Book inspiration

This actually appeared first on my work blog, but thought it might interest some of you as well ...

When the Tuscaloosa News Best College Football rankings are published every year I always get a lot of questions about where the idea for it came from.
Well, I can finally tell the whole story now.
It began after my first book was published, "Crimson Storm Surge," in 2005. I had the idea to do a supplement to the book, something that could possibly be published on a regular or annual basis. Then came the thought about maybe doing something similar with other programs.
But which ones to do?
I started looking into which football teams had a lot of books written about them (and hopefully sell) and some marketing rankings in general. That led to wondering how many different ways a team could claim to be No. 1 in some respect.
"Funny," I thought. "Someone could put all those lists together and come up with their own rankings."
And so I did. The first year we did it was a countdown through the whole summer and it seemed to get a lot of attention.
But that's not where it all ended.
Shortly after turning in that first manuscript, I was approached about doing a book on the history of the Southeastern Conference. I liked it, but first wanted to get my book about sports writing published, and before long has a two-book deal for "No Time Outs" and "Where Football is King," which were both published in 2006.
That, in turn, led to "Who's No. 1? 100-Plus Years of Controversial Champions in College Football," which hit stores last November.
So what's next? We finally ironed out all the details on the "supplement" idea, with a number of handbooks that will be out prior to the start of the 2009 season.
Talk about an idea taking root.