An heir to the Southern humor writing tradition of Mark Twain and Pogo, Roy Blount, Jr. has covered a wide array of subjects—from a season with an NFL team to the Jimmy Carter presidency—with equal parts incisiveness and whimsy.

Roy Blount, Jr. was born in Indianapolis on October 5, 1941. As an infant, he moved with his parents to their native Georgia, where his father became a civic leader in Decatur, and his family lived a comfortably middle-class life during the 1950s. He attended Vanderbilt University in Nashville on a Grantland Rice scholarship, and much of his early journalism work was, like Rice's, in sportswriting. In 1968, Blount began writing for Sports Illustrated, where he quickly became known for his offbeat subjects.

In 1973 Blount decided to follow a professional football team around for one year—from the offseason through a bruising NFL campaign...