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Showing posts from September, 2016
Books by Rob J. Quinn
Cover for Reach Past Your Limits Cover of The Birth of Super Crip Cover for Reach Past Your Limits

Rob’s Rants on Sports: Eagles Dominate Steelers; Wentz Rolls On; Sixers Relevant Again; more

Forget the Wentz Wagon. Eagles rookie quarterback Carson Wentz needs a float in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Here’s the latest Rob’s Rants: Wentz is doing the unheard of, and, after Philadelphia destroyed the Steelers, no one is questioning who they have played. According to NFL.com , he’s the first rookie to throw zero interceptions in his first 100 pass attempts, one of only two rookies to ever start and win the first 3 games in his team’s season (Mark Sanchez is the other, tempering excitement?), and the “first rookie quarterback since 1960 to throw 30+ passes and win in each of his first 3 career starts.” And, I’ll keep repeating it, he barely played in the preseason. Are we headed for a PA Super Bowl? I doubt it, but here’s two fun facts. The same NFL.com article mentioned above reports that the last time the Birds won their first 3 games by 15+ points, as they have this year, was at the start of their 1980 Super Bowl run. Last time they beat the Steelers at home? T

My Goodreads.com Review of Chad Millman’s and Shawn Coyne’s The Ones Who Hit the Hardest

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Here’s my review of Chad Millman’s and Shawn Coyne’s The Ones Who Hit the Hardest: The Steelers, the Cowboys, the ‘70s, and the Fight for America’s Heart. Read it on Goodreads.com or right here: The Ones Who Hit the Hardest: The Steelers, the Cowboys, the '70s, and the Fight for America ’ s Soul by Chad Millman and Shawn Coyne I’m not a big fan of sports books. That might sound strange if you know me, as I love sports. But it just rarely works for me to read about sports in book form for whatever reason. Yet, my brother bought me The Ones Who Hit the Hardest after I gave in to my Steelers envy a while back. The book offered some decent behind-the-scenes stories about the Steelers and football from the 1970s. Ironically, the most interesting part of the book was about Tony Dorsett, who grew up in Pittsburgh, but became a great player for the Dallas Cowboys—a big rival of the Steelers years ago. It was also interesting to read that Steelers Hall of Fame quarterback Terry Bra

Rob’s Rants on Sports: The 2-0 Eagles; Questioning Pederson; Phillies Halt Potential Free Fall; Flyers Get Started

While you look for a comfortable spot on the “Wentz Wagon,” take a minute to read my latest sports rants: At some point, the Eagles opponent can’t be an excuse for their success. I’m not sure that point came last week, but the Eagles looked good on Monday Night Football. In a somewhat dull game, Philadelphia and Carson Wentz went to 2-0 with a 29-14 victory over the Bears. The most notable thing about Wentz’s performance might have been that he certainly doesn’t shy away from contact. He was sent into an almost a complete summersault on one hit. He’ll need to learn to avoid some hits if he’s going to survive as a quarterback. But fans have to love his effort so far. More importantly, he’s not making any big mistakes. He has zero turnovers in two games. His other numbers weren’t stellar, as he was 21 of 34 for 194 yards passing with a touchdown. Those numbers might have been better, but his receivers dropped a couple passes, including what seemed like a potential touchdown to Jo

Rob’s Rants on Looking Forward to Speechless, Designated Survivor; Three Good Reads; Three Good Messages on Disability

Here’s some of what grabbed my attention while the sun set on a really good summer and fall rolls in: Consider this a public service announcement since the new shows I end up liking often get cancelled. I’m eagerly awaiting Speechless, which features a kid living with cerebral palsy. The preview suggests producers “get it,” meaning that we might actually be able to watch a show that includes a disabled character without a weekly dose of “oh my God, it’s so wonderful that he goes outside.” Designated Survivor looks interesting, though I already have doubts. The President and Congress are lost in a terrorist attack during the State of the Union. I’m just wondering where it can go after a few weeks of hysteria. I don’t think it can leave the devastation behind and become the next West Wing. Hopefully, it’ll be fun finding out. I recently read a great article by Michael Smerconish on the decision by NPR.org to stop allowing comments on their stories. He suggested more sites should

