Book Review: Play Their Hearts Out

As the book’s subtitle says, Play Their Hearts Out: A Coach, His Star Recruit, and the Youth Basketball Machine sheds a necessary light on the machine of grassroots basketball that extends from the youth levels into high school, college, and even the NBA. The story’s main players here are a coach, Joe Keller, and his player, Demetrius Walker. Author George Dohrmann follows them on their quests for two very different American dreams. Keller’s dream is simple: he wants to be a millionaire, and his dream can be achieved by convincing the ten-year-old Demetrius that he will help the boy achieve his own dream of reaching the NBA. There are other players involved, including a number of athletes, parents, and Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) coaches, and the major shoe companies—Adidas, Nike, and Reebok—always loom large in the background.  

After meeting in 2000, Keller agrees to let Dohrmann follow him because, as Keller says, “Having a guy from Sports Illustrated affiliated with my program will help with recruiting.” From the outset, Keller knows Demetrius’s talent is the golden ticket he’s been looking for. Throughout the book, Keller uses Demetrius to pop on to the AAU radar and, consequently, nab a boatload of money from Adidas before disappearing from Demetrius’s life. 

Dohrmann follows Demetrius through high school and into college. This makes Demetrius the lens through which we view the corruption of the grassroots basketball world. We see teammates, parents, and coaches move in and out of his life during his formative years, and each time, the aftermath is heartbreaking. Through his reporting, Dorhmann can see all the forces working for and against Demetrius, even when Demetrius is blind to them. The true beauty of the book is how Dohrmann exposes the way the grassroots system influences every level of basketball without overshadowing Demetrius’s personal journey. Each chapter opens with a photo—some provided by players’ parents—that, along with the narrative Dorhmann creates, leaves readers with the feeling of growing up alongside Demetrius.

Unofficial Video Companion: There’s a neat, 21st century feel to this book as well. Basketball fans will love looking up PTHO’s athletes on YouTube to watch their highlight reels. Dohrmann’s basketball scenes are already lively, but the videos bring to life the nuances in each player’s style and movement. Of course, many of those highlights are provided by the same hype machine Dorhmann writes about in the book, making them another reminder of how players are built up from such an early age.

Further Viewing: PBS’s Frontline documentary series will be airing “Money and March Madness” on March 29, featuring Sonny Vaccaro. Vaccaro, who appears in PTHO numerous times, has worked for all three major shoe companies and helped create the grassroots moneymaking system.

Further Reading: Dohrmann agreed not to publish his book until all the kids reached college. Now that they have, Dorhmann continues to have contact with most of PTHO’s players. He posts updates on his personal blog.

Review: Bad Sports by Dave Zirin

Many words have been typed musing about how important (or unimportant) a sports team is to a particular region. Not economically, or in any measurable way, but from a morale standpoint. In Boston, where I live, the Red Sox tie generations together. I won’t bore you with another anecdote, but it’s fair to say that people’s affinity for the old town team goes beyond idle chat and water cooler talk and reaches something more profound. Elsewhere, stories are similar. But in the last few decades, a force has insinuated itself between fans and their teams: Profit and its agents, the team owners.

Imagine a public resource paid for with taxpayer money. Let’s say, oh, it’s a state-of-the-art park, where sometimes people play a game. The construction of this park gave some members of the community jobs, but once complete, few people work there and make a good living—the jobs available are menial and low-paying, such as sweeping pathways, cleaning the public restrooms, or selling parkgoers food. Even though this is a publicly funded facility, the park owner charges exorbitant admission to watch people play this game, and the fees for food and drinks are also outrageous. The owner even charges admission for members of the community to see the inside of the park during off-hours. The proponents of the park claim that it will draw people to its neighborhood and improve the area, giving money to local restaurants, but studies in other cities have proven that this effect is small, if it exists at all, and the money people spend in the neighborhood is money they would have otherwise spent in another neighborhood.

Of course the idea of charging admission for a public park is silly, but it’s not too difficult to see the analogy I’m making. Through taking advantage of people’s love of sports, and particularly their emotional and often irrational ties to their sports franchises—the same colors and history their parents and grandparents lived and breathed—a group of very rich white men (and it is nearly always that demographic who own sports teams) has managed to build similar facilities in nearly every major city in the country. Many of these owners don’t even build competitive teams, whether through their apathy or ineptitude. And it’s this absurd situation that Dave Zirin exposes, explains, and eviscerates in his newest book, Bad Sports.

Zirin takes his cue from Neil DaMause’s fantastic book Field of Schemes, which examines the “great stadium swindle,” and which any informed sports fan should read. In Bad Sports, Zirin examines not only stadium financing, but also other instances of bad ownership. He puts together an All-Star team of owners who both extorted free stadia from their regions and went on to mismanage their teams, eventually driving fans away even though they had various advantages, including the aforementioned state-of-the-art facilities, generations of built-in fan bases, and in many cases, a successful team already in place.

