WASHINGTON – A publisher plans to release a book about sports and politics by former Republican Sen. George Allen next year.

Regnery Publishing in Washington says the former Virginia governor’s new book will be titled “The Triumph of Character: What Washington Can Learn from the World of Sports.” It’s due out next June.

Regnery says the book will show what politics can learn from the world of sports, a meritocracy based on athletic achievement and teamwork, and how that can help America surmount its challenges.

Allen was a college quarterback at Virginia and is the namesake son of the late Pro Football Hall of Fame coach of the Los Angeles Rams and the Washington Redskins.

In 1993, cowboy-booted, tobacco chewing Allen’s election as governor over a heavily favored Democrat launched eight years of the greatest GOP gains in Virginia history.

The senator was a serious prospect for the 2008 GOP presidential nomination before losing re-election in 2006 to Democrat Jim Webb. Allen’s campaign imploded after he famously called a Webb campaign volunteer of Indian-American descent “macaca,” a slur in some cultures, as the aide videotaped an Allen campaign rally.

Allen now heads the American Energy Freedom Center, a nonprofit advocacy group opposed to Democratic energy proposals such as cap-and-trade.

Regnery has published political books by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, actor Chuck Norris and political commentator Ann Coulter, among others.