Now that everything's been submitted and the pre-order page is (kind of) ready, I can announce what's been causing me to do almost nothing more than Talking Points for RTT for three months:

I've been serving as Editor for Rocky Top Tennessee, a publication by Maple Street Press that will be on the shelves in grocery, drug, and book stores all over Tennessee as well as parts of Alabama, Georgia, and Florida. You can also order it online.

Maple Street is filling a niche that was largley unmet until they started publishing their sports "annuals." What are sports annuals? Well, let me just quote Maple Street here:

Maple Street Press Annuals provide over 120 pages (not ads) of the most thorough, in-depth, and thoughtful analysis available on various professional baseball, college football, and college basketball teams. Brought to you from insiders and analysts that know the teams best, these keepsake Annuals feature world-class photography on glossy paper stock and go far beyond the basics and daily sports pages to give diehard fans the detailed coverage they crave. These are truly unlike anything else in print and are sure to satisfy even the most passionate fans.

WHAT MAKES MSP ANNUALS DIFFERENT?

• Focus on one team exclusively as opposed to covering every team in the country like national previews
• Provide unmatched coverage of the teams they focus on with over 120 ad-free pages of coverage on a specific team while national preview magazines provide 3-5
• Feature articles from writers and analysts that care and know about the team/program more than anyone else
• Focus on the present, future, and past of each team with articles highlighting the upcoming season, future stars for the team, as well as historical essays on the great moments and players of the past
• Feature in-depth, thorough, analytical, and exhaustive coverage of the team aimed for an intense and loyal fan
• Quality makes it able to be kept easily on a bookshelf or archive without corners bending, smudging, etc.
• Printed in full color on high quality paper stock
• Printed ad-free to maximize the content for the fan
• Feature significant voices from online writers that are familiar to avid fans of the team
• A true companion to the season for a diehard, avid fan
• High production values make it pleasing to the eye as well as interesting reading

We finished submitting everything to them last week, and although the sales mock up is still in draft form (with a typo!), you can pre-order it now. It is set to ship July 6 and will hit the shelves on July 21.

I'm really excited about this publication (1) because Maple Street does an excellent, high-quality job, and (2) because we were able to assemble an excellent staff of contributors:

• Bruce Feldman, ESPN.com senior writer and author of Meat Market: Inside the Smash-Mouth World of College Football Recruiting (reviewed here) and Cane Mutiny: How the Miami Hurricanes Overturned the Football Establishment.
• Clay Travis, author of Dixieland Delight: A Football Season on the Road in the Southeastern Conference and the soon-to-be-released On Rocky Top: A Front-Row Seat to the End of an Era. Clay's written all over the place, too, including CBSSports.com, Deadspin, and his own ClayNation. He's currently writing for AOL's FanHouse.
• Drew Edwards of the Knoxville News Sentinel.
• Wes Rucker of the Chattanooga Times Free Press.
• John Pennington of the Knoxville television show The Sports Source and MrSEC.com.
• Josh Ward, host of a Knoxville sports call-in show and contributor to the News Sentinel and MrSEC.com.
• Spencer Hall of Every Day Should Be Saturday and The Sporting News.
• Brian Cook of MGoBlog.com and The Sporting News.
  
• Matt Hinton of Dr. Saturday.
• Doug Gillett of Hey Jenny Slater and Dr. Saturday.
• Holly Anderson of EDSBS.com, Dr. Saturday, her own Snarkastic, and a frequent visitor to Rocky Top Talk.
• Todd Jones of Roll Bama Roll.
• Chris Brown of Smart Football.
• Brad Shepard (Ghost of Neyland) of Third Saturday in Blogtober.
• Matt Fisher of Gate 21.
• David Hooper, Will Shelton, and yours truly of Rocky Top Talk.

I think you'll agree that that's a pretty good list of folks, and I know that you'll love reading what they all contributed to the annual. Once the sales mock up gets corrected and finalized, I'll post a picture of it and a link to the order page in one of the sidebars. But there's no need to wait for that. Go ahead and order now!