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Author Cranor is already planning a sequel set in the contemporary NIL era of college football. Heath Whorton <\/p>\nHow does math enter the equation when an English major is writing about college football? Allow crime novelist Eli Cranor, author of \u201cMississippi Blue 42,\u201d a college football caper with some sharp cultural observations, to explain.<\/p>\n
Asked by Sports Business Journal about the long odds of selling football fans on a novel, Cranor offers a couple of answers as to why this venture is not a literary Hail Mary.<\/p>\n
First, he says, \u201c10 million people watch college football every Saturday. If we could get 1% of that viewership to buy this book, then we\u2019ve done really well.\u201d Cranor pauses, then does a quick Google to make sure the numbers add up.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m purely an English guy,\u201d he says, referring to his academic pedigree. Eyeing the results, he adds, \u201cThat\u2019s 100,000 in sales.\u201d<\/p>\n
As for a backup, or reinforcement, plan? His main protagonist is a headstrong female FBI agent who knows football inside and out. A lot of her pluck comes from Cranor\u2019s wife \u2014 and a bit of book-selling pragmatism. Women, by a large margin, account for the majority of fiction sales.<\/p>\n
Below is SBJ\u2019s scouting report on \u201cMississippi Blue 42.\u201d<\/p>\n
The basics:<\/b> Cranor\u2019s tale of big-time, Deep South college football is set in a fictional Mississippi town at a fictional SEC college during the 2013-14 season. In other words, before NIL, the transfer portal and the College Football Playoff. An FBI rookie, Rae Johnson, the daughter of the head coach of the Arkansas Razorbacks, is paired with a weary veteran agent on the cusp of retirement to ferret out white-collar crime associated with illegally paying top recruits at the powerful University of Central Mississippi. When the star quarterback falls to his death from a campus rooftop bar, followed by a shower of $100 bills, a parade of corrupt politicians and policemen, compromised coaches and players, besotted fans and hangers-on are swept up in a satirical tale that pokes fun and points fingers at the spectacle of the game while the FBI agents try to avoid collateral damage. Rae is a former pole vaulter at Arkansas who grew up on football fields and watching game film with her single-dad football coach. She\u2019s smart, brave \u2014 and often impulsively impatient to make her mark straight out of Quantico. Her full first name is \u201cRaider,\u201d bestowed by her father because of the impression that NFL team left on him.<\/p>\n
Write what you know:<\/b> The author played, briefly, for Howard Schnellenberger at Florida Atlantic University as a fourth-string quarterback before transferring to Ouachita Baptist College in Arkadelphia, Ark. There he became the school\u2019s starter, setting several records and earning second-team all-conference honors during his senior season in 2010. That led to a one-year stint playing professionally in Sweden before returning to the U.S. to coach high school football before pursuing creative writing. \u201cMississippi Blue 42\u201d is his fourth novel.<\/p>\n
Mississippi in mind:<\/b> Southern food, culture and football enthusiast and writer John T. Edge, host of SEC Network\u2019s Emmy-winning \u201cTrueSouth\u201d travelogue show, provided counsel on depicting the Magnolia State. Cranor credits Edge with helping him portray the Delta in all its shabby splendor, lending cinema verit\u00e9 and cameos by the likes of Morgan Freeman\u2019s real-life Ground Zero Blues Club in Clarksdale (where legend has it Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil at the crossroads). Give Cranor a two-point conversion for naming his fictional college program\u2019s home field Sutpen Stadium and the town Compson, Miss.: Thomas Sutpen is the lead character in William Faulkner\u2019s novel \u201cAbsalom, Absalom!\u201d, while Compson is the surname of a family featured in Faulkner\u2019s \u201cThe Sound and the Fury\u201d and other works set in Yoknapatawpha County (Faulkner\u2019s fictionalized version of Oxford, Miss., home of Ole Miss).<\/p>\n
You don\u2019t read fiction \u2026 :<\/b> If you like mysteries, you\u2019re going to like this book. And even if you don\u2019t, any college football fan will find plenty to enjoy. Cranor nails the excesses and vanities of the sport while showing why so many people love the game despite greed, violence and too-often disposable players. From the \u201cESPN analysts in slim-fit suits and high-top sneakers\u201d to the Waffle House meet-ups where players collect their payments from so-called bag men, and on to imperious, multimillion-dollar head coaches slinging dunderheaded (and plagiarized) locker-room speeches, Cranor spares no one. But somehow \u2014 maybe it\u2019s the star player held hostage in his hotel room during the Cotton Bowl by a gun-toting kidnapper wearing Brutus the Buckeye\u2019s mascot costume \u2014 the author always lets you know he can\u2019t resist autumn Saturdays any more than the rest of us. And, just as the plot looks like it\u2019s headed for the same schmaltzy finish that most fictional football forays end on, Cranor calls one hell of an audible. Dan Jenkins, from his eternal press box, must be nodding with approval.<\/p>\n
Author Cranor is already planning a sequel set in the contemporary NIL era of college football. Heath Whorton <\/p>\n
Sample passage:<\/b> \u201cRae knew, firsthand, the importance of college football in small Southern towns like Compson, or even back in Fayetteville. The Razorbacks were the closest thing to a professional sports team the Natural State had to offer. Arkansas didn\u2019t make it into the national media much, not unless some meth head got loose in a Walmart or her daddy\u2019s Hogs were playing. The emotional wellbeing of the entire state depended on how well the University of Arkansas\u2019s football team performed. It wasn\u2019t like that everywhere, but in states like Arkansas or Mississippi, the games were more than games. They were everything, the only thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sales blitz: <\/b>Soho Crime has rarely dipped into sports-related fiction, but the publisher\u2019s lead publicist, Paul Oliver, tells SBJ that Cranor\u2019s authenticity as both a novelist and a former player ring true \u2014 and will give the book an extended shelf life through the upcoming college football season. Soho started its release campaign with a decidedly different reader sweepstakes (giveaways included a Nomad Grill and Smoker and Cranor-autographed footballs) this month, and Oliver is on the lookout for football weekend tie-ins as player compensation and other themes of \u201cMississippi Blue 42\u201d continue to resonate.<\/p>\n