text: I was eager to read this book, but after reading it I was left completely flat.  The rest of the iceberg?  Hardly.
  
  Smith barely gives us more than what we could get from reading Sports Illustrated, or any Minnesota sports page.  He admits he's not a fan of football, but for the majority of the book leisurely describes the most basic parts of his football career.  
  
  This book is touted as: his full and complete story.  So we learned he was watching Ren & Stimpy during his NFL Draft.  Wow, are these the types of meaty stories that we want to read?
  
  How about telling us more of the inside details...  How did Smith deal with people who wanted to be his friends or girlfriends only because he was a star football player?  Who were his friends that he could trust, and when did he need that trust?  What thoughts enter your mind as you look to hire an agent?  What was he doing when he was "goofing off and missing class all summer" which led to one of the most covered stories of his time at Ohio State?  When, and why did he begin using pot?  If football is not "smart" enough for him, why doesn't he study and break down some of the coaching process that is more mentally challenging?  What happened to plans for medical school?  We know the stories of football; those are the parts of the iceberg that have already been documented.
  
  I also felt Smith wrote this book as if he is defending himself from all of America.  Who is attacking him?  Why does he feel the need to explain why he was paid so much?  Highly paid athlete stories are, sorry for the pun, a dime a dozen.  He tries to compare his sitting out for more money to a scenario for the average guy.  The truth is, many people will take a job for 5% less than a co-worker because yes, they value things other than money, and yes, they are happy to have a job.  
  
  Leaving the grammatical errors to the other reviewers, it felt like I was reading an average high school creative writing project.  'I did this, I did that, I went to bed, next day.'  Half of his quotes are from the wellspring of deep philosophy: pop music.  Smith notes "less than 50 percent of Americans read at a 10th-grade level".  Well, this book certainly won't tax the reading ability of too many people.
  
  One lesson from this book is that Smith had opportunities to swallow his pride, take some coaching, and come up with a better solution.  This book is another one of those times.  He should have hired an editor or writing consultant who could give guidance.  Build the characters; help us feel their stories.  Instead, Smith felt it necessary to go alone to get to the raw emotions.  Sorry, but compared to other autobiographies, this was not an emotional book.
  
  I'm sure Smith is all the things that Mike Gutter says he is, such as: thoughtful, honest, trustworthy, dependable, passionate...  but I felt that some of the best stories that would demonstrate these characteristics were left out of this book.  
  
  Instead, we are still looking for the rest of the iceberg.
  