Book Fair Fascination: The Narrative of Nine Series- Part 2

The Narrative of Nine: Scholastic Book Fair Sensation and Inspiration

How two Scholastic Book Fair purchases inspired nine steps to create two lifelong passions. 

Part 2 - The final four steps

February 2010

Super Bowl Fireworks 

Background:

As you may be able to tell from the book title I have listed above, the conversation around my 2010 Scholastic Book Fair purchase will center around the subject of sports. NFL football in particular. While my knowledge of the sport eventually reached that level, it began with a much more localized understanding of our local high school’s program. Most 8 year-old kids begin with awareness of the highest, most popular levels of football. Those on the national scale, college football included, happened to come second to me in my timeline of football interest. My focus here is recounting the journey of broadening my horizons toward the highest level of professional football and the league’s biggest event: The Super Bowl.

There is no other event in sports that matches the notoriety of the Super Bowl. It has become the closest thing to a national holiday and draws hundreds of millions in viewership each year. As the sport of football has continued to grow over the years, so too has this final game between the last two standing teams of an NFL season. The timeframe of my 2010 Scholastic Book Fair purchase is worth noting since it came just a few weeks after that year’s Super Bowl. The NFL’s 44th Super Bowl matchup between the Indianapolis Colts and New Orleans Saints was the first one I remember watching. My memory does not include the details of the actual game, but more of the eventization around it.

I, like a good number of the other hundred-plus million viewers, did not invest much time in the 2009-10 NFL regular season or playoffs leading up to the Super Bowl. If a game was on, I’d watch, but I did not seek it out on my own. A seed was clearly planted from these brief experiences and its growth was first noticed during our class trip to the annual Scholastic Book Fair. Weeks after the NFL season ended, a new one was set to begin for me when I made my book selection. Having heard the “Super Bowl” title many times in the lead up to that year’s big game, its front cover print stood out like flashing lights. The appeal grew with the word “fireworks” included in the title. Just below it was an impressive photo of what I would soon learn was one of the best plays in Super Bowl history. Captured from Super Bowl 42 in 2008, it featured New York Giants receiver David Tyree in mid-air, making what is now known as the “helmet catch.” Pinning the football against his helmet with a New England Patriots defender attempting to break it free, it was an image unlike any I had seen before. Kudos to the mastermind behind this cover design, as it certainly did its job and resulted in a purchase. More than that, though, it would become a key factor in a more worthwhile and long-standing investment in the sport at-large. 

Key Steps: 

1. Local football awareness  

Prior to that book fair day in February of 2010, a foundation had already been constructed from my local area’s football success. The year before, during my 2nd grade school year, the high school I would graduate from a decade later reached a football program peak. Their season culminated in a runner-up finish in the school’s first ever state championship game appearance. Without too much knowledge about the ins and outs of football as a sport, I understood their achievement was the talk of our town and could interpret the scoreboard’s wide margins quite well.

My understanding of how past events can help shape the then-current day circumstances is what grew my curiosity of the school’s football program history. I learned how longevity played a key role in the decades of their consistent winning ways. Stability in coaching and their ability to develop talented players was a key reason for this. The school has developed a long list of standout athletes with impressive post-high school football careers. Two former players on that list happened to graduate with each of my parents. My parents, thankfully, kept their school year books, which served as a time capsule I was very interested in exploring. In each one, covering a span of 8 years in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, it offered an immersive look into that moment in time. Within the yearbook pages, the athletics section that had the most appeal to me and was what I flipped to first.

Each sport featured a team photo and paragraph write-up on how the season played out for that year’s team. Yet what told the full story in its most honest form was the season schedule and results section, featuring the team’s opponents and the score outcome from each game. After viewing these pages for every sport offered by the school, I recognized quite a bit of inconsistency in each one except for, you guessed it, football. In the span of 8 years came several conference championships with no hint of coming close to a losing season. Wishing to uncover more than the yearbook paragraph and score listing had to offer, I had the opportunity to dive into another category of history. For this, I was fortunate enough to have two key sources, my parents, who were there when it happened. 

