Champions Way

June 12, 2017
New York Times investigative reporter McIntire painstakingly lays out a damning case that Florida State University and its sports program abet sexual assaults and academic fraud as the price for producing championship football teams. McIntire introduces relevant individuals (such as FSU president Eric Barron, who would later become president of Penn State) and story lines early in the book as he carefully lays a foundation for his argument. He effectively weaves together emails, police reports, court transcripts, and interviews with whistle-blowers and victims to show a pattern in how Seminole stakeholders handled scandals. The rape allegation against star quarterback Jameis Winston in 2013 is the most-well-known episode in the book (Winston was cleared the next year), but McIntire delves deeper into that and many other events to show negligence by campus and local police, grade manipulation and deceit by FSU administrators, and shadowy mess cleaning by attorneys and boosters in order to keep star players on the field. McIntire summarizes the history of college sports and the social and economic culture of football in American universities, particularly in the South, convincingly arguing that these transgressions are widespread.

Starred review from July 1, 2017
Digging into the massively successful football program at Florida State University and finding the whole project nearly irredeemable."College football is deadly serious business, nowhere more so than Florida State," writes award-winning New York Times investigative reporter McIntire (Journalism/New York Univ.) in this examination of the Seminoles dominant yet often academically and legally troubled football team. "How else do allegations of rape, attempted murder, academic fraud, domestic abuse, and other scandals...go unnoticed, uninvestigated, and unpunished?" As the author clearly shows, coaches, administrators, staff, boosters, and even local police have often looked the other way when it comes to rationalization or excuses for reprehensible player behavior--not to mention the demonization of anyone who might reveal the abuses or get in the way of the coverups set in motion to protect star athletes. According to the author, these myriad, multiplying sins seem to be the hallmarks of FSU athletics, especially the football program. In his deep dive into this cesspool, FSU comes to represent the situation throughout much of big-time college football, which brings in hundreds of millions of dollars at top schools such as FSU, Alabama, Ohio State, and elsewhere. Indeed, readers will get the impression that FSU is not even an outlier, which might be the scariest element of all. McIntire shows that FSU is not the only school pursuing the "champions way," as his diversions to similar case studies in other athletic programs make clear. Naturally, the author ran into resistance nearly everywhere he turned, so he was unable to get the complete story of any of the many cases he investigated. While this may provide grist for detractors to try to pick apart his reportage, any honest reader will come away appalled--and rightfully so. A depressing but eye-opening and important book about the deteriorating heart of college athletics.

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September 1, 2017

Investigative reporter McIntire analyzes the ever-accumulating scandals plaguing U.S. college athletics by taking a closer look at Florida State University's football team. He explores the murky journey of Hall of Fame coach Bobby Bowden's four-decade tenure, which ended in 2009. Florida State players were accused of dozens of offenses under Bowden, including academic cheating, gambling, and sexual assault. McIntire attempts to tie these previous transgressions to recent sexual assault scandals, noting the apathy by campus and local police to uncover any wrongdoings along with the team's boosters' blatant attempts at misdirecting and deflecting--all in the name of winning. The discussion of campus sexual assault by college athletes is notable and heartrending. McIntire concludes by listing ways of changing this broken system, in which despite student athletes being exploited, colleges and coaches continue to gain wealth. Source notes are included, and the author states that interviews with many coaches and players were not available to him, leaving the book with a tinge of polarization. VERDICT Fans of investigative journalism will admire McIntire's stances, while football fans might learn more about the inner-workings of the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association).--Keith Klang, Port Washington P.L., NY

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from September 1, 2017
McIntire sees a mendacious illusion in the crystal trophy Florida State University claimed in 2014 by winning the national championship in college football. Tracing the route Florida State took in securing that luminous prize, he uncovers an ugly chain of violence, deceit, and corruption. Readers contemplate that chain as they assess strong evidence that FSU succeeded on the gridiron only by ignoring crimes (including rape) committed by star players and by compromising academic standards for team members. But even as he indicts individual FSU players (including quarterback Jameis Winston), former FSU coach Bobby Bowden, and even then-FSU President Eric Barron, McIntire interprets the failings of these individuals as symptoms of a cultural epidemic reaching far beyond the campus of FSU. How, readers finally must ask themselves, can anyone prevent offenses such as those committed at FSU so long as university athleticsespecially footballcommand obscenely large amounts of money and wildly disproportionate media attention? Though he concedes that current political circumstances are not favorable to reform, McIntire confronts the readers with the cost of inaction by recounting the disturbing stories of two women (sexual-assault victim Erica Kinsman and betrayed whistleblower Christie Suggs) traumatized by the morally bankrupt system now governing college sports. A deeply unsettling expose.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)