Author Jeff Pearlman joins the show to talk about his new book, Boys Will Be Boys. The book is a look at the Dallas Cowboys dynasty of the 1990s both on the field...and off.

Jeff has done somewhere in the area of 80 interviews for this book, so we try to do something different. We talk about those 80 interviews. Every. Single. One.  No, we talk about the process of being interviewed so much, and telling the same stories over and over. He likens telling the same stories to Hall and Oates singing Rich Girl over and over again. That isn’t the most flattering correlation. I ask if he’s ever told the same story twice to the same host, forgetting he already told it during that interview.  These junkets are that much of a whirlwind. We also talk about what it’s like being the interviewee when it’s your job to be an interviewer. Does he look at the process differently?

We briefly cover his career and talk about the sheer number of stories he has penned, including his latest piece for ESPN.com on Lyman Bostock. He asserts that he has written around 5000 stories, including three books. And a blog. That’s somewhere near 250 stories a year for 20 years. He’s like the Wilt Chamberlain of sports journalists.

And yes, we talk about the book. Is Emmitt Smith as pompous as he seems on TV? Should Michael Irvin be in jail? Should Charles Haley be in a mental institution? How much credit does Jimmy Johnson really deserve?

He plays the book straight, telling all sides of every character, but there has to be some backlash. I ask him if this book has led to any anger by either people highlighted in the book, or by people who are fans of the Dallas Cowboys. We compare the fervor surrounding this book to his previous works. Has he made a lot of enemies? We somehow get in a conversation about John Rocker and the Long Island Ducks, and I ask if there is a sportswriting parallel for the independent leagues that we can send Skip Bayless to.  Come to think of it, it’s probably a blog. Nevermind.

Will Leitch asserts in his book that fans give everything to sports – time, money and love – and get little in return from teams and players. He claims that because of that, sports should be looked at as a commodity...strictly business. Pearlman has made a career on telling stories.  He humanizes, and in some cases dehumanizes, the people in the world of sports. I pose the question...can they both be right? Can sports be a faceless commodity and still have characters like Jeff portrays?

Link to this:

| | | | | |