So far, it’s been a ssslllooowww start to Year 2026 with several business associates not getting back into the full swing of things yet. But I am. I have quite a few projects I’m working on this year, kicking off with an NFL Football book called Touchdown In Brazil about the first ever American game that was played in Sao Paulo on Friday, September 6, 2024, at the Corinthians Arena between my hometown Philadelphia Eagles and the legendary Green Bay Packers.

I am so excited about this new book that’s coming out in August right on time for the 2026 season, not only because I love the sport of NFL football ~ or “American football” as the soccer futbol countries call it ~ but that I’ll also get a chance to share a few chapter excerpts of the book RIGHT HERE on www.BlackMenInAmerican.com starting next month in March.

Even if you don’t watch or follow the sport of American football ~ with the 60^th Super Bowl (LX) coming up next Sunday,  February 8, between the Seattle Seahawks and the New England Patriots ~ I wanted to share this particular football story with the world to enjoy. So, what I did was take a passionate South Philadelphia Italian man who loves his Philadelphia Eagles so much that he decides to leave his wife and kids at home while he travels down to Sao Paulo, Brazil, alone, for the game. Imagine the guilt and defiance of that situation.

Then I took a Green Bay family of four who travel down to Sao Paulo from the state of Wisconsin to cheer on their beloved Packers and the $55 million-dollar-a-year quarterback, Jordan Love. I also spotlighted a Brazilian family of four, who have a sports restaurant and bar near downtown Sao Paulo, where they invite all the local and international fans to enjoy the games on their large, twenty-foot screen in an open-air seating area out back, while devouring their Brazilian food and drinks.

And for good measure, I added an African-American husband and wife couple from Philly, who head down to the massive industrial city of Brazil to enjoy the culture and all of and festivities of Sao Paulo before, during and after the game. That’s what everyone does when they travel to a sports event. They get a chance to experience everything that a hosting city, town, state or country has to offer. Just think about people who travel every four years to the Olympics Games.

Every last Olympic traveler can tell you what they enjoyed or hated in the host countries, where they experience far more human interaction than the competitions going on inside the arenas. After all, most of these fans will never have a chance to get within 10 feet of these superstar athletes. But that same fan can tell you all about the hotel accommodations, the local travel, the food and drinks, the nightlife ~ if they partake in it ~ the climate, the popular hangout spots, and how the overall culture differentiates from their own countries

Well, I do the same thing with Touchdown In Brazil, giving you a big taste of the human experience of these four family narratives that all culminates with an excellent American football game at Corinthians Arena.

And that’s just part of the news that I have to offer to you today. I’ve also decided to write my autobiography / memoir, From The Bottom, The Omar Tyree Story. I’m actually pitching that deal to a major publishing house as you read this. And that idea, to finally write my own life story, happened because of the Touchdown In Brazil book. I also have a Wall Street business teammate who has been pressing me for the past four or five years to write it in order to appeal to more male readers who are not the most passionate supporters of fiction.

So, what happened in late January was that my editor at Kensington Books, who are publishing this international family adventure and sports novel in August, asked me to write a letter to the readers, like I did in 2024 when they published Control, a psychological thriller and mental health novel. And as I wrote about my love for American football, starting at the tender age of four, I reflected on playing tag-the-wall touchdown with my uncles, my older cousins and their friends in our family basement in “The Bottom” of West Philadelphia.

That’s when and where my adolescent uncles, cousins and their friends all advised us to “take it like a man” and ignore the pain every time one of them tripped us up on the concrete floor, where we crashed on our unprotected knees, elbows, shoulders and heads. With their bigger bodies, the older boys were all on their knees, while me, my youngest Uncle Joe, who was only two years older than me at six, my cousin Bocky, who was the same age as Joe, the two youngest Forsythe Brothers, Donald, who was the same as a Joe and Bocky at six, and Garland, who was the same age as me at four, and finally Paulie Hall from across the street who was six as well.

That’s how we gathered in the ’hood during the early 1970s. Many families coming out of the so-called “Baby Boom” era had seven to ten children back then. And we would all hang out together at a young age like an extended family. That was how the older males ~ who were far from being grown or responsible in what they told us as younger males ~ warned us not to cry out like “a girl, a sissy, a punk, a faggot, a bitch, or a homo (sexual).”

Oh, they were quite graphic and vicious back then, believe me! What boys and girls often say to one another when no adults are around could be quite shocking, when I think back to it. But they were mainly saying those things in hushed tones down inside the basement so my grandmother wouldn’t yell down the stairs, “What are y’all doin’ down there?” and put an end to our fun if any of us younger boys cried out from our rough play. So, the older boys would warn us often not to whine like a baby, or else we would suffer the consequences of losing our cool, macho boy cards, which allowed us to hang out and be respected by the older guys, who were not quite teenagers yet.

