EX-NFLER MARK BAVARO READS MORE THAN A ZONE DEFENCE...

You may remember Mark Bavaro as a pretty good pass-catching tight end on the New York Giants' 1986 and 1990 Super Bowl teams. Now, if the advance hype can be believed, he's set to become the first pro athlete in many years to publish a "serious" novel about her or his sport.

Tim Green, a defensive end with the Atlanta Falcons in the '80s and '90s, has cranked out several Grisham-genre thrillers about football, and Terrell Owens has a children's book.)

From My Irrationalities, an author's blog:

Debut -- NY Giant star and two-time Super Bowl champion Mark Bavaro's first novel, a fictionalized account of life in a scandal-ridden NFL through the eyes of a tough, idiosyncratic athlete at the top of his sport, pitched as a modern-day North Dallas Forty, to Marc Resnick at St. Martin's, in a good deal, at auction, by Alex Glass at Trident Media Group.

(From what I can easily gather, "good deal" means the author is getting $100,000-$250,000 U.S. for his or her book. Damn.)

It's way too late to imagine funny titles for novels written by sports people -- like The Obscurity of Genius by Mike Milbury, or Die Angst an Der Linie des Freien Werfens by Shaquille O'Neal. (That's what you get when you type "The Angst At The Free-Throw Line" into an English-to-German translator.)

Still, it's been more than 30 years since former Dallas Cowboys receiver Peter Gent wrote North Dallas Forty, which I cop to being among my early influences.

(Much obliged to Dan Rowe for the tip.)

That's all for now. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.