What separates Bad Sports from Zirin’s previous books is its cohesiveness. While his prior works were also punchy and iconoclastic, they lacked an overarching narrative and read more like a collection of his shorter articles for The Nation and his Edge of Sports blog, which, to be fair, they were to some extent. But in Bad Sports, Zirin puts forth a thesis and follows it through the entire book. I would have even preferred further exploration on some of the topics, but the book does a good job of being something you want to read the whole way through as opposed to just picking it up and reading it piecemeal.

Bad Sports is recommended reading not only for any sports fan who feels abused by their colors, but also for those interested in politics who may just have a casual interest in sports.

Interview with Rafe Bartholomew, Author of Pacific Rims

A few weeks ago, I reviewed Pacific Rims by Rafe Bartholomew. Even after the first few pages, I could tell the book would make a lasting impression on me. There are the portraits of athletes throughout the book and the Filipino culture that are both entertaining and enlightening. Then there is Bartholomew’s writing that reveals his passion to learn about the nuances of Filipino basketball, athletes, and culture. The words become evidence of an author who truly loves his subject. Recently, Bartholomew was kind enough to answer a few of my questions about Pacific Rims. Also, be sure to check out more about the author at his website, RafeBartholomew.com.

Is there anything you’d like readers to know about you before diving into Pacific Rims?
My background is that I was born and raised in lower Manhattan, which nowadays people probably associate more with litigious talent than hoops skills, but back in the early nineties we had a lot of good players downtown, most notably Smush Parker, who was my teammate on traveling teams until we were about 16. Anyway, I grew up playing and loving basketball, and when I learned about the sport’s role in Philippine culture, I went out there on not much else but inspiration and faith that I’d find the basketball-mad country of my dreams there.

Given the in-depth nature of your research into another culture (I think you referred to it as “amateur anthropology”), I’m sure you gathered a great deal of material for this book. Can you describe the process of deciding what to include and cut out?
Yes, my amateur bona fides are legit. But since academics have tended to overlook basketball’s place in Philippine society, I was happy to dive in and do my best. Over three years, the xeroxed newspaper and magazine articles, gigabytes of audio interviews, and spiral-bound reporter’s notebooks certainly piled up. I tend to write with a pretty loose outline, sketching out a theme for each chapter in my head and a couple scenes I plan to include, and then let it flow from there. Alaska’s 2007 season, being the narrative backbone of the book, determined a lot of what made it into and out of the book. I think having that arc makes Pacific Rims a better read, but it also made it hard to fit in a lot of PBA history that just would have taken me too far away from the narrative to explain.

I would have loved to write more about some of the great players and moments in PBA history—Ramon Fernandez, Samboy Lim, Bong Alvarez, Allan Caidic, and many more. Instead, they’re mentioned very briefly. And then there are the players who aren’t all-timers but who just appealed to me—imports like Shawn Daniels and Anthony Johnson and local oddities like Ryan Bernardo and Jimwell Torion. I wish I could write about all of them. Hopefully, someday I will.

You wrote about the differences in how the homegrown Filipinos, Filipino-Americans, and even the import players interacted with each other. Was there a difference in the way these players interacted with you?
For sure. A lot of the time imports just seemed happy to be talking to someone else from back home. Even though Fil-Am players also grew up in the States, they tend to have very settled lives in Manila, with stately homes, large families, and household employees to oversee. They just don’t have as much time to sit around and gab after practice. Imports are in the opposite situation. Aside from basketball, their entire lives are thousand miles away, so they have all the time in the world to go shopping, watch bootleg DVDs, sleep, or, in my case, spend afternoons and evenings telling me about their experiences.

Fil-Am players were easy to get along with. We shared a lot of cultural touchstones—often the players were only a few years older than me and had grown up listening to the same music, watching the same movies, and admiring the same basketball players. We usually had an easy time relating to each other.

Because of language and cultural differences, it probably took the most time to get to know the born-and-raised Pinoy players. These guys were often the most courteous members of a team. They would always greet me when I arrived and left from practice, and they’d make small talk about what I’d done the previous night, etc. But they seemed the least comfortable in direct interviews, partly because my Tagalog was not as strong in 2007 as it is today and also because there isn’t a very strong tradition of probing sports journalism in the Philippines, so when I asked for an “interview” they often thought of a 90-second quickie about the upcoming game, while I was thinking of a 90-minute session that included questions about their childhood and where they first played and all kinds of things that usually didn’t come up when they spoke with the media. Over time, however, we got more and more comfortable with each other and I was able to learn a lot about the players through direct interviews and regular old observation.

Describe the process of selling American publishers a book on Philippine basketball.
I didn’t exactly have agents and publishers banging down my door for a chance to sell this book. Awareness of Philippine anything—not just basketball—is woefully low here in the States. I received several rejections telling me that I had a really interesting story to tell but that they feared there was just no audience for it. It took more than two years from the time I signed with my literary agent to the day that I received an offer for Pacific Rims, and in between came several rounds of proposals and rejections. I never got too phased by it, however, because I really loved what I was doing (playing ball, following a pro team around, living in Quezon City) and I felt pretty confident that eventually, some editor would see the project the same way I did. It didn’t matter how many publishers rejected me as long as one of them didn’t.

