What do football writers talk about?

I had dinner tonight with one of my friends from the NFL beat, Stan Olson of the Charlotte Observer. He's in town, obviously, to help cover the Bengals-Panthers game Sunday.

Stan and I got to know each other while covering the NFL Combine for the past several years in Indianapolis in February. He and I and the Tampa Tribune's Roy Cummings, whom I saw last week at Raymond James Stadium, regularly have dinner together at the end of the day in Indianapolis.

At dinner, at least with the three of us, the topics of conversation are many. What do we talk about? Just about anything but football. Sure, there's some shop talk: Which players are cooperative, what's your particular coach like to deal with? But Stan, Roy and I often talk about music.

One night a few years ago, we happened upon Neil Young. We hit on the regular songs -- "Heart of Gold," "Like a Hurricane," "After the Gold Rush" -- and we all agreed that a great, under-rated Neil Young song of all-time might be "Powderfinger,"
a Civil War story about the personal cost of war.

So, for my friends Roy and Stan, here's a couple stanzas of "Powderfinger:"

" ... Daddy's rifle in my hand
felt reassurin'
He told me,
Red means run, son,
numbers add up to nothin'
But when the first shot
hit the docks I saw it comin'
Raised my rifle to my eye
Never stopped to wonder why.
Then I saw black,
And my face splashed in the sky.

"Shelter me from the powder
and the finger
Cover me with the thought
that pulled the trigger
Think of me
as one you'd never figured
Would fade away so young
With so much left undone
Remember me to my love,
I know I'll miss her."