As my understanding of the “why” and “how” behind such success was developing, I came to realize the importance of team personnel and players. The knowledge of specific players began with the two with which my parents graduated. Each were of the program’s  highest tier of talent and individual accomplishment; Lee Becton, class of 1991, and Anthony Wright, class of 1994. The individual to coach them both, and countless others in the span of over 30 years, was Clay Jordan. I have had the pleasure of interviewing all three of these accomplished individuals, which you can access here ()

After getting those historic stories from the ‘80s-’90s era of the school's football program, I transitioned to seeking out the then-current ones, and boy, there sure were plenty. At the time of 2008, the area’s local journalism industry was still thriving. So too were the county’s high school football programs, which led to a lot of good team and player coverage. Without much internet exploring capabilities and a subscription to the local paper, my best bet to consume this content would be at my grandparents house. They not only had a subscription to various publications in the state, but weeks worth of issues were saved in a bin. I made a habit to rummage through it during each visit. If the football season was in session, my go-to day of week in their collection was always Friday and Saturday. The high school game previews and recaps gave me the best insight on local game results and also introduced me to game statistics for the team and individual players. 

Not only did it introduce the idea of stat-keeping for games, but the actual players accumulating them. I saw it was a key way to learn of the best players on the local teams and the game at-large. This built great context for me to carry into the games I began to attend in-person. To know those then-current players and exactly what they were doing on the field, it made for an experience in which I could easily invest. It was not long before the visions of myself one day playing began to creep into my imagination. I balanced those future thoughts with the current ones during my 3rd grade school year. A portion of our weekly schedule was dedicated to free writing in our journals. The page-length requirement was meant to be filled with whatever happened to be at the top of our young minds. For me, the main subject of thought at that time was centered around the sport of football. 

In fall of 2009, during the heart of football season, my free writing was based on the local high school game I attended on Friday evening. My writing style was heavily influenced by the local newspaper’s high school football recaps I had begun to consume. I harked back on the structure of those articles and tried to give the best description of each game and standout players. I would lose myself in this process and end up going well beyond the baseline length requirement. The more I read and wrote, the further enamored I was toward the sport’s complexities. Little did I know that I was merely scratching the surface. 

2. Super Bowl history 

Of the several publications my grandparents subscribed to, one of them covered the entire state of North Carolina. The featured sports stories went well beyond my local area and into the college and professional football ranks. During my visits to my grandparents’ newspaper stash, I would initially avoid anything that did not include the local high school team. My attention was solely set on them, even when the teams at our state’s college level were given a spotlight in the local paper. However, when a bye week came into effect during the high school season, I turned to the other option of statewide sports coverage and found it to be quite viable. While it never became my go-to source for reading up on weekly football coverage, it did expose me to the world of NFL football, thanks to their Carolina Panthers coverage.

I had just enough intrigue to periodically check in on the team throughout that 2009 season. There was nothing special about their team, who finished with a win/loss record of 8-8, but there was one game to catch my attention, which ended up being their most impressive showing of the entire season. It came during the second to last week of the regular season, occurring two days after Christmas. Their 41-9 victory over the New York Giants was a game outcome I had grown accustomed to from our local high school team. I had come to know the Panthers as a pretty average team, at best. Seeing this score and reading the details about the game, I could not help but think … The Giants must be bad! To be fair, they too were average at best, and also happened to finish the 2009 season    with a record of 8-8.

The 2010 Scholastic Book Fair came nearly two months after the Giants and Panthers matchup. With the Super Bowl Fireworks book in my hands, I was ready to dive in and sought to get further insight on the game featured on that impressive front cover action shot. I reached the section where the game, Super Bowl 42, was featured and saw a bigger picture on the miraculous play’s entirety. The entire game could be categorized as such, for that matter, as it featured an underdog storyline for a New York Giants team who defeated the unbeaten New England Patriots. 