Was it difficult to get acclimated to the culture in the Philippines?
It’s hard to answer this question, because my brain now tells me that I feel more at home in the Philippines than anywhere else and it can’t really make room for other realities. But if you look at my early blog posts from the Philippines, I think you can chart my acclimation, from a typical, semi-thoughtful visitor who had never lived in a developing country before to someone who’s interested in writing about something deeper than quirky nicknames and technicolor jeepneys.

How much Tagalog did you pick up during your time there?
Over the years I became a very adequate Tagalog speaker. I get a lot of compliments for my language skills, not all of which I think I deserve. Because most foreigners put forth so little effort in picking up Tagalog or any other Philippine language, the handful of people who manage any respectable level of proficiency get plaudits up the wazoo. I think if I were Filipino American and spoke the same exact Tagalog as I do today, people would consider it decent but also tell me endlessly how stilted my grammar was and how foreign my accent sounded. Still, I’m very proud that I can converse fluidly in the language, as well as read and write it pretty well, and I’m still studying so hopefully I will only get better.

It wouldn’t be very Filipino of me if I didn’t ask you about the numerous mentions of food throughout the book. Tell me about the best/worst foods you ate in the Philippines.
The best food, hands down, was the seafood. Crabs in coconut milk, grilled tilapia and lapu-lapu with tomatoes and onions stuffed inside, squid adobo. It was always fresh, unbelievably cheap, and unfailingly delicious. But I miss street food—squid balls, barbecued pork intestines, bananacue, and kwek-kwek—the most. The only thing I had a hard time eating was papaitan, a stew with broth made from goat bile. Serious gag reflex there.

What will you write about next?
I’m not sure. I’d love to continue writing about the Philippines. Every day in the country I felt like I saw something that would make a great story. But as we already talked about, it’s not always the easiest sell. Hopefully, after Pacific Rims, the publishing world will be a little more open to books and articles about the Philippines.

*Author photo is from the Pacific Rims Facebook page.

Book Review: Pacific Rims

Being half Filipino and growing up in Hawaii, much of my youth was filled with the sights, smells, and tastes of my grandmother’s Filipino cooking, as well as the sound of her chatting up other old women in Tagalog, their native language. I’ve eaten some of the food and know a small selection of Filipino phrases (the naughty ones), but that’s pretty much the extent of my knowledge. I’ve been told by a number of Filipinos that I need to go see my homeland. I would be all for it, but I wouldn’t know where to start, since I have no idea where in the Philippines my family came from or when my grandparents moved to Hawaii.

I’m telling you this because Rafe Bartholomew’s Pacific Rims: Beermen Ballin’ in Flip-Flops and the Philippines’ Unlikely Love Affair with Basketball is as much about Filipino culture as it is about basketball. Bartholomew, an assistant editor at Harper’s Magazine and 2005 Fulbright Scholar, embeds himself with the Alaska Aces of the Philippine Basketball Association (PBA) for a season. The PBA is the second-oldest professional basketball league behind the NBA. Like other PBA teams, Alaska was named after its corporate owner, in this case, the Alaska Milk Corporation (the Aces arch-rivals are the brewery sponsored San Miguel Beermen).

That the immense popularity of basketball in the Philippines makes a franchise an effective marketing tool is only one hint of how the sport permeates through Filipino culture. PBA players and coaches often translate their basketball fame into government positions. Politicians build high-end, roofed courts not only to appease local constituents, but also because courts are often used as community centers.

Bartholomew catalogs the basketball culture by linking its introduction to the history of the Philippines and pointing out that its popularity is not as unlikely as his title suggests. Like Catholicism, which was brought to the country by Spain, Bartholomew writes, “Basketball was also introduced by a colonial power,” this time the United States. The Philippines embraced it, created their own style of circus lay-ups instead of flashy dunks, and even became a dominant international basketball powerhouse from the early to mid 1900s.

Basketball is everywhere. Bartholomew begins the book by finding a pickup game simply by following the sound of dribbling basketballs. Many kids learn to play on makeshift hoops with backboards of planks of wood nailed together. Jeepneys—”a form of public transportation from U.S. military vehicles that once carried GIs around the American naval and air force bases”—are often painted with NBA team logos and players’ faces.

Pacific Rims also boasts its share of fascinating characters. There is Willie Miller, the Aces’ star player and PBA’s “clown prince,” providing moments of levity. There is Rosell “Roe” Ellis, the Aces’ star import player. Roe attended Rainier Beach High School, the same high school in Seattle as Nate Robinson and Jamal Crawford. Roe’s history is presented with the clarity of amazing self-awareness. Before diving headfirst into the events that brought Roe to the PBA, Roe begins his story of how he ended up in the Philippines by asking, “You know I choked a ref, right?” Then there is the unforgettable Billy Ray Bates. Bartholomew picks up Bates’s story where David Halberstam left off in Breaks of the Game. The pages devoted to Bates are simultaneously joyous and heartbreaking. They tell the story of a tragic-hero type figure finding and losing direction through the game of basketball.

