Through the years, the nonpareil Dan Jenkins has been accused of being one of the funniest and most astute chroniclers of our games. In both his fiction and reportage, being funny and being smart are mutually inclusive. In I'll Tell You One Thing, he reveals himself as wildly inventive, loyal, passionate, and outrageous on the subject of college football--and particularly college football in Texas and his beloved SWC.
A TCU graduate, Jenkins unabashedly wears both heart and prejudice on his sleeve throughout this contentious mixture of fact, fiction, and a whole lot of opinion. "A man of the college football persuasion is," he suggests, "capable of talking for hours on the subject of why his game is better--more exciting, more interesting, more important--than any other team game," and Jenkins indeed talks--and debates--throughout with Billy Clyde Puckett, Tommy Earl Brunner, and Coach T.J. Lambert, some of the most famous characters born of his pen. What they're debating is quite real, though: college football, players, games, statistics, biases. It's dead-solid sports history and wonderful fun. So are the old game stories--also quite real--that Jenkins resurrects from the typewriters of the likes of Grantland Rice to show what the game was like when the college, not professional, game was king. If that's not enough fun, Jenkins provides even more with outrageous lists from who should have won each Heisman and the best college fight songs to the 10 stages of drunkenness and why the '30s are his favorite decade. The real fun of I'll Tell You One Thing, though, is just how much Jenkins does tell and how entertainingly he tells it. --Jeff Silverman
