James Taglienti

Sportswriter: Whitewright Sun. Blogger. FWAA member. Football enthusiast. Minority owner: Atlanta Braves.

[James Taglienti @iamthe12thman]

Book is live: College Football's Best Offense (And Defense) In 2022 https://t.co/X2iKeaFDil

[James Taglienti @iamthe12thman]

@Drewtamu Are you old enough to have gone to the original?

[James Taglienti @iamthe12thman]

@Barsotta If you start your argument with Nijaree, you've already lost the argument. She is a shining example of the benefits of NIL and the transfer portal.

[James Taglienti @iamthe12thman]

@slmandel Were any articles written to reflect that belief?

[James Taglienti @iamthe12thman]

@coachkou How player dependent was that scheme? To me, it is notable Chadwell hasn't run the same thing at Liberty.

[James Taglienti @iamthe12thman]

@MeekPhill_ Did Batarool at least use the McMahon gif?

[James Taglienti @iamthe12thman]

@jimshapiro I spent yesterday talking to all CUSA coaches about how they're using AI. Thanks for giving me another concrete example I can use in my article.

[James Taglienti @iamthe12thman]

@engineering_bae It's always awesome when husbands are obsessed with their wives.

[James Taglienti @iamthe12thman]

2026 Conference USA Football Kickoff & Media Day

[James Taglienti @iamthe12thman]

@CoachDanCasey With the guard kickout and tailback seal, it's almost like they're blocking counter.

[James Taglienti @iamthe12thman]

@TheHost_ More AI slop.

[James Taglienti @iamthe12thman]

@JimboFeacher @TurnAndBurn210 @AggieFootball 2012 was their last trip to Kyle, I believe. I was there, and watching JFF destroy them while setting the SEC record for total offense was definitely cathartic.

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

There is a diner in the Tennessee mountains where a little girl showed me a book.

She could not have been six. She held it the way grown men hold the deed to a house.

A thin paperback. The cover soft and bent from love. A cartoon bear.

I asked her, to be kind, if it was a good book.

She said, "The Book Lady sent it. She sends me one every month. She knows my name."

Then she went back to her pancakes, as if she had not just described something impossible.

I could not let it go.

All through breakfast I turned it over. A woman who knows the names of small children, sends them books, and asks for nothing. In my country she would have a shrine. Incense. One clean day a year when the town remembers her.

I decided the Book Lady must be a gentle fiction. A story mothers invent, the way we tell children the old mountain is watching, so they behave.

I was wrong.

The Book Lady is real. She is the most famous woman in the state. Her name is Dolly.

I made errors. In a hardware store I called her "your empress." The man thought about it honestly and said, "Close enough."

I asked a waitress if Dolly was still living. She set down the coffee pot with great care. "Honey, Dolly will outlive us all, and then she will send flowers to the funerals."

Then they told me the thing, all of them, in the flat voice this country keeps for facts too large to raise the voice for.

Dolly grew up one of twelve children, in a one-room cabin, in these same mountains. Her father could not read a word his whole life.

So she built the thing that sends the books. Not the clever children. Not the deserving ones. Every child who signs up, from birth until they start school, free, their own name on the cover, whether the family has money or nothing at all.

The children do not know she is famous. They know only the Book Lady. Some will grow old and never learn it was her.

Two hundred million books, a man told me at a gas pump. Then, seeing the number had defeated me, he made it smaller and heavier at once.

"She did it for her daddy," he said. "He never got to read. So she made sure every child after him would."

I would like to tell you what happened in my chest when he said that. I do not have the words, and I distrust any man who claims he does.

I come from eight hundred years of men who wrote everything down. We cut our names into stone so the centuries could not misplace us.

My father was the last of that line before me. A silent man. For forty years I believed his silence was the only thing he ever gave me.

In that diner, I remembered something I had put away as nothing.

When I was a boy, my father worked among machines loud enough to take a man's hearing, and in time they took most of his. He came home each night with nothing left to say. But there was one year, when I was learning to read and ashamed of how badly it went, that every night, however late he came in, he sat beside me while I read one page aloud.

He never said a word. I thought he was only checking that I had done the work.

It took me forty years and a stranger's diner to understand.

He could not hear me. By then he could barely hear anything. He was not listening to the words. He could not have caught one of them.

He was only sitting where a small boy could look up and see that his father had stayed.

I carried that year my whole life as proof my father was cold.

It was the warmest thing anyone has ever done for me. I just never had the book to prove it, so I let myself forget.

There is a bookshop two doors from that diner. I have just bought a thin paperback with a soft-looking bear on the cover. I am mailing it tonight to my father in Japan. He is eighty-one. He still cannot hear.

He will not need to.

Inside the cover I wrote one line, large enough that he can read it without his glasses:

"I finished the page. I always finished the page. Thank you for staying."

The Book Lady learned it from her father, who could not read.

I learned it from mine, who could not hear.

And somewhere in the mountains between us, those two old men would have understood each other completely, and said nothing at all, which is the loudest thing men like them have ever known how to say.