Like any good sports book, Pacific Rims has its sequences of cinematic highlights, including a suspenseful game recap where I found myself turning the pages, wondering what would happen next, and rooting for the Aces to pull off a hard-fought win. But the best parts of the book are when Bartholomew links basketball to Filipino culture. When speaking to Michael Tan, who researches gender, sexuality, and public health in the Philippines, Bartholomew writes:

The sport had become not just a pastime for young Filipino men, Tan explained, but a rite of passage. When boys reach adolescence, they receive privileges. Their mothers begin to allow them to roam their neighborhoods freely, getting into trouble but also learning how to carry themselves as men. Inevitably, these boys end up playing basketball, first in their own neighborhood, but then branching out to compete against kids in other areas. These early trials teach them masculine virtues like teamwork, aggression, and machismo…So basketball is there to make friends, build alliances. It even crosses class barriers.

Finally, there is the passage that reminded me of my childhood family dinners, my grandmother’s cooking, and her sitting around the table, chatting forever with her Filipino friends: “Togetherness is one of the most rigid social norms in Philippine culture, and it played a major role in the chemistry of PBA teams. There’s a powerful urge in Philippine society to be part of the group, whether it’s a family, a bunch of classmates, or a basketball team.”

There’s a wealth of information on the internet regarding Pacific Rims. Bartholomew’s website is a good place to start (and has links to order the book, which you should do ASAP). Check out the book’s Facebook page, which also includes a bunch of photos of Philippine basketball. Last but not least, be sure to check back here, where I will be posting an interview with Bartholomew in the near future.

Book Review: Rivals! by Richard O. Davies

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine who works in the publishing industry asked me if I’d be interested in reviewing an upcoming sports book. Free book? Free book about sports? Yes, please. A short time later, I received Rivals! The Ten Greatest Sports Rivalries of the 20th Century by Richard O. Davies, which goes on sale today.

According to the author bio, Davies “teaches courses in 20th-century American History, American Ideas and Values, and the History of American Sports.” Seeing those course titles together immediately gives the idea that this book won’t be solely about the rivalries, but also about how the rivals connect to a broader American history. In the book’s preface, Davies writes:

I have learned from teaching sports history to many bright college students that they have little understanding of the underlying events and traditions that have made prominent sports rivalries so compelling. This book is intended to provide that historical dimension, hopefully without slighting events that resonate in recent memory.

I felt it was necessary to include that passage before talking about the book in further detail because the purpose of the book is (always) necessary to evaluating the book. With the daunting task of providing and examining the historical relevance of the ten rivalries discussed—Harvard/Yale, Dodgers/Giants, Duke/UNC, Bears/Packers, Jack Nicklaus/Arnold Palmer, Celtics/Lakers, Frazier/Ali, Chris Evert/Martina Navratilova, Ohio State/Michigan, and Red Sox/Yankees—Davies is successful. He explains how Harvard and Yale helped create modern football with the implementation of the forward pass, how the Dodgers contributed to desegregation by signing Jackie Robinson, and how Duke/UNC created college basketball conference tournaments.

Unfortunately, the strength of this book is also it’s biggest problem. It’s far too difficult, if not impossible, to thoroughly study all the intricacies of each rivalry. Every single one can or has warranted its own book that would undoubtedly dig deeper than Davies is able to in such short chapters. Rivals! is more like a crash course on sports history, and one that is enlightening in its own right.

Other books by Davies include Sports in American Life: A History, America’s Obsession: Sports and Society Since 1945, and Betting the Line: Sports Wagering in American Life.

Home Run in Harvard Square: “You Gotta Love Writing”

All sports fans love sports stories, and the Cambridge Center for Adult Education’s recent event was a showcase of excellent storytellers. Billed under the title, “Reporting From the Dugout,” last Thursday’s presentation featured Red Sox beat writer for the Boston Globe Amalie Benjamin, author of Wicked Good Year and Boston Herald columnist Steve Buckley, and host of NPR’s Only A Game Bill Littlefield. I’d only read Amalie and had never heard of Buckley or Littlefield, so I wasn’t really sure what to expect. I was pleasantly surprised as the night began with Littlefield setting the tone by beginning with a story about, years ago, meeting a Twins player hours before first pitch sitting in the empty stands to remind himself how beautiful the game (as opposed to the business) of baseball is. After all three of them told a quick story about their jobs, they opened up the floor for questions from the audience.

Every question from the audience became an opportunity for the panel to retell their favorite stories from their careers. They talked about Manny Ramirez selling grills, which players they can or cannot rely on for good quotes, and how awkward it can be as a reporter in a locker room full of naked ballplayers. They fed off each other, joking with each other and letting one story prompt another. When Littlefield talked about accidentally running into Theodore Roosevelt “Double Duty” Radcliffe, I realized I could sit there and listen to these people talk about sports all night.

At one point, Littlefield said that in order to do their jobs, “you gotta love writing,” meaning they do what they do not because they love sports (which I’m sure they do), but because they love writing. Both Amalie and Littlefield spoke of how relaxing and how much joy the actual act of writing brought them. With that in mind, it’s no wonder their anecdotes were so perfectly crafted, no doubt the result of countless retellings. (As I left the venue, I overheard Buckley say, “That’s a line I use often”).

