I'll Tell You One Thing: The Untold Truth About Texas, America & College Football, With Pictures to Prove It

by Dan Jenkins, Sally Jenkins (Foreword)

Sports-literature legend Dan Jenkins joins the Woodford lineup with this unique book on college football, Dan's great passion. This fresh idea combines 25,000-plus words of fiction with fact, a roman a clef, that takes place in his familiar milieu, Texas, and hilariously discusses all the great college players from Texas, the Texas lifestyle, and what's wrong with football and life in the rest of the country.Writing in the first person, Jenkins trots out and interacts with his famous and uproariously funny characters from his novels including Semi Tough, Dead Solid Perfect, Baja Oklahoma and his recent best-seller, Rude Behavior. In a bar called He's Not Here, in the evenings leading up to a historic showdown game between TCU and SMU, his characters meet up with real-life figures from sports and broadcasting.

The whiskey goes in and the truth comes out as they ponder the old Texas greats (Doak Walker, Sammy Baugh, and Earl Campbell, among others) and how they might stack up against today's players. They argue over the state of college football, and they very nearly brawl over which U.S colleges have the best fight songs.

Punctuating all the fun is Jenkins' amazing collection of college football photos. There's never been a book quite like it. The legions of Jenkins fans will experience more than his storied blend of barroom social satire and stand-up comedy. In this unique book, Jenkins, one of America's truly great humorists, shows us his monumental passion for those autumnal Saturday celebrations known as college football. It's irresistible.

Genres: Football, Sports

192 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Dan Jenkins was an American author and sportswriter, most notably for Sports Illustrated.

Jenkins was born and raised in Fort Worth, Texas, where he attended R.L. Paschal High School and Texas Christian University (TCU), where he played on the varsity golf team. Jenkins worked for many publications including the Fort Worth Press, Dallas Times Herald, Playboy, and Sports Illustrated. In 1985 he retired from Sports Illustrated and began writing books full-time and maintained a monthly column in Golf Digest magazine.

Larry King called Jenkins "the quintessential Sports Illustrated writer" and "the best sportswriter in America." Jenkins authored numerous works and over 500 articles for Sports Illustrated. In 1972, Jenkins wrote his first novel, Semi-Tough.

His daughter, Sally Jenkins, is a sports columnist for the Washington Post.