THE PRE-SEASON KID.(The Talk of the Town)

Each week in the fall, Andy Benoit decorates the family basement by arranging cutout cardboard logos of pro football teams on the wall; the pattern varies according to who's playing whom. On Sunday morning, he watches pre-game coverage from nine until ten--this is in Boise, on Mountain Time--then breaks for half an hour to join his parents and his sister Katy for mandatory breakfast. From ten-thirty until nine in the evening, he's back in the basement, alone, staring at the TV, which is equipped with the N.F.L. Sunday Ticket satellite package. Upstairs, another TV records selected games, so that, come spring, Benoit can study old videotapes. He watches six hours of tape each day for a month--and then he's ready to write.

Benoit, who just graduated from Boise High, is the author of "Andy Benoit's Touchdown 2005," an N.F.L. preseason guide that was published this month by Ballantine. Though this marks his national debut, it's the ninth volume in a series that Benoit began in fourth grade, with his mom serving as typist. (From Volume IV, "Touchdown 2K": "Last season was a huge turnaround for the league, and that made me look stupid. This year's book will be more precise. You can use the book for gambling if you like, just don't blame me when you lose the farm.") Benoit doesn't play football; he just watches it on TV. In fact, he's never been to an N.F.L. game.

Last week, Benoit paid a visit to the Jets' training facility, in Hempstead, Long Island. It was his first time seeing pro football in person, and also his first experience with green turf; the field at his home-town Bronco Stadium, on the Boise State campus, is Smurf blue. Benoit took a place along the sideline, watching the team run various drills, and after a minute or two a couple of men approached and asked if he was with the media.

"No, this is Andy Benoit, the author," a reporter standing nearby said, and produced a copy of the nearly two-hundred-page "Touchdown 2005" for inspection. (Page 30: "The New York Jets seem to have hopped on the subway at South Ferry in Manhattan, ridden all the way north past 103rd Street, clear up past Dyckman Street, across the Hudson River, through the western side of the Bronx, and straight on out of the city. Their destination? Mediocrity.")

"You did this yourself?" one of the men, whose name was Robert, asked. "How old are you?"

"Nineteen," Benoit said.

"Hey, Stephen, look at this," Robert said. "He wrote all this himself."