The Book of Basketball

As most people who follow this blog have probably already heard, ESPN’s Bill Simmons (the Sports Guy) just released his 700+-page magnum opus, The Book of Basketball. Simmons is currently on a month-long tour promoting the book, and this past Friday, the tour took him back to his hometown here in Boston. Simmons has been basically my favorite sports writer since I started reading him as a senior in high school in 2002. Simmons signature is writing from the perspective of a fan while integrating (often obscure) pop culture references. I have posted links to my five favorite columns by him at the bottom of this post if you want to know what you’re getting yourself into before purchasing a book that could literally stop a speeding bullet. I’ll address the signing itself, then what I’ve read of the book so far before getting to said links, but let me say this: I opened the book Saturday morning for the first time, and between then and now (late Sunday night), I have already burned through 115 pages.

The signing took place at the only place that made sense: Hurricane O’Reilly’s, a popular sports bar located across the street from the TD Banknorth Garden, hours before the Celtics faced off against the Bulls. Figuring the bar would be open beforehand and my friends and I could help ourselves to some afternoon drinking without judgement (always a plus), we arrived at 3:15 for the 4 o’clock signing. No dice. The line was already about 30 deep, and the bar didn’t let anyone in until 4. By that time, the line had grown to perhaps 100 people, and stayed wrapped around the block for over the next hour. Approximate number of girls in this line: four, all getting books signed for their boyfriends. A line like this was good, however, for my friend and I to impress strangers with our Roger Dorn Indians and Johnny Utah Ohio State jerseys. If you don’t understand what I just said, there is a 95% chance we could never be friends.

Inside, there was a line to purchase the book, two women who asked for your name, wrote it on a post it note, and stuck it on the inside page before ushering you over to the guy, who handed you over to the guy that allowed you to hand your book to the Sports Guy. I was slightly put off by the whole procedure, but can wholly admit it was necessary to expedite things if he a) was going to get to the game where he was promoting the book that night and b) was to avoid being verbally harrassed by a cavalcade of young- to middle-aged men with obtuse questions about everything from Kurt Rambis’s mustache to David Silver’s hip hop career on 90210. This is not to say he wasn’t affable, or as affable as a man who’s written his name thousands of times and traveled to six different cities in the past week (if you include the flight from his home in L.A. to D.C. where the tour started on Monday) could be expected to be. A book tour seems like an absolutely miserable thing: all the downside of a rock ‘n’ roll tour without any of the groupies and not nearly the amount of money. So despite my not liking how closely the signing resembled ushering cattle through a slaughterhouse, I don’t know an easier way that it could’ve been done. Besides, he appreciated my friend’s jersey enough to sign his book “I AM AN EFF BEE EYE AGENT.”

The best part, however, came about two hours later, after my friends and I had hung around Hurricane’s and drank a handful of Legend Lites. Legend Lites aka Boggs Lite is what we call Miller Lite, seeing as this was the beer attributed to Wade Boggs’s legendary “50-60 beers consumed during a cross-country flight.” While leaving the bar, the sidewalk was now largely empty as everyone had either gone in the Garden for the start of the game, or had found the bar at which they would watch it. There was, however, an older gentleman with a woman peering in through the window of Hurricane’s. He wouldn’t have stuck out except for a “pantheon” (to borrow a Simmons-ism) mustache that was a cross between 1978 Rollie Fingers and Mark Twain. My friend Matt instantly recognized this as Simmons’s father from his picture that had appeared in one of Simmons’s columns a few months ago. Unbridled with concerns about social graces thanks to the Boggs Lites, we instantly approached him and asked if it was in fact him. He smiled and said “yes, I am the Sports Dad” and was on his way to the game himself. We then asked him the only thing that made sense in such a situation: if he could sign our books as well. He obliged even me, who asked him to sign it something that could be construed as disrespectful, but at the time sounded beyond hilarious. (He smiled and gladly wrote it, so I think we’re okay.)

As for the book itself, all I can say is that so far it’s really fucking good. I started in the middle with his idea of a construction of the Basketball Hall of Fame followed by his ranking and detailed explanation of said ranking for the top 96 players ever to play the game. The biggest thought that I have so far is that I’ve learned an insane amount of information about guys I had only heard of. Guys like Elvin Hayes, Bernard King, Bob Lanier, and Artis Gilmore that I knew of but all came before my time, now have statistics, stories, and identities to go with the names. The NBA has been around just long enough for a book like this to exist — there are enough people and enough archivable (if that’s a word) resources that we can trust the entire league’s history has been covered. I wish a book existed like this for baseball, but that would be sadly improbable at this point seeing how old the game is and the people who met the people who covered the people that started it are long gone. I’ve heard of Rogers Hornsby and Honus Wagner, and I can tell you that they were good and are in the Hall of Fame, but outside of a few stats, I couldn’t tell you why, or who they compare to, or whether or not they’re better at baseball than Albert Pujols or Alex Rodriguez.

