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The System: The Glory and Scandal of Big-Time College Football
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About The System: The Glory And Scandal Of Big-Time
Product Description A Shelf Awareness Best Book of the Year NCAA football is big business. Every Saturday millions of people file into massive stadiums or tune in on television as "athlete-students" give everything they've got to make their team a success. Billions of dollars now flow into the game. But what is the true cost? The players have no share in the oceans of money. And once the lights go down, the glitter doesn't shine so brightly. Filled with mind-blowing details of major NCAA football scandals, with stops at Ohio State, Tennessee, Texas Tech, Missouri, BYU, LSU, Texas A&M and many more, The System explores and exposes the complex, and perhaps broken, machine that churns behind the glamour of college football. With a New Afterword. Review "The best book on the sport written in years. . . . There's just no way a college football fan won't devour this book."--Dan Wetzel, Yahoo! Sports "[A] harrowing and occasionally uplifting journey--or literary trip--through recent history and across the country's most football-obsessed campuses."-- The New York Times “Throw[s] the penalty flag on the troubled and troubling state of college football.” —The Chicago Tribune “The authors are superb at humanizing figures like the college presidents struggling to maintain a balance and even longtime Ohio State booster Bobby DiGeronimo, who became a fall guy for the scandal-beset school.”— The Christian Science Monitor "One of the most sweeping yet meticulously researched books ever written on big-time college football. . . . A vital read." —The Hartford Courant "The System is a broad survey of the machinery of college football."-- The Wall Street Journal About the Author JEFF BENEDICT is one of the country’s top investigative reporters. He is a special features contributor for Sports Illustrated and the author of eleven critically acclaimed books, including Pros and Cons and Out of Bounds. His essays and articles have appeared in the New York Times, Newsweek and the Los Angeles Times, among other publications. ARMEN KETEYIAN is a CBS News correspondent based in New York and the lead correspondent for 60 Minutes Sports on Showtime. An eleven-time Emmy Award winner, he is widely regarded as one of the finest investigative journalists in the country. He is also the author or coauthor of nine previous books, including Money Players and Raw Recruits. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. THE COACH Part I, Mike Leach after midnight On Saturday afternoons in the fall of 1981 the roar of the crowd would echo across campus every time BYU scored a touchdown. It happened a lot that year. BYU led the nation in offense, scoring more than five hundred points, thanks to the arm of two-time all-American quarterback Jim McMahon. On his way to setting seventy NCAA passing records, McMahon had put Provo, Utah, on the college football map. Twenty-year-old Sharon Smith hardly noticed. But one evening that fall she was outside her apartment when a rugged-looking guy with wavy, shoulder-length hair approached. He introduced himself as Mike Leach, a twenty-year-old junior from Cody, Wyoming. He lived in the apartment complex next door. They even used the same laundry room. Turned out they had been neighbors for months. Smith was surprised they had never crossed paths. But Leach traveled a fair amount. He was a member of BYU’s rugby team. She was intrigued. Leach didn’t look like a BYU student. For one thing, his hair was too long. It should have been above his collar, according to BYU’s honor code. But Leach ignored the rule. That got him repeatedly summoned to the dean’s office. Still, Leach didn’t cut his hair. He didn’t talk like a BYU student either. His vocabulary was a little more colorful. So was his upbringing. He grew up in Wyoming with boys who spent Friday nights popping beers and getting in fistfights. Ranchers wearing sidearms would come into town for lunch at the lo