With the Giants poor showing against the Panthers still relatively fresh in my mind, I was taken aback by what appeared to be a quick downfall in just 2 years. Little did I know of the rarity of sustained success over a stretch of multiple seasons. I was also unaware of how there was a local connection to this game, but that knowledge would come in due time. Until then, my understanding of not just Super Bowl 42, but the Super Bowl as an institution, had the chance to increase with an entertaining tool in the months ahead.

When summer rolled around and longer stretches of time were spent at my grandparents’ house, to keep myself occupied, I was in need of more than just the sports section of their newspaper. Fortunately, I was able to choose from a nice selection of DVDs and VHS tapes. One of those VHS tapes had a cover spine with a familiar logo. It was the same one featured on the top left corner of my Super Bowl Fireworks book, and various other places throughout its pages. The NFL shield is one of the more well known and easy-to-spot representations of a professional sports league brand. Above the spine’s NFL logo was the title Super Sunday and A History Of The Super Bowl next to it in smaller print.

The cover’s American flag backdrop was another recognizable symbol and had enough appeal to catch my eye. After removing the VHS tape from its place in the line of others, the front cover revealed the Lombardi trophy, which is given to Super Bowl winning teams. Though I saw this trophy many times throughout the Super Bowl Fireworks book, there was a certain pop of perfection in the artwork. There were no handprints or sweaty players grasping this Lombardi Trophy here, as were shown in the book. Instead, the cover’s mix of a metallic glisten and waving American flag backdrop was a picturesque encapsulation of the sport’s highest honor. To achieve it, I would find out when playing the VHS tape, would come at a price.

The NFL Films produced documentary, released in 1988, featured the best moments from some notable Super Bowl matchups, of the 22 that had taken place up to that point. In football, what used to be categorized as the “best” plays of a game were often the most violent. Nowadays, a majority of them would be unthinkable to allow in a game. Despite the intense nature of what was displayed on the tape, I found the game’s positive aspects outweighed any negatives. With a high stakes atmosphere of this kind of game, the bittersweet components are quite evident. The NFL Films had unprecedented access to provide in-depth coverage of victory’s thrill and defeat’s agony in those Super Bowl games. Thanks to the coaches and players who were mic’d during the biggest moment of their professional lives, the soundbites offered an amazing introduction of the ultra-intense nature of the sport. It sounds ridiculous now, but at nearly 9 years-old, I felt due for a certain level of edge in my persona. The pursuit of my athletic involvement, particularly in football, seemed to be a key gateway toward obtaining this trait. 

3. A football education 

Two months before the 2010 NFL season was set to begin, the subject of player safety had become a hotbed issue for the league. Taking it into consideration, the NFL was forced to take drastic measures to eliminate harmful styles of playing football. In the 16 years since this reckoning with the health and safety of NFL players, those strides have continued to make great progress in protecting those who play the game at all levels. As a fan of the sport, I recognize this quite clearly from the trajectory of my own perception of how the game is played. A great example of this view point is in relation to one of the most notable gifts I ever received.

By the time my 9th birthday came around in the middle of that 2010 summer, my parents knew of my budding interest in football better than anyone else. This understanding was reflected when I unwrapped their gift to see the Madden 10 video game for my Wii console. At that time I was unfamiliar with the extreme popularity of the Madden video brand and its vast history in American culture. What I did know was that the video game cover had two football players on it. The cover provided instant credibility and was all I needed to willingly devote my full attention to exploring all the game had to offer. Now, however, I see it in a different light.

