Boom! This is Books & Biceps #364!
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Today’s Issue is brought to you by the Summer 2025 ‘Read More, Lift More’ Challenge!
NEW READERS ARE STARTING EVERY DAY!
Every summer we take on a ‘Read More, Lift More’ Challenge, where we pair one phenomenal book with 30 workouts inspired by the book along with quotes and commentary. This summer, we’re working off of Alfred Lansing’s brilliant New York Times Bestseller, Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage. This book is one of the most popular B&B recs of all time and it follows an insane failed attempt to get to the South Pole in 1914, followed by a heroic, mind boggling rescue mission through a thousand miles of pack ice, on foot and makeshift boats. You will never forget this read.
Following the challenge is simple:
📚 You read 10 pages a day
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🧠 You get a daily quote from the book matching the section you just read, chosen by me, and a Meathead Motivation thought from me to keep your mindset locked in.
Start today and in 30 days you’ll be in better shape with a great book under your belt. You in? You ready? Let’s gooooooo!!!
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BOOKS
If you were making a Venn Diagram of authors Books & Biceps readers would love and you put “ex college QB” on one circle and “Edgar Award Winner” in the other circle, the entire B&B crew would be smack dab in the middle flexing and shouting, “give us the damn books!”
I’m happy to tell you that this dude exists in the form of my buddy Eli Cranor. Eli played quarterback at FAU and Ouchita Baptist University and he’s not only written some tremendous books, but his book that came out this week, Mississippi Blue 42, was essentially written directly for us. Here is my official blurb that I was honored to write to promote the book:
“Cranor blends his lifetime in pigskin with his gift for prose into a book that is a rare treat: a clever work of crime fiction that longtime Elmore Leonard readers and diehard football fans will both love.”
I can’t say it any simpler than this: If you love college football, great writing and top-notch fiction, then this book is for you. I enjoyed the book so much I asked Eli if he’d be down to join us for an exclusive Books & Biceps Q&A and he quickly agreed.
You’re going to LOVE this conversation. It includes College Game Day, great SEC football player names, creating fictional character playlists, Jimbo Fisher’s buyout, how to recreate the small moments behind bowl games and so much more.
Enjoy the summary and exclusive interview and buy the book here!
BACK COVER SUMMARY:
Special Agent Rae Johnson grew up on football fields alongside her father, a national-championship-winning coach. Which is exactly why, fresh out of Quantico, she’s sent down to Compson, Mississippi, to investigate the illicit money flowing into a bustling football program in the heart of the Delta. But two days into the assignment things take a dire turn when UCM’s star quarterback is flung from the roof of a college bar, lands on a bag of money, and dies.
Hoping to turn a routine fraud case into a career-defining bust, Rae ingratiates herself with the fans, coaches, players, and politicians who make up the university’s complex social hierarchy. With rumors of corruption rustling through the kudzu vines, Rae soon realizes there’s more to the game than what she’d learned as a child. And in order to win, she’ll have to put all her father’s lessons to the ultimate test.
BOOKS & BICEPS Q&A:
ONE
FINKEL: When you’re describing Rae’s big time football coaching dad, Chuck, in the beginning of the book, you have a great line: “His record was so atrocious, the board of trustees in Lubbock were willing to fork over a truckload of cash just to get him out of there. For the next five years, the Red Raiders were contractually obligated to pay Chuck $5,500/day to not coach.”
I love this because it reads so true to college football fans. You MUST have had a coach in mind when you wrote this. Which real coach inspired this level of “make millions to not coach” cashing in? Or is it a combination of so many haha?
CRANOR: I've got to give credit where credit is due, and the truth behind this line is that I stole it. A buddy of mine, a lawyer down in Arkadelphia, sent me a text shortly after Jimbo Fisher was let go from Texas A&M back in 2023. My friend had run all the numbers (math is not my strong suit). He figured out how much they were paying Jimbo per day to not coach. I was drafting this novel at the time and thought it was hilarious. The tone was perfect for Mississippi Blue 42. I did ask him if I could use it. So I guess maybe "steal" isn't the right word.