Revvin’ Up the Blog

After a summer of dipping my toe back into the blogging waters and “tinkering under the hood” of the site, I’m looking forward to revving up the blog this fall. I thought I’d left blogging on my own site behind when I decided to self-publish my first book. I started this blog as a promotional tool, intending to let readers know about all of the exciting things I was doing around the book and how the next one was coming along. I think I’ve learned a lot in the last few years, especially just how hard it is to not only write a book, but to publicize it. In that time, I self-published a second book, my first novel, which offered even more lessons. I continue to look for ways to promote those books. But I recently started thinking about what to do next. Writing a second novel didn’t make much sense, as I’m still working on getting the first one some attention. However, I knew I wanted to continue writing. My mom was the one who suggested getting back to blogging. It wasn’t a bad idea

Commenting

I’ve added the Disqus commenting system to the blog to allow for reader feedback. For more information on the system, go to the Disqus site . The system allows readers to comment using various social media accounts or an account with their site. Besides their rules, I have a few of my own: Rob J. Quinn reserves the right to delete comments and/or block individuals from commenting for any reason. Do not post spam. Do not post copyrighted material. Do not post any type of offensive material. Do not post any type of racism or any other type of prejudiced comments against a group of people. Do not post personal attacks. Do not post personal information of anyone, including yourself. (This includes your e-mail address—you’ll end up with spam from others.) Do not write a blog post of your own as a comment. Keep it short. Rare exceptions may be allowed. Keep comments on the topic of the post to which you are responding. Comments can be used for promo

Rob’s Rants on Sports: Wentz, Pederson Good in Opener; Considering McNabb, Dawkins for Hall of Fame; Hinkie Tweets

It’s a Friday Rob’s Rants as I play catch-up after a late-summer vacation. I was not quite as impressed with Eagles rookie quarterback Carson Wentz as I thought I’d be when I got to watch the opener against Cleveland on DVR. I heard the first quarter on radio, and saw the second and fourth quarters around checking into a hotel. That said, Eagles fans should be excited by what they saw. The opening drive was obviously pretty sweet. And Wentz made two excellent passes on each of his TDs. He also made a couple other very nice passes in the game. His numbers are impossible to argue with—22 of 37 for 278 yards—and, maybe most importantly, he didn’t have any major mistakes, including zero turnovers. Seeing the game the way I did initially, I wasn’t focused on the lulls between the touchdowns. Plus, the Cleveland Browns looked every bit as bad as people said they are. I believe Ron Jaworski called them the perfect first opponent for the Eagles. When they lined up their new quarterback, Rob

Rob’s Rants on Sports: Early Super Bowl Pick; Tebow Time Not Over; Bradford Traded; Iverson to the Hall; NFL Lockout Worries . . . in 2021

I had planned to post a game-by-game breakdown of the Eagles schedule this week. I had them going 6-10 (after originally throwing out 8-8 in my “ State of the Eagles ” post) due to a pretty rough schedule. But with Howie Roseman trading away Sam Bradford and handing the reigns to Carson Wentz, those pre-season predictions have become even more meaningless than usual. So, here’s a Rob’s Rants with a national look at sports that still has a Philadelphia slant: The NFL will kickoff its season tonight, so most sports talkers are giving their soon-to-be-forgotten Super Bowl picks. Why not? I’ll take the favorite based on the odds where I look, the Green Bay Packers, over the next favorite, New England Patriots. Yes, I’m tempted to put the Steelers in there, but their secondary scares me. I had no intention of taking the Pats, but the other options don’t excite me at all. Minutes of preparation went into this pick, and it’s still as good as any other.  The Mets signed former NFL quart

#TBT from my Inquirer Experience

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I d u g out some of my old newspaper clips as I recently considered applying for a job or two. I also found a couple Blog Zone ’s from the paper that included my old sports blog . I thought I ’d share some of them on a “Throwback Thursday.” This was my first professional work as a writer. The main story covered some of the difficulty my alma mater was facing in the early going of the football season. I got a major assist from someone—I’m guessing Joe Juliano, who wrote the Area Colleges / Small Colleges notebook before me, and was a great help to me as I was getting started—who obtained the quote in the story. Get quotes—the first of many lessons learned! I actually thought this was the only article on which “Rob Quinn” was my byline, but not so. Mom told me that I needed more to my name—even though she’s not a fan of “Robert.” I eventually added the “J.” in “Rob J. Quinn” in her honor. I thought this was one of my best stories. It was on Jason Brader, a running back from