On the cover are two players who were part of Super Bowl 43 in 2009; Arizona Cardinals receiver Larry Fitzgerald and Pittsburgh Steelers defensive standout Troy Polamalu. At that time, both were star players for their respective teams and the NFL at-large. It was not common for a Madden video game cover to feature two players, but there they were. I did not know of this rarity then, nor did I think anything was out of the ordinary with how each player was positioned on the cover. Now, with 16 years of further advancement in player safety, I can only think of the head-on collision each player would be subjected to experiencing. Such an impact would be inevitable from the technique represented in the cover’s illustration. Back then, though the higher-ups representing the NFL were newly awakened to these realities, most fans still enjoyed the bliss of ignorance around this subject matter. 

From the moment the Madden game disc was inserted in my Wii console, my own ignorance toward the entire sport of football began to rapidly dwindle. I became enamored with the technicalities of the sport, just as I had with its history. The Madden game served as a Football-101 educational tool for me to grasp the rules, scoring, as well as the offensive and defensive play designs. What eventually became impactful to an even higher degree was the team selection process before starting a game. How cool was it to choose any random team combination, of the 32 available, to square off against each other in a game? Well, for a while, I had no idea. So ready to start a game, I stuck with the two teams automatically selected for me.

The New York Giants and Philadelphia Eagles were those two teams. In what was yet another encounter with the Giants, this was at a more direct level with them set as the “main user option.” From the first game I played, to the onslaught of others to come, there was no other team that replaced the Giants from this “main user option.” The identifiable quality of this team went beyond their name or jerseys. I had the ability to learn their players on both the offensive and defensive sides of the ball. The one under center as their quarterback was Eli Manning, who quickly became my favorite player. 

My choice to view him as such was validated when I connected the dots from my Super Bowl Fireworks book I had acquired months earlier. It was his throw in Super Bowl 42, and ability to escape a sack from the Patriots defense, that led to the amazing catch seen on the book’s cover. Depending on how you look at things, he was the reason my football investment had reached the point it had. It all started with an eye-catching book cover photo, made possible by his ability to make the play. He would go on to make many more memorable plays during his 16 year NFL career, the entirety of which was spent as the New York Giants starting quarterback. In this summer of 2010 timeframe, Manning was in the middle of his journey to breaking nearly every franchise passing record. In hindsight, I could not have picked a better time to become a Giants fan. Despite a 10-6 record, they barely missed the playoffs in 2010. The next year, though the team had one less win, circumstances made way for a division championship and playoff qualification. Getting there was one thing, but to witness their improbable run to ultimately win another Super Bowl, once again defeating the New England Patriots, I was floating on a victorious cloud of “too good to be true” fandom.

Back to the first time they defeated the Patriots in February of 2008, I was unaware of everything about the team and sport of football at large. So much so that I had no idea of a local connection there was to this 2007-08 Giants team. Of the individuals who could say they were part of a team who stopped the juggernaut Patriots from finishing as undefeated champions, one in particular was from my hometown of Vanceboro, North Carolina. Anthony Wright, who was on the tail end of a respectable NFL career, served as Eli Manning’s backup quarterback.

For more insight on his career journey, and perspective of that season, you can find that conversation here: https://thenarrativeofnames.blogspot.com/2025/06/anthony-wright-athlete-interview-series.html

4. Camp of connectivity

The opportunity to first hear his recollections came in that impactful summer of 2010. Back then, the 2 year and 4 month time after becoming a Super Bowl champion seemed so long. Now, I can better recognize how that was nothing more than the blink of an eye. It makes the idea of that entire experience all the more fascinating to me now. What made this possible was my decision to sign up for West Craven High School’s annual football camp. It was an easy choice, and a necessary one, since my sights were set on joining our town’s Pop Warner football team. Held on the same field where my local athletic heroes thrived during their Friday night games, the camp served as the first true immersive football experiences. Though we were not in pads, the setting itself created a sense of legitimacy toward learning and playing the sport.