The biggest criticism I’ve heard of Simmons over the year have been that a) he makes arguments without facts to back them up, b) he makes too many pop culture references to be taken seriously, and c) he’s just not that good of an actual writer. Reading five pages of this book will tell you that it has been tirelessly researched, especially when you take into account that many of the guys he talks about ended their careers long before he was alive and his comments about them couldn’t be written without watching hours of game footage. As far as the pop culture references go, I was in third grade when Kevin Johnson and the ‘93 Suns faced off against Jordan’s Bulls in the Finals. I remember this event just as I remember my first college party: I know it happened, I know it didn’t end well, but I can’t recall the actual details. Reading Kevin Johnson’s (ranked #93) section, however, Simmons compares KJ’s awful efforts in Games 1 and 2 to Tony’s tanking in the movie Blue Chips, which I’ve seen probably 15 times for better or worse. I do not have to read any further — from this one reference, I can grasp just how badly Johnson sucked. Besides, people need to lighten up — most of the references are funny enough to make up for the ones that are lame.

As for the last point of contention about him “not being a good writer,” it’s asinine. I’ve thought about this before, and almost bought into it even, that he was more entertaining than he was talented. Watching Andy Milonakis make an ass of himself was entertaining for a few minutes, but he didn’t last because he had no talent. (How’s that for a weird pop culture reference?) Simmons has always aimed to write from the point of view of a fan and it’s a major reason why he’s embraced. To do this, he uses the proper observations, diction, humor, etc, etc. If he spoke from an aloof place of a sportswriter with priveleged access, he wouldn’t be the Sports Guy. I should note that this criticism in particular usually comes from elite intellectual types who need something to complain about to validate their own smarts. These are the same people that think Total Recall is a lame movie and listen to copious amounts of Wilco. To say Bill Simmons isn’t a good sports journalist is like saying that Ray Lewis isn’t a good quarterback.

Am I biased also having come from the Boston area and therefore being on probably the same side of every argument he’s made? Yes. Does that matter? I don’t think so. Did this post read like some pathetic fanboy who met someone he looked up to? Yes, but that shouldn’t surprise. I wouldn’t have bothered going to the signing if I wasn’t a fan already. Should I be worried about saying I “look up to” a guy who in his twenties “drank too much, smoked too much pot, and showed horrible taste in women?” I don’t see a problem with it. Anyways, after all that, here are those links to my five favorites articles:

Idiot’s Guide to the Boston Marathon: Nothing captures why I love being from this area like this article

2005 NBA Draft Diary: Christ, I wish I had come up with the idea for the running diary. Every year, the NBA Draft is like a two-day holiday for me because I love watching the draft itself and then the next day this column comes out. They’re all good, but 2005 was the best.

1984: The Greatest Year Ever: I should be peeved that he omitted my birthday from this article, but other than that, he makes a hell of a case.

20 Most Annoying Gamblers at the Casino: I guess this only resonates for those who have been to a casino here and there. But BOY does it resonate.

Curious Guy: Chuck Klosterman: This isn’t even really an article as much as it’s an email exchange between him and one of my other favorites columnists, Chuck Klosterman. He did this twice; both are good.

By the way, I’m also reading Klosterman’s new book, Eating the Dinosaur, and I have to say the football essay is very unique, and I mean “I haven’t heard these ideas and observations juxtaposed against each other in this manner” unique, not “watching home movies of your friends’ kid sing off-key in their elementary school play” unique.

Sports Books!

This week is big for sports books. First, Chad Ocho Cinco’s book, Ocho Cinco: What Football and Life Have Thrown My Way came out on Tuesday and proceeded to fly off the shelves as fast as the receiver flies by cornerbacks. While I’ll write a more complete review of the book once I’m finished reading it, I’ll say right now that it’s a very good read. I expected to enjoy it, but I didn’t expect to want to be reading it all the time. (Unfortunately, I have to keep up with school and that job thing also.) Like the title says, he talks about off-field aspects of his life as much on-field. He even gets other players and coaches from around the NFL to tell you how awesome he is. My favorite part, so far, is Oakland Raiders cornerback Nnamdi Asomugha saying he felt left out because Ocho Cinco didn’t talk trash to him.

Bill Simmons’s ridiculously huge The Book of Basketball: The NBA According to the Sports Guy comes out this week as well. Simmons will be in Boston tomorrow for his book signing tour, and Alex will be covering it.

Next on the list is Open: An Autobiography, by Andre Agassi. This book is already getting a lot of attention and causing controversies because of his admission of using crystal meth, failing a tournament drug test, and hating tennis and his father. Most sports talking heads have asked, “Why now? Who benefits from this?” Most of them haven’t considered that maybe, in some weird way, Agassi does. Like Agassi says in this AP article, ”I think I had to learn a lot about myself through the process.”

And finally, Michael Oriard, who we interviewed in September, has a new book, Bowled Over: Big-Time College Football from the Sixties to the BCS Era. He discusses some aspects of the book and college football in this interview with Inside Higher Ed.

