Peter King opens up to The Post about 40 years of never-told NFL stories

Legendary NFL columnist Peter King quarterbacks a wide-ranging and wildly informative and entertaining Q&A with Post columnist Steve Serby, sharing never-told tales across 40 years of NFL history from his riveting new book “The Game,” which will be released Tuesday.Q: What was the most shocking thing you learned during your research?A: Probably that Paul Tagliabue was legitimately concerned about a nuclear attack on the United States, because of his past.When he got out of law school, he took a job with the Defense Department.

His first really big project there was on the viability of how our enemies could get a nuclear bomb into the United States, and let it be kind of like in a sleeper cell until they were ready to detonate it.That’s why he was so scared on September 11, 2001, as he walked home from his office, through the soot of Manhattan to his Upper East Side apartment.Q: Describe the state of the NFL game today.A: I think the product is really a lot of fun.

The bottom line is in America, I really think we need football.We’re in such a divisive time in our history, and we need football.

We need it badly.Stop trying to ask players to do more.

Players don’t need to do more, they’re doing enough already.And the game is good.

It can be tweaked.But I love the game the way it is.Q: A Bill Parcells anecdote.A: Being in the car with him on the morning after they beat Denver in the Super Bowl [XXI on Jan.

25, 1987].Getting picked up at the Westin South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa, California, by the NFL Director of Security Charlie Jackson.

Sitting in the backseat with Parcells and we’re barely out of the parking lot.Parcells — who is, like gleeful — he puts his two arms over that seat in front of him, he’s sitting in the back in some sort of limo, and he says, “Hey Charlie, tell me: Was [Mike] Ditka as happy last year as I am right now? How was Ditka last year right at this time?” And Charlie Jackson just laughed and he said, “He wa...