TWO
Writing a book about a fictional school in the SEC had to have been so much fun creatively. You have TONS of material. But one aspect I really enjoyed, both as an author and reader, are the names you came up with. Ella May Pride is an all-time perfect fake hot southern cheerleader name. Speer Taylor is another good one for a coach. And Harry Christmas rules. Did you just jot down ideas watching College Game Day? What names didn’t make it? I was just ripping through fake names for fun after reading this. It’s a great time.
There was a lot of College Game Day involved in the writing of this novel. I won't deny that, but that's not where I got the names. I keep a running list of names on my phone. Anytime I see or hear a good name, I add it to the list. I've been doing this forever, all the way back to when I was a high school football coach. Each year, I got a new roster, and in turn, a whole new list of possible characters. Here's a sampling of the names currently on the list: Porkchop Palmer, Nate TenBarge, William Earl Williams, Kayler, Kennedy Corona, Steely Beard, Sholandra Granbury Pickford, Rap Newby . . . I also keep a running list of band names, just for fun: Septum Ring, Tretinoin Purge, Prevnar 13, Mexican Car Seat, and The Pink Spittoons.
THREE
Steely Beard is either a Big Ten middle linebacker or the lead singer of a Grateful Dead cover band haha. Going back to the Harry Christmas character, when you go through his jet-setting research for how he built the city of Compson, Mississippi into the epicenter of college football, it really resonates with anyone who loves the game. You can completely see how real guys like Harry saw opportunity in some little nowhere town with a decent program and turned it into gold. How deep did you research this section? I know you played and saw things, but did you talk to any of these guys or were the headlines enough to make a composite character? There certainly were enough of them!
So much went into the research side of this novel. The book is built to answer how we arrived at the NIL era of college football. What led to the 2021 ruling that forever changed the college football world? Was it the right choice? Anytime I start a new book, I'm always looking for a question, a gray zone, something that is both wrong and right. The best stories exist in the middle, and in order to tell a good story, especially one like Mississippi Blue 42, you have to do your homework. I wanted this book to read like an alternate history.
It's about a fictional federal investigation into big-money college ball, but so much of what's in here really happened. I can't share names, but I did talk to players and coaches from major programs. I also leaned on what I could recall from my time in locker rooms and the field houses. There's some really great reporting out there too. In many ways, Steven Godfrey's SB Nation article "Meet the Bag Man" was the catalyst that got me thinking about this book. The whole FBI sting into NCAA basketball corruption also played a part. I kept wondering what would happen if agents went digging around in college football? As far as Harry Christmas is concerned, I would say there are men like Harry lurking in the shadows of every major program.
FOUR
One of my favorite scenes in the book is at the start of Chapter 28, when Moses McCloud was sitting with Cerge, trying to eat before taking on rival Mississippi State. The food. The banter. The nerves. Cerge unphased and eating like it’s just a regular meal on a regular day while McCloud’s mind is muddled while Cerge tells a story that seems to have nothing to do with anything… But it has to do with everything. You nailed that scene, man. First, well done. Second, did you pull from your own playing days from that? Everyone who ever had a team meal before a big game knows that feeling. Some guys loose. Others tight. Others oblivious. The scene felt so real. Did you map that one out or did it come to you while writing?
That scene is straight from the heart. I always hated pregame meals. I hated waiting for kickoff, the endless hours in the hotel, the flights, the road trips. Looking back on it, though, that's where I learned the most about my teammates. I roomed with guys from the 305, guys from LA and Detroit. They told me stories I'll never forget. I was from a small town in Arkansas. I learned so much about people from college ball, people who didn't look like me, weren't raised the way I was raised. I even played one season overseas in Sweden, and that's a whole 'nother story.
