Hey everyone. I'll send out another update once all the contracts are signed but I've chosen a publisher. Just don't want to announce until it's official. But it's getting close. More details very soon....

In the meantime here's another snippet I cut from the book. This one is about working crowd control at Alltel Stadium (Now TIAA Bank Field) in Jacksonville.

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Back in 1972, my dad and a couple of his buddies bought season tickets to the Steelers, who to that point were a laughingstock of a franchise who hadn’t won a single playoff game in their entire forty-year history. Tickets were not hard to acquire. Truthfully, they may have let you in for free if you promised to drink enough beer. (Which my dad and his friends surely did) Then out of nowhere the Steelers got good. Really good. Four Super Bowl wins in six years good. And suddenly the whole city, reeling from the slow, steady death of the steel industry found an identity in its previously moribund football team.

To give you some idea of how things have changed, people in Pittsburgh now put their newborn babies on the waiting list for season tickets hoping that by the time the kid is 30, a seat or two might become available. But I was lucky. Because my dad hopped on the Steelers elevator while it was still in the basement, I’d been going to games at the unsightly Astroturf donut known as Three Rivers Stadium since I was eight. Which is why it didn’t occur to me that it was possible to watch the Steelers from anywhere other than halfway up section 645 until I stunningly found myself working in the club seats directly behind their bench. I’d traveled eight hundred miles and was somehow much, much closer to my favorite team than I’d ever been at home.

What I’d quickly find, however, was just how tough it was to hide my loyalty. I was stationed right next to the field but had to stare up at the crowd, thus turning my back to the action. This was taxing enough – let alone having to stifle the cheers that unconsciously wanted to erupt from deep in my soul whenever the stadium announcer relayed that they’d sacked the Jaguars quarterback. And while swarms of Steeler fans had invaded the upper decks, my section was full of rich season ticket holders who were clearly pulling for the Jags. If at any point in my life my appendix was going to rupture, this was it.

The Steelers came within three measly yards of making the Super Bowl the previous season. The Jaguars were an expansion franchise full of other teams’ castaways. We should have absolutely rolled them, thus rendering my nerves about the result useless early on and letting me better concentrate on my job.

That did not happen.

There were more cheers in the stadium than restless boos. Behind me I could hear the Steelers players yelling stuff like, “We should be killing these guys. Let’s go!” and “This isn’t even a real team!” and "I'm sure this concussion won't have lingering effects!"

The Steelers were down by seven when Jaguars kicker Mike Hollis lined up for a 53-yard field goal at the end of the first half. I wasn’t concerned. Back then almost nobody made fifty-yard field goals. But he freaking drilled it. Around me, everyone erupted. Trying to stop the stream of obscenities I wanted to yell was like trying to suppress a vomit. Just after the ball went through the uprights, a guy in a teal jersey leapt into the aisle and started high fiving everyone around him. After seven or eight mighty palm smacks, he turned to me.

I kept my arms crossed. “Sorry. Against protocol,” I sneered.

“Come on, we’re beating the freaking Steelers!” the dude yelled, his hand still in the air.

Fuck. Now I knew what it was like to be an undercover cop who had to brutally execute a small-time street dealer just to stay on the inside. (Alright, maybe that’s slight exaggeration) My eyelids twitched behind my sunglasses as I stuck my hand up for what is and always will be the least favorite high five I’ve ever given. For the next two hours I had to suffer through Jacksonville's first ever home win. The stadium was electric. The joy was contagious. These people had just seen their brand-new NFL team win a game in person for the very first time.

I did not share in their delight.

The only redeemable part of the experience happened just before halftime. As I’m standing there surveying the crowd, an attractive thirty-something woman made her way down the steps and stopped right in front of me.

“Hi,” she said nervously. “I have a weird request.”

“Ok,” I answered. “I’ll probably have a weird reply.”

“My sister has a huge crush on Bill Cowher. He’s the Steelers coach.”

