, "Appliances, Kitchen: William 'The Refrigerator' Perry Was Not Actually a Refrigerator."
The entry, "Stadium, Giants," addresses the geographic anomaly associated with the reigning NFL champions playing their home games out of state: "The Giants are too embarrassed to tell anyone they're dating New Jersey."
A favorite entry is certain to be "Mexico, Ron: The NFL Should Not Have Been Surprised By Michael Vick's Involvement With Underground Dogfighting." Here the reader is reminded just why the former Atlanta Falcons quarterback required the nom de guerre "Ron Mexico" (but there's no need to go into medical issues here) and reviews misbehavior and controversies linked to the troubled young quarterback.
Glib, funny, and sometimes rude ("Leaf, Ryan: Ryan Leaf's Family Should Not Read This Book For Obvious Reasons"), The Football Uncyclopedia is both entertaining and forgettable, sort of like the NFL preseason itself. (Okay, I know what you're thinking: the preseason is just forgettable.) But I think you get the idea.
Turning The Page - Cincinnati Library Blog - Aug. 4, 2008