Indentured

Starred review from January 15, 2016
A vigorous indictment of collegiate athletics, a system that enriches everyone except the athletes. Writing with New York Times contributor Strauss, a specialist in college sports, business writer Nocera (Good Guys and Bad Guys: Behind the Scenes with the Saints and Scoundrels of American Business (and Everything in Between), 2010, etc.) comes out swinging: the NCAA is nothing short of a cartel intended to protect a system based on--well, something pretty close to involuntary servitude. To wit: college sports generate more than $13 billion in annual revenue, more than the NFL, but its 460,000-odd players are required to remain unpaid amateurs. Though only 5 percent of NCAA football and basketball players go on to professional careers, they are still professionals in all but name, worked by an establishment that "squeezes every dollar out of marquee athletes." Most schools treat their athletes as prime and prized property; small wonder that one of the early characters in the book is a "fixer" whose job it was to take care of perks. All strictly illegal, of course, and reason for the NCAA, which had evolved rule books hundreds of pages long, to attempt reforms from time to time, as when philosopher and nonjock administrator Myles Brand was brought in to clean house in 2002. The proposed platform was utterly impractical, since it meant cutting back on such things as selling naming rights, licensing merchandise, and otherwise generating revenue for cash-strapped universities; in the end, the players were last on the list of concerns. It's there that the narrative takes a surprising twist, as the players began to organize for themselves, making demands for compensation that caused one athletic director to complain, prophetically, "what's to prevent all players from suing us to get a piece of every broadcast rights fee?" Though the tangled, ego-crossed effort fell apart in court, Nocera closes his deeply researched, anecdote-rich account by suggesting that reform efforts are far from ended. Championship-level reporting on the boundaries of sport and business.

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February 15, 2016

To most followers of sports, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) acts as a watchdog agency guaranteeing that players competing at colleges under its aegis are amateurs and not paid professionals. Coauthors Nocera and Strauss, however, both veterans of the New York Times, contend that the NCAA acts as a cartel, enabling the collegiate sports industry to generate some $13 billion in revenue at the expense of athletes who spend anywhere from 40 to 60 hours a week practicing while subsisting on below-poverty-line scholarships. They trace the pushback against the NCAA in the last several years, led by such disparate individuals as economists, lawyers, football and basketball players, as well as one of the first big-time purveyors of athletic shoes to universities. Meanwhile they examine legal cases such as that of former UCLA basketball player Ed O'Bannon, whose likeness was used in a video game with no compensation to him, and that of the Northwestern University football players who sought to unionize. VERDICT This well-reasoned treatise is likely too technical and polemic for casual sports fans but is essential for those who foresee a change in the future of collegiate athletics.--Jim Burns, formerly with Jacksonville P.L., FL

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 1, 2016
Hating the governing body of college sports, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), comes easily to most fans, so it's no surprise that the authors make a convincing case against the organization. In example after example, it proves much easier to sympathize with the so-called rule-breakers (former UNLV basketball coach Jerry Tarkanian, along with a litany of other university coaches and officials) than with the NCAA's leaders and spokespeople (even a former NCAA head, the late Walter Byers, became an opponent after leaving his post). But the issues underlying regulation of college sports are complex and often lost in the welter of excesses and abuses. There is a racial component to all of this, too; acclaimed historian Taylor Branch sees in the NCAA the whiff of the plantation, and the authors' larger premise, that the NCAA is similar to a cartel in which scholar-athletes are indentured servants, also suggests a racial subtext. Not the final word on a very difficult subject, but a solid source for anyone hoping to understand the quagmire that is the NCAA.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)