NFL book club: Michael Bennett gets the Seattle Seahawks to tackle books

Seattle Seahawks defensive end Michael Bennett is used to sacking quarterbacks, but he’s found something else to tackle in his downtime: a book club.

Bennett has founded a book club for his teammates, ESPN reports, and their first pick is Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers: The Story of Success.” The Seahawks reached the Super Bowl in 2015, losing to the New England Patriots. In 2014 the Seahawks also went to the Super Bowl; that year they won the championship.

“They have been receptive,” Bennett said of his teammates. “I tell them don’t waste too much time staying on the phone all the time. Every once in a while, open up a book.”

Maurice Kelly, the vice president of player engagement for the team, said he wasn’t surprised that Bennett came up with the idea for a teamwide book club.

“He reads a lot,” Kelly said. “He leaves his books all over the damn place. I see ‘em in my office all the time.”

Bennett told ESPN that “Outliers” is a natural choice for his book club’s inaugural pick.

“I think ‘Outliers’ is the perfect book for us because we are outliers when you think of the sense of what we’ve been through and who we are and the situation we were born in,” he said. “I think the book is really good for all these young guys to read something like that and all the stuff that Bill Gates has been through, Paul Allen. All these guys and how they overcame the situation that they came through.”

Bennett, who played college football for Texas A&M University, has a reputation in the NFL for his outspokenness and engagement with social issues.

He endorsed Bernie Sanders for president last year, and told reporters that politics is often a topic of discussion in the Seahawks locker room.

“We always talk about politics,” he said, adding he and his teammates seldom agree. “It has a lot to do with what goes on around the world. We like to talk about it and like to be a part of it.”

Bennett isn’t the first NFL player to channel his love of literature into a book club. In April, Indianapolis Colts quarterback and book lover Andrew Luck started one of his own.

“I love to read both fiction and nonfiction and I feel strongly about the power of reading,” Luck said. “So I thought, ‘Why not start a real book club?’”

Luck’s club recommends books for both younger and older readers. Its current picks are C.S. Lewis’ “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” (for “rookies”) and Andy Weir’s “The Martian” (for “veterans”).

Bennett’s book club lacks a website — at least for now — but he and his teammates have a few weeks to get through “Outliers” before the Seahawks’ first game on Sept. 11 against the Miami Dolphins.