Held in the heat of the day in the middle of June, West Craven coaches and players from the prior season served as instructors for the elementary and middle school age campers. At the age of 9 and the limited size that came with my age, it was humanizing to see those high school athletes as they truly were; teenage guys who were still developing as athletes. Without pads and a helmet, their stature gave a kid like myself a sense of hope to see most of them appear as I realistically envisioned myself in 6 or 7 years. This was especially true for the most well-known and accomplished player from the prior season’s team. Standing around 6 foot tall with a thin frame, a young man named Justin Hardy was there to join his teammates and coaches in assisting with the camp. At the time, Hardy was set to attend Fayetteville State University on a football scholarship after impressing as a do-it-all athlete during his time at West Craven. Yet he believed there were bigger things in his future as a college athlete. It was something I and countless others wholeheartedly believed, as well, especially after watching him amass over 3,000 total yards and 40 touchdowns in 2009. Thankfully, the football program at East Carolina University came around to the same way of thinking.

Throughout the week of camp, a main topic of water cooler discussion among the campers was about the special guest who was set to close the camp by speaking to us on the final day. Intrigue grew as time progressed and former NFL quarterback Anthony Wright was confirmed to be our visitor. This news injected each of us with the energy and enthusiasm needed to withstand the intense level of heat and competitive football drills. Little did any of us know that a future NFL player was in our midst from the camp’s start to finish. 7 years later, it was Justin Hardy who would go on to host a camp of his own just months after playing in Super Bowl 51 as an Atlanta Falcons wide receiver.

Each camp day ended on a high note with some form of competition usually involved. One included a sprinting race between two teams consisting of both campers and the high school players who were each evenly divided. Witnessing the speed from those players, my fascination toward their abilities was given a major boost, in spite of any underwhelming observation toward their physical stature. These guys were the real deal. After winning my one-on-one race matchup, I felt like I was, too. However, the ultimate example of “the real deal” came in the final moments of the camp’s final day.

Thanks to inclement weather, the camp finale flag football game was moved to the school’s gymnasium. It was all fine and well for us campers, as we knew the special guest could then speak to us in a more intimate setting. I still believe it enhanced the presence of Mr. Anthony Wright when he appeared larger than life among us campers in the gym. This is what a football player looks like, I thought. The words he shared were equally impressive. While the specifics of his talk are no longer in my memory, the manner in which he spoke is very easy to recall. It was the one of the first times I remembered someone appearing so passionate in their speaking presentation. It was a true display of care and connection toward the place where he began his athletic pursuits. Anthony eventually came around to displaying something else, which was associated with the latter part of his athletic pursuits. It was something that required no description whatsoever. After reaching in his pocket, Anthony revealed the Super Bowl ring in his grasp and took a moment to let it speak for itself.

From my spot in the middle of a congregation of campers who were seated on the gym floor, the ring, like the man holding it, seemed bigger than life. Yet it was after the speaking portion was finished that both, the man and ring, would be seen in a much closer light. While this was mostly due to physical space between myself and Anthony Wright, a more personal component happened to reveal itself. By this point, both campers and parents were spread out around the gym floor. For me, the time for photos and last goodbyes turned into one of a big “hello.” It was Anthony who, upon seeing my mother and someone he knew as a classmate and fellow 1994 graduate, joyfully exclaimed her name and met her with a big hug. I was more than happy to witness every second of it. You could even say I was proud.

What I could not say was that I had hindsight of the moment’s true sense of magnitude. That would come later on. When it did, I was able to recognize how, in just the span of 4 months, I went from purchasing a Super Bowl book to touching the official Super Bowl ring from the game on its cover. To see the brightly shining Lombardi trophies on the ring was one thing, but to place my hand on it was what tied the moment together in a perfect bow. The trophies on his ring not only represented each of New York Giants Super Bowl victories at that time, they represented one of my own. It was the victorious feeling of finding a passion and grasping its possibilities.

(Photo courtesy of Mr. Anthony Wright)

Book Fair Fascination Part 1: https://thenarrativeofnames.blogspot.com/2026/03/book-fair-fascination-narrative-of-nine.html