Whether it was right or wrong, that’s how boys became men where I grew up, which made us all hardened teenagers and tough-minded young men when we reached those next stages of life. With that story opening up my Touchdown In Brazil book, with my earliest recollection of love for American football, it made me think about how much the readers don’t really know or understand about my personal journey, determination or temperament. My Wall Street partner is absolute right about that. Readers only know what they read or hear about you, and I’ve never gone into great detail about my own life story, while writing creating all of the interesting characters of my books.

A lot of readers and non-readers have this stereotypical idea of a young writer-to-be sitting around reading books all day inside the house, while drinking a glass of milk and eating a stack of warm, homemade cookies, which was definitely not the case for me. I was your typical, hardheaded Black Philadelphia boy from the ‘hood, who ran around in the streets, while dreaming about becoming a professional athlete when I grew up.

So, with me now turning 57 in April of this year, I finally had to ask myself, “What the hell are you waiting for? Write about your own life now before you start forgetting shit. It’s TIME!” And it’s ironic now that I was actually raised in a place was called “The Bottom” of West Philly, while many other people just like use the word. You know, they like to relate the term as an analogy of going from “The Bottom,” or from nothing, to reach “The Top,” where they become successful in life. Yet… they still have the roots, the resolve and the toughness of The Bottom still surging through their veins, their spirit and their character, particularly when things get hard.

That’s me. I’ve always had an edge that jumps out and fights to keep going when I become stressed by the natural rigors of life. Yet, I’m  still disciplined enough to calm back down and get things done when it’s time to refocus. And I was trained to do that by a hardcore stepfather who you’ll read about in my book. I haven’t started writing it yet, we’re going to shop it to a major publisher first. But I did pull together a detailed summary and outline of the 38 chapters, which correlates with the street that I grew up on at 38^th and Aspen. I also started calling up my aunts, uncles and older cousins to let them know that I’ll need their help to fill in the blanks about my Mom and Pops and my early childhood years, which they all have different stories about.

On top of that, I have a sports agency trilogy book that I want to pitch as an international series. Why? Because sports is where all of the action is. These superstar athletes are getting plenty of money, with corporate endorsement deals, live television interviews, constant public exposure, and can maintain a lavish lifestyle while doing what they love to do. Now the largest American colleges have agreed to allow NIL deals (Name, Likeness Image) that pay college athletes, some of whom are still teenagers, millions of dollars before they even turn pro.

You talk about a game changer! Do you know what these NIL deals can do to the egos and psychologies of the average American teenager? I mean, they have their own business teams now at 15 years old, which typically include their parents. Hell, my mother told me forty years ago when I was still a young athlete in high school myself, “You can’t just depend on academics anymore. So, if you can get a scholarship to go to school for sports, then you gotta do it.” However, she had no idea forty years ago that talented college students would now make more money in one collegiate year than my mother would make in her entire life.

That’s crazy, ain’t it? Corporations are now handing out NIL and endorsement deals to high school students that are more lucrative than the combined incomes of 10 parents! These powerful sports corporations and agencies are invading Brazil now as well to sign up their young athletes in soccer, volleyball, basketball and mixed martial arts. And Rebecca Andrade, the celebrated Olympic gymnast, now has an Adidas deal with several others, including Volvo, Panasonic, and even her own Barbie fashion doll. And she makes a guess appearance at the game in Touchdown In Brazil.

So, yeah, I’m writing a series of books about that lifestyle now, with all of the business and cultural details. I’m already on chapter four of the opening book. But I can’t give you the title of the sports agency series until the deal is done. Because I don’t want anyone to try and steal my titles (smile).

Other than that, with one book on the way out for August, and two new ones to be shopped to acceptable publishing houses, I’ve been calling around to filmmakers and investors to see if I can finally climb into the movie world with a few of my old and new Intellectual Properties (IP), which continues to be very hard to land. But instead of complaining about it and getting sidetracked, I’ll just keep shopping projects and talking about filmmaking, while doing what I KNOW I can do, which is write, publish, market and sell books. And I want more people around the world to enjoy them now, starting with the upcoming Touchdown In Brazil this August.

Get ready for the first excerpt in March, RIGHT HERE in www.BlackMenInAmerica.com magazine. And by the way, Happy Black History Month. I’m be writing more about that in the next two weeks

~ Omar Tyree is a New York Times bestselling author who has published more than 30 books and counting and won an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Work of Fiction after graduating from Howard University, cum laude, with a degree in Print Journalism from the School of Communications in 1991.