“Out Of The Darkness: The Mystery Of Aaron Rodgers”

“It was a sunny afternoon in Malibu in February 2024,” sports biographer Ian O’Connor writes, visiting Aaron Rodgers who was “working on his tan while I fact-checked anecdotes and claims from the 250 interviews I conducted for this unauthorized book.”

The book is “Out Of The Darkness: The Mystery Of Aaron Rodgers” ($29.99 in hardcover from Mariner Books; also for Amazon Kindle). The “long-shot kid from upstate Chico” might not “lead the Jets to their first Super Bowl appearance since they won it all in January 1969”; yet, as the new season beckons, one never knows.

“Rodgers,” O’Connor writes, is “the most compelling and polarizing figure in professional football, hands down… I wrote this book to explain why.”

What follows is an account of Rodgers’ life, beginning with Pines Elementary in Magalia and concluding with his move to the New York Jets and his season-ending injury early in the first regular game of the season. O’Connor takes the reader inside Rodgers’ most crucial games, at Pleasant Valley, Butte College, Cal, the Green Bay Packers, and the Jets.

But the book captures Aaron’s personal odyssey as well against the backdrop of strained family relationships (O’Connor flew to Chico to take Rodgers’ parents, Ed and Darla, to that fateful Jets game), the sometimes prickly relationships with teammates, friends, and coaches, and the ever-present question of what is next after a Super Bowl ring (with the Packers in 2011) and MVP awards attesting his status as one of the greatest QBs in history.

Butte College is especially formative. Smart as a whip, Rodgers finds a mentor in coach Craig Rigsbee. It is 2002; Aaron is 18. Rigs overrules his staff and makes Rodgers “the guy.” O’Connor writes that “it was a decision that set up the most important season of football that Aaron Rodgers would play—ever—and leave Rigsbee as the man most responsible for changing the trajectory of his career.”

Despite his “self-generated controversies,” O’Connor notes, friends “talked often about Rodgers’ generosity, his outsized heart, and the money he had donated in the wake of the great wildfire and the great pandemic.” 

This, too, is Aaron Rodgers, Chico’s son.

"Paradise Found: A High School Football Team's Rise From The Ashes"

Paradise High's junior safety Dylan Blood said it this way: "After all we've been through, we have each other's back in everything; we play for each other. It's win or death. If it wasn't for Paradise, none of us would be who we are. Paradise is something within each of us, and we're fighting for it together." 

It's the spirit of "CMF"--"Crazy Mountain Folk." And it's captured in a heart-rending new book by LA Times columnist Bill Plaschke. Reporting on the Bobcats' first football season after the Camp Fire, Plaschke entered the life and thoughts of Coach Rick Prinz, the coaching staff, athletic director Anne Stearns, the players, and those who cheered them on. 

"Paradise Found: A High School Football Team's Rise From The Ashes" ($28.99 in hardcover from William Morrow; also in audiobook and Amazon Kindle formats) reads like a cliff-hanging thriller--because it is.

Readers may know how the season ended, that cold (and rainy) dose of reality, but will not be prepared for the many stories of players and their coaches escaping the burning town and then living what came next: disruption, anger, questioning, and--commitment to football. It is enough to reduce a book columnist to a puddle of tears.

"'Football became the thing that bound the town together,' explained Jay Bell, athletic director at the high school from 1985 to 2004. 'Paradise is a different kind of town, and we had a different kind of football program.'"

On Thursday, November 8, 2018, coach Prinz texted team members at 8:10 a.m., confirming practice that afternoon at 3:00 p.m. unless the smoke got in their way. Little did he know.

Much later, after the season, at the banquet to honor the players, Prinz recalled that text. Then he said: "Eleven minutes later, we were running for our lives. These young men faced the reality of death. ... I could see the anguish and fear in my players' eyes. We didn't have a school, we didn't have a practice field, we didn't have cleats, we didn't even have a football!" But, of course, they had something else. 

You must read this book. Period.

Dan Barnett teaches philosophy at Butte College. Send review requests to dbarnett99@me.com. Columns archived at https://dielbee.blogspot.com