Good morning and happy Friday, everyone. I hope you all had a decent week, but even if you didn't, it's Friday now. Wahoo!
The Black Knights have a monster game this week down in Tulsa, Oklahoma, tonight. I mention it because I'm super-excited about it, obviously, but also because I was really happy with the work I did over at As For Football this week as well. With James out learning to fly a new airplane, I've had to do both the Preview and the Keys to Victory for the last two weeks, and I felt like this week's Preview in particular came out really well. Go check that out if you want to see the kind of writing that earned us a following back in the day.
With that out of the way, let's get into it.
1. Dr. Necropolis Preview Plans
Friends, there's a reason you need to sign up for the Dr. Necropolis mailing list, and it's because I'm planning to use the mailing list to send out early review copies of the book electronically to interested friends and classmates as a way of generating early reviews and buzz for the book. Those early reviews are critical! Amazon's algorithm won't push a book until it receives fifteen written reviews.
So. My plan right now is to use a service called Book Funnel to send out review copies starting in early December to members of my mailing list. Because honestly, I don't really want to charge my friends for the book, but I do really need your help telling people about it. You will then have a month to read The Return of Dr. Necropolis, and if you like it, leave a review on launch day, December 29, 2026.
That's it!
As of this writing, my plan is to launch the ebook for $.99 for the first week, so if you REALLY like it and you want to be SUPER HELPFUL, you can then buy a copy for just under a buck and leave me a Verified Purchase review. But honestly, the ask here is just that you leave me a review and tell people what you thought of the book.
In other news, we're almost done working out the final details on the book's cover. I sincerely hope to show that to you before the end of the month. But again, the cover will debut in my newsletter.
Seriously, friends, social media has become an absolutely shit way to get the word out about stuff. If you want to know about the book, get on the newsletter.
Thanks.
2. Corporate sponsorships to cover JMU's record American entrance fee (The Northern Virginia Daily)
JMU, however, appears to be the first to finance its move by delivering new sponsorship agreements at the conference level.
Athletic director Matt Roan somewhat reluctantly acknowledged that the concept was inspired, at least in part, by one of JMU's future conference mates.
Memphis, an American member since 2013, made an overture to the Big 12 last year that reportedly included a financial package worth between $200 million and $250 million, with sponsorship commitments from FedEx forming a significant component.
The Big 12 rejected the proposal, but the concept offered an example of how corporate partnerships could potentially be leveraged during conference realignment.
As much as I welcome JMU's entrance into the American Conference, this development overall does not look good for college football as an institution. The powers seem hellbent on turning what was once the greatest sport on Earth into just another pro league, and I couldn't love it less.
As I've said many times, I feel like I learned more from college swimming than I learned from college classes, and I use it more. College swimming taught me to work my ass off and compete for what I want. College classes, by comparison, often focused on niche subject-matter that I often liked but which rarely intersect with my actual reality. So to the extent that the current changes in the college football landscape are taking sports opportunities away from non-NFL caliber players -- in all sports -- I hate it.
These changes are helping a tiny handful of people at the expense of the other 99% of collegiate athletes, just like every other thing everywhere else on the planet.
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| Former Army O-Line Coach & current CMU Head Coach Matt Drinkall on CFB's changes. |
3. The Return of Dr. Necropolis Playlist (Spotify)
This playlist has been through several iterations. In looking for some music for today's write up, I decided to cut it down to something that you might actually listen to on a single CD.
I really want to talk about all the choices on this list, but that's a project for some kind of spoilerific podcast interview. No idea when the hell we'll actually get around to that.
4. Why Do We Root for Villains? (Page Chewing)
Speaking of podcasts, I was on the Page Chewing's Beyond the Page podcast a couple of week ago, and the interview dropped publicly earlier this week. This was my favorite of the recent interviews I've done to support The Return of Dr. Necropolis because we spent the most time talking about the actual book and about the writing process generally.
The piece is up on YouTube, but I don't think it's particularly interesting visually, so much like my own show, I'm going to give you the Spotify embed below. It's also on Apple Podcasts and wherever else. Listen however you want.
5. Army Football Night Games
As noted in the intro, Army Football plays tonight, and it's the first of a three-game set. They also play on Halloween Night down in Memphis next week, and they'll host Air Force for a crucial Commander-in-Chief's Trophy game on Saturday night in primetime on CBS the first week in November.
I mention this because Army doesn't generally play a lot at night, and institutionally, I don't know that they're good at it as an organization. Granted, they beat K-State for a signature win last season at night, and they took them #4-Oklahoma to overtime at night way back in 2018. Still, playing at night is tough.
It's probably good that they'll get a couple of cracks at it before they host Air Force, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't nervous about tonight's game. They'd probably be favored by a touchdown if they were playing at noon at Michie Stadium. As things stand, however, they're 1.5-point underdogs.
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That's all I've got this week. As I said, you can do us both a favor by signing up for my book's mailing list, and if you haven't, definitely check out some of my work this week over on AFF. We're in for a great game tonight, and I tried really hard to make sure you'd be ready and psyched for it.
Go Army! BEAT TULSA!!!
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