Acknowledgments: The Longhorn Alphabet

If children's books had an acknowledgement section, here's what I'd say...

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The journey to write and self-publish this book has been an absolute thrill. It really started last year in New Orleans for the Sugar Bowl, when I was telling my wife and in-laws about how my son Jack was wishing there was a UT specific Alphabet book that dove deep into Longhorn Football. We’d already connected over several NFL, NBA and …WWE… alphabet books as we’d begun to enjoy sports together. Grace and my in-laws immediately responded with, “you should write that book.” Fandom, connection through sports and seeing our lives through that prism has been a constant theme of mine and shows up through my writing. It’s a big part of how I see the world and how I view generations of people connecting with one another. I responded to Grace, Beth and Andy that “I’m not an artist,” and they simply said “so what? Find one. You’d be the person to write it.”

I started floating the idea to several folks and I knew I didn’t want it to be generic and baby-ish, I wanted it to be something that my 5-year-old son, my 8-year-old nephew and my daughters would be excited about and stay excited about for more than a day. Shoot, I think it looks amazing and I think it will look fantastic on your coffee table too.

I remembered the books I read as a kid about sports and history that were amazing bridges into my lifelong interests, I wanted to create that. Thankfully, other people got just as excited about the idea as I was and when I was planning on punting the idea, a great friend named Jason connected me to an amazing children’s book illustrator named Andreea Chele. Fun fact about Andreea, she lives in Bucharest Romania and naturally knows very little about American football. But that didn’t stop her from wanting to tackle the project and she was a total joy to work with. She put up with my dozens of pages long Google Doc that explained American football, UT, the Longhorns history and players and what I wanted the book to look like and feel like. But she also took the proverbial ball and ran with it and added so many amazing elements to the book. She dove deep into Longhorn history alongside me, even watching Roll Left and 53 Veer Pass dozens of times on YouTube in order to be able to capture the plays on the page for kids. It’s been an amazing experience.

The book IS officially licensed by UT Austin.

So, here are my thank yous:

-To Grace, thank you for your love and support. You never blinked an eye when I told you I wanted to self-publish a book and every time I didn’t want to do it, you pushed me to keep working on it.

-To Jack, Campbell and TBD: Before becoming a Dad, I had a lot of nights where I wondered if being a father would stop me from doing the things I wanted to do. I can confidently say it’s been the opposite, being your dad has opened up the world and pushed me to do the things I always wanted to do: write, be an author, work for myself, not work some job I wasn’t proud of so I could have more time with you. You won’t read this for a long time, but you’ll read this book before long and I hope you enjoy it and see how I excited I was to create something we get to share together that allows us to keep making memories together around sports or whatever it is you want to make memories around.

-To Dad: Happy Birthday. You drove me to literally dozens and dozens of Spurs games from Northwest freaking Austin as a kid just so we could connect and have a team to bond over. I hope this book creates many relationships like what we have had over the Longhorns. (And I apologize that it’s the Longhorns :) )

-To Mom: Thank you for being the ultimate storyteller, with all your prefacing. You’ve made me love stories, reading, writing and care about what we pass to the next generation.

-To Andy and Beth: Thank you for adopting me into your family of Longhorns and never ceasing to create connection points around your kids and grandkids, whether it be the Longhorns, trips, dinners or time in nature. It’s modeled so much of how I want to connect with my own kids.

-To Doug, Josh, Bry and Zach: Loving, arguing and consuming sports together has been a lifetime of fun and laughter.

-To Daniel and McCall: Thanks for being our ultimate wing-men at Longhorn games, there’s nobody else we’d rather get baked in the sun with as we get a early margarita induced headache and spend over $100 on snacks for our children just so we can all cheer on Texas together.

-To my Outside the 40 Acres Crew: We watched us lose to Maryland (twice) and we’ve made it (I think). I love the gut punches and the celebrations with you. I hope our kids do as well.

-To Scott McElroy: You were the first person I told about this idea and you never let me forget that I’d had it. Thank you.

-To Meredith and Clay: Thank you for believing in me, the introductions, the edits.

-To DJ and Ken: Thank you so much for being excited about this and for validating it. You all do amazing work and I’m excited to help in whatever way I can.

-To Whitney: You helped me sand down so much of the rough edges on how I wanted to do this and accomplish this. Thank you.

-To Papa/Glen Dyer: Grace and I wish you were here to hear you laugh and get excited about the Longhorns all of the time. But thank you so much for the memories and for never losing to the Aggies.

-Thank you to Andreea, Jason, the Thors, Michelle, Jenna, Andrew & Kendall, Taylor/Tim/Bebe/Larry, Eric and Joe of IT, Wong, Andy/Brody, 3-2 and my Aggie cousins who fuel my hate.

Last, but not least, thank you so much to everyone who has tolerated and possibly enjoyed, my writing, it was all part of the journey. More words will follow. I am so grateful for your support.

Hook Em!