Interview with Michael Oriard, Sports Scholar and Former NFL Player

Michael Oriard is a Distinguished Professor of American Literature and Culture and the Associate Dean of the College of Liberal Arts at Oregon State University. A former Notre Dame and Kansas City Chiefs center, Oriard pursued his Ph.D during the offseasons throughout his NFL career and has gone on to publish many books and articles on the relationship between sports and American culture, including Sporting With the Gods: The Rhetoric of Play and Game in American Culture, Reading Football: How the Popular Press Created an American Spectacle, King Football: Sport and Spectacle in the Golden Age of Radio and Newsreels, Movies and Magazines, the Weekly and the Daily Press, and Brand NFL: Making and Selling American’s Favorite Sport. His book, The End of Autumn: Reflections on My Life in Football was originally published in 1982 and republished in July of this year. I just read it, and I would recommend it to anyone, sports fan or not. Yes, it is about football, but to say the book is only about football would be selling it short. It is also about life, finding oneself, and the way sports interacts with the American populace. It just so happens that football is how he was able to find himself. The writing is sometimes cinematic, especially when describing the often overlooked offensive line battles with amazing detail and clarity, and always honest, absorbing the reader completely. Recently, Professor Oriard was kind enough to answer some of my questions.

A major theme throughout the The End of Autumn is the heroism of playing football and how those “heroic illusions” become “deflated” in the NFL. Is this a realization that occurred to you while playing or something you became aware of in retrospect or during the writing process?

After my near story-book experience at Notre Dame (where I was wholly caught up in the mystique of the place), playing in the NFL was in itself “deflating.” Whether I consciously thought of it in those terms while I was playing is another question. I doubt it.

One of the most striking things in the book is the way you write so openly and honestly about football and team relationships that usually remain hidden from the public. Did you ever have any reservations about writing about yourself or your teammates and coaches this way?

In writing about myself, I consciously maintained a boundary between the public and the private, deciding just how much of my private self I was willing to expose, and no more. In writing about my teammates, I was very conscious of not simply using them for my own purposes; I was willing to be more frank about teammates and relationships in the abstract than about individual teammates by name. In writing about my coaches, I faced a challenge in that they could not remain anonymous. In writing about Ara Parseghian and my other coaches at Notre Dame, there was no problem, because I had nothing but positive things to say about them. In writing about my high school coach and about Hank Stram in Kansas City, I simply tried to be fair—with Hank in particular, as generous as I could be while still being honest. I believed that honesty was an obligation once I chose to write the book.

You write that “the football team is in many ways the heart of the university…the center of student enthusiasm and emotional involvement.” Why do you think football (and athletics in general) has this role and such a lasting effect on students both during and beyond their college careers?

University leaders discovered as early as the 1890s that the popular enthusiasm for college football could be exploited to promote and build their institutions. Football was an integral part of American higher education as it developed over the twentieth century, not something tacked on. And individual institutions developed their own local football cultures within the national football culture. Football in particular and athletics in general became the center of “college life,” the Greek system, and the social calendar on campuses; as such, it became the principal connection of many alumni to their alma maters. American universities became known (and remain known) to outsiders mostly by their football (and more recently basketball) teams; I doubt that most faculty and administrators would choose for this to be the case, but it’s what we have.

You’re now a professor at Oregon State University; are you involved with Oregon State athletics or any of the academic programs that support student-athletes?

No. When I arrived at OSU in 1976, I feared that word would get out that there was a jock in the English department, and I’d have every athlete on campus in my classes expecting an easy time. It didn’t happen, but I retained a wariness against involving myself in athletics. I also was conscious virtually from the day I left football of not being an ex-jock who lives in his past and needs to hang around players and teams. I have informally mentored a few genuine student-athletes who sought me out, but except for a one-term appointment as acting director of academic services in the athletic department, I have had no formal involvement with OSU athletics.

How, if at all, do you feel the student-athlete has changed since your college career?

When I was at Notre Dame in the late 1960s, I received the best education that my institution offered, while playing college football at the highest level. I doubt that that is even possible today, because of the greater demands on “student-athletes’” time, and because the larger sports culture has so changed that it has become increasingly unlikely that an athlete good enough to play at the highest level will arrive at college with academics as his highest priority.

How has the game, both college and the NFL, changed from when you played?

I’ve pointed toward an answer with the previous question. And college football has changed because the NFL has changed. As the average salary in the NFL increased from around $20,000 in 1970 to nearly $2 million today, somewhere along the line a boundary was crossed, at which point the possibility of playing in the NFL overwhelmed every other consideration for a college football player. The money is directly a consequence of the media. I grew up with three national TV networks and “The Game of the Week.” ESPN and the rest of the cable sports networks, at the center of a 24/7 world of sports media (which is now expanding even more into the blogosphere) have generated not just revenue but a depth and breadth of attention to sports that was inconceivable in my playing years.

You write about football providing you with an identity, especially in college, but you say in the NFL, you thought of yourself as a graduate student who happened to play football. How did this transition happen?

Football provided me with an identity during my adolescence, when the confirmation of my success at Notre Dame helped me navigate the typical adolescent anxieties. I arrived in the NFL without thinking I had anything to prove; what had happened at Notre Dame was sufficient. (And had I been unsuccessful at football at Notre Dame, I would have navigated my adolescence in a different way. I was fortunate in my family, my upbringing, and my early education.) In college I also had an identity as a student and as whatever my education would eventually lead to. After graduation that identity remained important, while my athletic identity had served its purpose and was no longer necessary. I should add that my “identity” today includes being a former football player. What I have been informs who I am.

