An unlikely love story

Here we don't go again.

When New York Times sportswriter Joe Drape transplanted his family to north-central Kansas to chronicle a season of a domineering small-town high school football team, he wasn't about to get a patent for his idea. This kind of book had been written before.

H.G. (Buzz) Bissinger spent a year under the "Friday Night Lights" of Odessa, Texas. Minnesota sportswriter John Rosengren embedded himself with the Bloomington Jefferson Jaguars to detail the 2000-'01 hockey season in "Blades of Glory." John Feinstein offered inside glimpses of the 1985-'86 Indiana Hoosiers and basketball coach Bob Knight in "A Season on the Brink," while Madeleine Blais documented a girls' team in her "In These Girls, Hope Is a Muscle."

I expected more of the same from Drape and his new book: "Our Boys: A Perfect Season on the Plains With the Smith Center Redmen."

To my surprise, Drape delivered the most improbable, unabashed love story I've read in years. He thankfully tosses his objectivity into the Kansas wind and rhapsodizes about all things Smith Center -- from its hog farms to the Second Cup Cafe; from its oversized combines to its undersized running backs.

"Our Boys" is really an ode to Yoda-like Coach Roger Barta, who is gunning for a fifth straight undefeated season and a state-record 67 victories in a row. His mantra: "Let's just get a little bit better everyday."

And they need to. After nine stars graduated in 2007, only four awkward seniors had played much when 2008 rolled around. Lacking confidence and trust in one another, the Redmen start slow. But they pick up momentum right along with Drape's narrative.

At the outset, Drape admits his journey from Midtown to mid-America might be little more than an interesting midlife crisis. By late autumn, he's in love: "As each day passed and I learned a little more about the players and witnessed how Coach Barta and the coaching staff taught them ... I had fallen into a routine that I was not ready to see end."

The players' guarded "yes, sirs" gave way to easy dialogue as "we had gotten to know each other's families." Drape rode on their combines, visited their hogs and the players gave his 2-year-old son, Jack, high-fives and rides on ATVs.

"The Smith Center Redmen had become 'our boys,' too."

As another football season approaches, they're well worth adopting yourself.