[James Taglienti @iamthe12thman]

@Michellek4040 @BradWCAttorney You need an obnoxiously large championship ring to show off your dodge ball prowess.

[James Taglienti @iamthe12thman]

@CapstoneCowboy @JoshPateCFB @MattBrownEP The pursuit of the casuals at the expense of the diehards is getting tiring. They're going to squeeze the golden goose for every nickel until they kill it, then dine on its carcass.

[James Taglienti @iamthe12thman]

@lukeevangelist_ I thought Chilifest was its own business entity. How does SAE play into it?

[James Taglienti @iamthe12thman]

@ShehanJeyarajah "Of all the things that don't matter, this matters the most" is an accurate sentiment.

[James Taglienti @iamthe12thman]

@ShehanJeyarajah I've noticed a lot of people have upped their game in an attempt to match you. Time to increase the bling, sir.

[James Taglienti @iamthe12thman]

@SECcousinShane Tax accountant or IRS agent.

[𝕭𝖊𝖓𝖓𝖎𝖊✨ @Bennieeexyz]

Jury duty letter came addressed to my cat.

Not a mistake. "Felix Martinez" - that's his full name according to his vet records.

My last name. His first name. Somehow he's a registered voter now.

Called the county clerk.

Me: My cat got summoned for jury duty.

Clerk: Is the name correct on the summons?

Me: Yes, but he's a cat.

Clerk: Is Felix Martinez a legal resident of this county?

Me: He's a legal cat.

Clerk: Sir, if the name matches our records, he needs to appear or file an exemption.

Me: He can't file anything. He has paws.

Clerk: You can file on his behalf.

Me: Under what exemption? There's no box for "is a cat."

Clerk: (pause) Check "unable to serve due to medical reasons."

Me: What's the medical reason?

Clerk: He's a cat.

Me: That's not a medical condition.

Clerk: It is if it prevents him from serving.

Sent in the form. Got rejected two weeks later.

"Insufficient documentation. Please provide medical professional's statement."

Took the letter to my vet.

Me: I need you to write that my cat can't do jury duty.

Vet: Why is your cat summoned for jury duty?

Me: Excellent question. No good answer.

Vet: This is the weirdest request I've gotten.

Me: Can you just write that he's medically unfit to serve?

Vet: On what grounds?

Me: He's a cat.

Vet: (started typing) "Patient is unable to serve due to species-related limitations including inability to speak, read, or comprehend legal proceedings."

Me: Perfect.

Sent it in. Got another rejection.

"Summons is mandatory. Failure to appear will result in contempt of court."

My roommate thought this was hilarious.

Roommate: Felix is going to jail.

Me: This is serious.

Roommate: Bring him to court. See what happens.

Decided that was actually the only option left.

Day of jury duty, put Felix in his carrier. Brought the entire paper trail of rejection letters.

Checked in at the courthouse.

Clerk: Name?

Me: Felix Martinez.

Clerk: (looked at the cat carrier) Is that Felix?

Me: Yes.

Clerk: (long stare) He's a cat.

Me: I've been saying that for six weeks.

Clerk: Why didn't you file an exemption?

Me: I filed three. All rejected.

Showed her the letters. She read through them, expression shifting from confusion to disbelief.

Clerk: Someone rejected the veterinary documentation?

Me: Twice.

Clerk: (called her supervisor over) You need to see this.

Supervisor read everything. Looked at Felix. Looked at me.

Supervisor: How did a cat get registered to vote?

Me: You tell me.

Supervisor: This is a data error.

Me: Took you six weeks to figure that out.

They dismissed Felix immediately. Apologized for the inconvenience.

Supervisor: We'll remove him from the voter registry.

Me: Appreciate it.

Supervisor: (pause) Out of curiosity, how would he have voted?

Me: Probably whatever party supports universal treats.

Got a formal apology letter a week later and a voter registration card.

For me this time. Apparently I wasn't registered, but my cat was.

Roommate: Felix committed voter fraud.

Me: Felix committed nothing. He's innocent.

Roommate: That's what they all say.

Felix is sleeping on the jury summons now.

Fitting end to his legal career.

[Wall Street Apes @WallStreetApes]

American Preacher uses common sense to explain how far off track America has become

“If you can get arrested for hunting and fishing without a license, but you can enter this country and remain in this country illegally, you got a country run by idiots

If you have to get your parents' permission to go on a field trip and get an aspirin at school, but you don't have to get their permission to get an abortion, you got a country run by idiots

If you must show identification to board an airplane and cash a check and check out a library book, But you don't have to show identification to vote in our elections. You got a nation run by a bunch of idiots

If the government wants to prevent and they want to take our guns away and turn around and send F-16 fighter jets to our enemy countries, take our guns away and give ammunition to our enemy countries, you have a country run by idiots.

— If your government believes the best way to eradicate trillions of dollars in debt is to spend more trillions of dollars in debt, you got a country run by idiots.”