My book on the Cowboys and Texans is...finished!

The Texans' Abner Haynes (photo by Sports Illustrated)I'm very excited to announce I've (finally) completed the manuscript for my book about the three-year pro football battle that took place in Dallas from 1960 through 1962. The title is "Ten-Gallon War: The NFL's Cowboys, the AFL's Texans, and the Feud for Dallas's Pro Football Future."

The book will be out in September 2012, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, the same people who published "That First Season," my book about Vince Lombardi's first year in Green Bay, and also "The Great Match Race," my book about the epic North-South horse race that captivated America in 1823.

"Ten-Gallon War" is the story of the birth of the Dallas Cowboys as well as the birth of the American Football League -- two momentous occasions in pro football history that were very much intertwined. Fledgling teams owned by Lamar Hunt and Clint Murchison, Jr., young men from Texas oil dynasties, fought it out in a rollicking battle for survival, although they never faced each other on the field.

I relied on interviews with more than 60 sources, including Texas football legends such as Abner Haynes, Len Dawson and Gil Brandt.

Like my book about Lombardi, it is set in the years when pro football was coming of age, skyrocketing out of baseball's shadows to become America's true national pastime. It was a simpler time when football was far less corporate than it is today. Quite honestly, I can't believe some of the stuff I dug up abut these teams and that time, and I can't wait for people to read it.

I will be updating this blog regularly with information about the book in the months leading up to its publication -- there might even be a few chunks of text to give you a feel.

Please feel free to post comments and check back regularly to see what's here.