Quote

At home I have a copy of the April 21, 1986, issue of 'Sports Illustrated.' I'm on the cover with the blurb, 'Can Lou Do It?' I'd just arrived at Notre Dame, and with spring football underway, I was the focal point of that week's coverage.

When I was a kid, my father brought home the autobiography of Sid Luckman, the great Chicago Bears quarterback - probably an extra copy from the sports department where he worked. It was the first sports biography I ever read.

The books I used to love as a kid, I used to read football books - and by that I mean soccer books - stories about boys in school who started to play football and then became the captain. I'd read them cover to cover. I just got lost in them.

I don't know where I got the idea for 'The Great Thumbprint Drawing Book'; I just told my brain to think of a book, and it did.

The first piece of art that I ever bought-when I could afford it-was a Warhol sketch from the period when he was just getting out of doing commercial work and more into art. It's a sketch of a young guy's face. I guess the gallery that I bought it from thought I would like it because the young guy kind of looked like James Dean.

My father brought me a box of books once when I was about three and a half or four. I remember the carton they were in and the covers with illustrations by Newell C. Wyeth.

Remember that a good football novel has to have the same ingredients as any other good novel: drama, convincing and interesting characters, a strong story-line, and some kind of magic in the writing.

Books had instant replay long before televised sports.

We had a poster of the Davis Cup in 1986. It was in Prague, the Czech Republic against Sweden, and we went to watch, so I got the poster. You couldn't get all the posters. You were lucky if you got one.