Next Man Up: A Year Behind the Lines in Today's NFL - Hardcover

John Feinstein is an American sportswriter and commentator. He is a columnist for the Washington Post, an author, is a guest commentator on NPR, and does color commentary for United States Naval Academy football games. He is also a frequent contributor to The Tony Kornheiser Show. During a radio broadcast of the football game between the Naval Academy and Duke University on October 1, 2005, Feinstein blurted an obscenity over-the-air in response to what he perceived to be a bad call on the field. He immediately removed himself from the rest of the broadcast, except to return at the end to apologize on the air. Although he offered his resignation to the Naval Academy, they rejected it because of his contrition and have invited him to continue to participate in future broadcasts. Feinstein was a sports writer for the The Chronicle while enrolled at Duke University, where he graduated in 1977. One of Feinstein's nicknames is "Junior", despite not having the suffix in his name. The name was given by Tony Kornheiser because of the similarities in his temper to John McEnroe. Feinstein sometimes fills in as a guest host on The Jim Rome Show. Rome considers Feinstein to be one of the most intelligent people he's interviewed on the show, and occasionally teases him about an over-the-phone interview that was interrupted by Feinstein's daughter.

*Starred Review* Through 16 books in his genre-defining, year-in-the-life style, Feinstein avoided tackling pro football, feeling that the legendary lack of access granted the media by the NFL's powerful owners and general managers made his approach impossible. That changed when fortysomething Steve Bisciotti bought the Baltimore Ravens, and Feinstein was able to convince him, as well as Ravens coach Brian Billick and general manager Ossie Newsome, to do the unthinkable: allow a writer complete access to the team and its management throughout an entire season. The 2004 NFL season looked to be a good one for the Ravens, who had won the Super Bowl in 2001 and seemed primed to return to the top. It didn't turn out that way, which gives Feinstein's account an extra dimension of tension, on top of the fly-on-the-wall fascination of sitting in on coaches' strategy meetings and listening as decisions are made on who to start and who to cut. To most fans, who mainly see football players encased in helmets and pads, it's hard even to project the human side of their lives; Feinstein offers us this opportunity, showing the day-to-day rigors of the marginal player, hoping only to avoid being cut. The specter of injuries, an ominous inevitability in football, gets a human face, too, as the Ravens suffer debilitating blow after blow. Football has never seemed as personal as it does here, in one of Feinstein's most involving books. Best-sellerdom is a foregone conclusion. Bill Ott
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