That's also a lot to try and cram into one scene, but I'm glad it hit for you. I try to plan as little as possible before diving into a story. I like to get the characters talking and see where they take me. Cergile Blanc is a straight scene stealer. He's loosely based on a guy I played ball with. I've been trying to get him onto the page for more than a decade now.
FIVE
FINKEL: Let’s talk about Moses’s big pregame playlist that you share while he’s walking back to his room after forgetting his headphones (don’t want any spoilers!). Lots of points here for specificity and randomness: Miles Davis. Bone Thugs. Hans Zimmer from Gladiator’s soundtrack. This is so good and dead on. How’d you come up with these musicians and what was your perfect pre-game playlist?
CRANOR: For my money, specificity is the key to good writing. I teach a couple creative writing courses every semester, and that's something I always harp on. Give me details. Weave them into the story. Don't just say "He listened to his pregame playlist." Tell the reader what songs are on the playlist, and let those songs explain something about the character. As for Moses McCloud, it was important for me to show that he was smart, but he was also a poor kid from Clarksdale, Mississippi. I wanted his playlist to show both sides. I will say, though, that the Gladiator soundtrack was my pregame go-to back when I was playing. And anytime I write, I listen to "Kind of Blue" by Miles Davis on repeat. I guess it goes to show that there's always a little bit of the author in any book, even if it's "fiction."
BONUS QUESTION:
I’ve asked a lot of specific questions, but this one is important. How much fun was it to create a fictional college football universe where you’re the master? You create the teams, the games, the characters, all of it. After playing and loving the game your whole life, what does this book ultimately mean to you?
People always say "Write the book only you can write," and Mississippi Blue 42 was it for me. I've been working on this novel, on and off, for the last decade. It's the thing that didn't fit neatly in any box (a crime novel about college football?). Still, I kept returning to it. I kept trying to answer the very question you just asked: why is this important to me? And the answer is that this book is about so much more than college ball.
It's about America.
Much like our country, college football has changed an awful lot in the last decade. The veil has been lifted. For so long, we didn't know how the sausage was made, but now, for better or worse, we do. I think we're all still reeling from that. With this novel, I wanted to dramatize the inflection point, the exact moment in time when these changes first started surfacing. I didn't want it to get too serious, though. It was important to have fun along the way. There's a lot of satire and humor in this book. There had to be. We're talking about a game. The American game. You can't play it straight and tackle the pageantry, pride, and yes, corruption involved in college football. Wrap those topics up in a candy-coated, football-shaped shell, and that pill is much easier to swallow.
BICEPS
You all know I’m a competitive swimmer and how much I love racing and training for the sport. And when readers ask me about long terms goals, I usually have a hard time being specific, other than saying, “I just don’t want to ever stop.”
Well, now I have a specific goal. I want to be like Frank Manheim.
Who? Frank Manheim! The guy who just won the 100 yard freestyle at the US Swimming Nationals… at 95 YEARS OLD! And he dove off the blocks, which is super impressive (most of the guys over 80 or so dive off the side). Check out my man right here. THIS is my swimming goal. To be racing at 95:
STRONG LINKS
If you’re a guy over 40 and you’ve been looking for a new digital magazine that’s written for midlife men, by midlife men, on the topics that actually matter to us: family, fitness, fashion, finance, food & fun, then join 20K of us at Midlife Male.
I write a column every Tuesday called The Manologue. This week, I tackled a topic near and dear to every dude’s heart. HBO’s Hard Knocks:
DO YOU WANT TO IMPROVE YOUR FLEXIBILITY AND MOBILITY IN 2025?
Hell yes, you do! You gotta try the Knees Over Toes program. I’ve been doing it for over 2 months and the results are legit. No BS. I’d never share this if it didn’t work wonders for me.
This is the EXACT workout I’m using to cure my longstanding low back pain, along with my longtime pathetic mobility and flexibility. So far, my tight hip pain has disappeared and my low back pain has gone from a constant five down to a two. This may sound dumb, but I can put my shoes and socks on without that familiar twinge and tightening. It’s incredible.
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