The long snapper is perhaps the most overlooked and underappreciated position in football. He spends a great deal of his career bent over a football, with a guy either kneeling seven yards behind him or standing back at 15 yards. In a sense, the long snapper has one job—to go unnoticed. If he is noticed, it probably means he’s flubbed a snap—and for a long snapper, a single mistake can mean instant unemployment.In Upside Down Football: An Inside Look at Long Snapping in the NFL, Te...

From the hive mind behind the popular Happy Rant podcast comes this cornucopia of humorous and thought-provoking critiques of Christian culture. Come for the good-natured cynicism. Stay for the enlightenment.Ted Kluck, Ronnie Martin, and Barnabas Piper, hosts of the Happy Rant podcast, take their faith-based back-and-forth from the recording booth to the book page with this collection of insightful and often hilarious takedowns of pastor trends, p...

Author Ted Kluck found, online, a community of computer nerds and football enthusiasts so rooted in the past and so uninterested in the future that they have created algorithms and computer software that can accurately simulate football games, seasons, and careers using fields of data that already exist on the thousands of players who have suited up in the National Football League. All of these players are now old. Some of them are now dead. But they became the object of Ted Kluck’s fascin...

In the midst of a Christian subculture that idolizes families, an evangelical history of overcelebrating families, and a secular culture that overprograms families, one American family identifies the danger they’re in the midst of and embarks on a radical adventure. Household Gods offers an examination of the culture that spawned family idolatry and the steps we can take to flee this idolatry and escape to the Cross.

Can Flex Deal with the Drama?Flex is a football player, not an actor. But he can fake it if it means getting to see KK, the girl he’s dating (sort of—it’s complicated), every day after school for about a month.This play isn’t for the weak, though. First, Flex has to deal with his nemesis, Actor Boy, the guy who greets girls with kisses on either cheek. C’mon, dude. Really?!?Then there’s the whole Shakespeare thing. What was “Bill” thinking when he w...

Robert Griffin III exploded onto the NFL scene with a style and flair anything but typical. With a Heisman Trophy on his mantel, RG3 entered professional football in 2012 under a spotlight that glowed beyond his own team, the Washington Redskins. Could the Baylor graduate electrify the NFL as he had the college game? Could he return a fabled franchise to the realm of elite Super Bowl contenders?Author Ted Kluck deepens the reader’s connection to a man who became the face of a rever...

Join Flex on His Quest to Be CoolLike most middle schoolers, Flex's mind is on a million different things—school, sports, friends, girls (of course), and yeah, he's thinking about God too. More than any of these thoughts, Flex is obsessed with one thing—being cool.But how can Flex attain awesomeness when he's so amazingly average at, well...EVERYTHING?!?Football could be his ticket out of seventh-grade obscurity, but then Coach sticks him with a bor...

In the midst of a Christian subculture that idolizes families, an evangelical history of overcelebrating families, and a secular culture that overprograms families, one American family identifies the danger they're in the midst of and embarks on a radical adventure. Household Gods offers an examination of the culture that spawned family idolatry and the steps we can take to flee this idolatry and escape to the Cross.

In 1987 the players of the National Football League went on strike, demanding better pay and the right to seek free agency. Determined to keep the league going, team owners pulled replacements from wherever they could be found, from the semi-pro leagues to bar stools, in order to create makeshift teams. For three weeks, “regular” men—truck drivers, school teachers, stockbrokers—were able to put on NFL helmets and jerseys, play in professional stadiums, and live their dreams. The replacemen...

Sometimes, Church HurtsThe Church, the Bride of Christ. That description conjures up images of radiant white bride, eyes sparkling with peace and harmony, right? Maybe that’s why it’s such a gut-punch when that Bride behaves more like a grade school bully or a hot tempered drill sergeant.What do you do with that reality, a reality that sometime hurts? Ted Kluck and Ronnie Martin aren’t interested in 140 characters of tweetable comfort. They’d rather share t...

There are books on how to worship God with our marriages, our money, and our sex lives. Books on how to “think biblically” about movies, television, and the arts. Books on how to vote Christianly and how not to vote Christianly. But there is little thoughtful, Christ-centered writing on the subject that drives most of men’s banter with each other and consumes the bulk of their free time- Sports.Written in the vein of Rick Reilly (Sports Illustrated), Chuck Klosterman (...

A Suburban Dad and an Ex Con Show What Discipleship Looks LikeTed is an educated thirty-something father of two who's been going to church his whole life. Dallas is a twenty-one-year-old former cocaine addict with a prison record who has recently become a Christian. When they agree to meet regularly for "discipleship," they know that chatting once a week in a coffee shop just won't cut it. Instead, they decide to get to know each other while restoring an old Triumph Spitfire. Fille...