“You don’t have to tell me who Bill Cowher is,” I said, nearly giving away my true identity. “I mean they showed him on the Jumbotron. He’s the guy with the mustache, right?”

“Exactly!” she said. “Is there any way you could get his autograph for me? You’d be my favorite person ever.”

Now obviously what I should’ve said in response is something like, “Lady, the back of my shirt says EVENT STAFF, not ALL ACCESS GUY. In the wildest scenario you can fathom, I still wouldn’t be able to get near a man whose multimillion dollar job depends on the opposition tendencies he’s currently dissecting, nor would he give me a moment’s consideration if I did.” Instead, I realized just how funny the possibilities were and responded, “Oh yeah, no problem.”

She let out an excited squeal and ascended the stairs, her hopes and dreams now riding on me. Somehow, I had to come through. I had to defy the odds, get myself in front of Coach Cowher and explain the gravity of the situation. “Sir, I know you’re in the middle of trying to decipher their blitz packages, but there’s a woman I don’t know who will consider me her favorite person ever if you could just…”

“Say no more, son,” he’d answer with a smile. “I always carry a glossy photo of myself in my back pocket for just such cases.” Producing a Sharpie from nowhere he’d scribble, “To my biggest fan. Best wishes” – Bill Cowher.

When that ultra-realistic scenario failed to materialize, I went with plan B. As she giggled her way up the stairs, I turned to the people sitting next to me, who’d clearly heard the whole exchange. “Anybody have a pen?”

The sheer lunacy of her request sent the section into overdrive. Men were checking their pockets, women their purses, marsupials their pouches. Finally, one lady produced a Sharpie at the precise moment that high five guy handed me the white cardboard container his hot dog had been delivered in. Then the real test came. From what I knew about Bill Cowher, how would he sign his name? There was much debate.

“I’m thinking you can read the B in Bill and the C in Cowher and not much else,” I said.

“No,” the lady who’d provided the Sharpie countered. “Bill has two big loops at the end of it. There’s no way he’d ignore those.”

“Oooh, that’s a good point,” I replied. “Which leads to the inevitable follow up. Is he an i dotter?”

A drunk guy who’d barely been coherent since the first quarter burped his way into the conversation. “If you ignore the dot, you’re a (hiccup) fascist. That’s the most (hiccup) fun part of the singernut (hiccup) siganoor (hiccup) sing-nature. And I know cause my name is Frank.”

We all squinted, trying to figure out what universe Frank contained the letter "i" until he suppressed the burp that had ended his thought prematurely.

“Ippiovitti.”

“Then it’s settled,” I answered. “Thanks Frank.”

I signed with big loops, dotted the i, and stuck it in my back pocket. We all had a good laugh, never expecting the woman to come back to claim her prize - which was why I could barely contain my excitement when she hopefully crept back down the stairs and tapped me on the shoulder with about ten minutes left in the game.

She unconsciously put her hands in front of her mouth as if to pray. “Did you happen to be able to…”

I reached into my back pocket, soon finding myself in a dainty yet crushing hug when I produced the section’s consensus of what Bill Cowher’s autograph probably looked like.

“How did you do it?” she exclaimed, fighting the urge to jump up and down.

“Eh, we're old friends," I said confidently.

“Oh my god, you’re the best!” she squeaked, floating up the stairs. “Thank you, Bill!” she yelled in the direction of a man about to spit fire at his players for losing 20-16 to an expansion team.

Was it a jackass move? Of course it was. But I mean, c’mon, if you somehow examine all possibilities for obtaining the autograph of your older sister’s celebrity crush and determine that your best pathway to success is to approach a random eighteen-year-old kid in an Event Staff shirt, you’re sort of asking for it. I can only hope that somewhere in America, there’s a hot dog cardboard in a specialty glass frame on a delighted sister’s living room bookshelf.

Even if there isn’t, I will continue to believe that there is.