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Product Description From #1 New York Times bestselling author of TRAVEL TEAM, HEAT, and MILLION-DOLLAR THROW comes a cheer-worthy, family-friendly football novel set amid the Friday Night Lights world of Texas high school football Jake Cullen is a freshman quarterback playing high school football in Texas, the high-pressure land of Friday Night Lights. He is also the brother of Wyatt Cullen, who quarterbacked his team to the Texas State Championship last season--not to mention the son of former NFL quarterback and local legend, Troy Cullen. To be a Cullen in Texas is to be football royalty . . . which leaves 14-year-old Jake in a Texas-sized shadow. Being a good teammate comes naturally to Jake; being a winner and a celebrity does not. Jake may be a Cullen, and he may play quarterback, but he is not his brother or his father. He's just like every other kid: fighting for every ounce of respect, awkward around a pretty girl, in awe of his famous family, and desparate to simultaneously blend in and cast his own shadow. Inspired by the real-life Manning family of quarterbacks and set amid the football-crazy culture of Texas, QB 1 is a coming-of-age story perfect for the fan of MILLION-DOLLAR THROW and HEAT. Review The New York Times Bestseller! "This is a wonderful book by a great writer. All football fathers and sons will enjoy it."--Archie Manning About the Author Mike Lupica is the author of multiple bestselling books for young readers, including Heat, Travel Team, Million-Dollar Throw, and The Underdogs. He has carved out a niche as the sporting world’s finest storyteller. Mike lives in Connecticut with his wife and their four children. When not writing novels, Mike Lupica writes for New York's Daily News, appears on ESPN's The Sports Reporters and hosts The Mike Lupica Show on ESPN Radio. You can visit Mike Lupica at mikelupicabooks.com Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. IF YOU WERE A HIGH SCHOOL QUARTERBACK, A TEXAS HIGH school quarterback, this was the moment you imagined for yourself from the first time somebody said you had some arm on you. This was football now, pure football, the way you drew it up, but not in some playbook. In your dreams. And in Texas, usually your dad had dreamt all the best ones first. Two minutes left, ball in your hands, game in your hands, season in your hands. State championship on the line, the new 1AA championship for small schools like yours. One of those small-town, big-dream schools. Like you were the one in the book or the TV show and you were playing for Friday Night Lights High. Only this was your school, the Granger High Cowboys, against Fort Carson, in Boone Stadium, the fancy new stadium at Texas State University. Fort Carson ahead, 20–16. Cowboys’ ball at their own twenty-yard line. One time-out left. Even if you were a high school senior, already had a college scholarship in your pocket to the University of Texas, even if you could see yourself in the pros someday, there was no way to know if it would be exactly like this for you ever again—one shot like this with it all on the line. Unless you were somebody like Eli Manning, and you got to do it twice, in the Super Bowl, the way Eli had done it twice to the Patriots. Eli: bringing his team from behind in the biggest football game there was, winning both of those Super Bowls in the last minute, something no one—not even Eli’s big brother Peyton—had done in the history of the National Football League. But the quarterback in Boone Stadium now wasn’t a Manning. It was Wyatt Cullen. Son of Troy Cullen, who’d been the greatest quarterback to come out of this part of Texas—at least until his son Wyatt came along. Around here, people lived out their dreams through their high school football stars. All the ones who’d grown up in Granger and knew they’d probably die there wanted to know why you’d ever want to be one of those Manning brothers when you could be a Cullen in Granger, Texas