Do you feel that football has a greater impact on American culture than other sports? If so, why do you think that is?

Since the 1960s (a Harris poll in 1965, to be precise), professional football has been recognized as Americans’ favorite spectator sport. Pro football currently outpolls Major League Baseball about two to one, with college football number three, ahead of the pro and college basketball, hockey, NASCAR, and the rest. What exactly it is about football that so appeals is a matter for speculation and debate. I would point to the fact that each game of a 16-game season matters more than 162 MLB games or 81 NBA games. I would emphasize football’s relationship to a seemingly widespread desire for intense experience. And I would also point to the relationship between football and masculinity in this country. By a different definition, baseball has had a greater impact on “American culture” in that it has spawned considerably more literary art—fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. There is a long tradition for explaining this by baseball’s leisurely pace, pastoral and cerebral nature, connection to fathers and sons, and so on.

Why do sports in general seem to have such a large influence on American culture?

I would point to my comment in the previous answer about the longing for intense experience. It’s a cliché that sport is life with the volume turned up. That’s an apt description (and a not-yet-clichéd corollary follows that football is life at 500 decibels with a massive subwoofer). Sports generate narratives that address the most fundamental dimensions of human existence (symbolic good and evil, life and death, heroism and sacrifice, etc.), with a clarity in the contest and the outcome that is utterly missing from ordinary human existence. With their unscripted plots and uncertain outcomes, sporting events provide entertainment that reaches much deeper than mere entertainment. In today’s fragmented media university, where “mass culture” has given way to niche cultures, sports come closest to constituting an actual common culture.

How do certain cultures, (regional or racial cultures, for example) influence sports and vice versa?

Sport in its fundamental nature is local and tribal: my team against yours, home confronting invaders. Local cultures become imprinted on local sports, as in small-town high school football or college football and NASCAR in the South. Racial cultures are “local” by a different definition. The most obvious in the U.S., of course, is our sense of a distinctive African American style, particularly in basketball and football. Nationally televised sport, through which viewers far removed from the NFL or MLB or NBA teams they root for, runs counter to this fundamental local nature (and probably means that these sports move away from “sport” and more toward “entertainment”).

Even in 1982, when the book was first published, you wrote that football was becoming less about the sport and more about entertainment. What are your thoughts on football and the NFL now, 27 years later?

I seem always to be anticipating the next question. Yes, when I wrote in The End of Autumn that NFL football was becoming more about entertainment, I had no idea that cable television in general and ESPN in particular (and SportsCenter even more particularly) would soon be transforming our sports culture, a process that is now moving to the Internet as well. What the players do remains real, and this is the source of NFL football’s power, but as the NFL markets its brand ever more aggressively a question inevitably arises, whether it risks undermining the sport by appealing to an ever-wider audience as entertainment. My recent book, Brand NFL, explores this possibility.

Given the extreme media coverage on sports now, I’m curious about what the team’s relationship with reporters was like when you played.

I had a sense that my teammates regarded the local reporters essentially as parasites, while the local reporters generally resented having to cater to nonintellectual physical performers. I suspect that that fundamental relationship continues in part, but what’s new today is the increased celebrity of some players and the increased celebrity as well of some reporters—the TV guys who are stars themselves. The power of the media to create celebrities gives these celebrity reporters and studio hosts a kind of status and power beyond anything that even the premier sportswriters of my day in New York and Los Angeles had.

Regarding the subject of players as employees and the effect football has on players, such as their shortened life expectancies, what has the NFL and NFLPA done to help players during and after their playing careers?

Over just the last couple of years, damaged former NFL players have succeeded in calling public attention to the long-term consequences of even short-term playing careers. These players create an interesting dilemma for the NFL and NFLPA—“interesting,” that is, beyond the real human misery they represent—in that it confronts them with the prospect of assuming financial responsibility for a player’s lifetime after just a few years in the league. The NFLPA is chiefly responsible to current, not former, players, yet it has systematically improved the benefits of retired players with each new labor contract. (Gene Upshaw became furious at the criticism of former players who would not acknowledge these efforts on their behalf.) The NFL and NFLPA truly became partners as much as adversaries with the 1993 labor agreement, and both of them cannot afford to appear uncaring toward former players. (The fact that labor peace is now threatened does not really change that fact.) This concern about the NFL “brand,” in fact, is the most powerful factor working on the former players’ behalf, and both the NFL and the NFLPA have recently addressed the need for more research on concussions and for streamlining the process of applying for disabilities payments.

You write that you let go of football and football let go of you, but do you miss it?

Some 35 years after I left football, it is too distant a part of my past for me to “miss” it. But I periodically have dreams in which I’m somehow playing again, invariably under very strange circumstances, so perhaps there is some part of my unconscious that misses it. At my age and with my physical ailments (that are most likely a consequence of my having played football for so many years), I find it increasingly strange that I once did what I did in college and the NFL.

I noticed that the colors of the hardcopy of Brand NFL are orange and black, did you have a say in making this book Oregon State colors?

Orange and black? Not my copy. In any case, I had no say about the cover design (though if I had complained about it when it was proposed to me, I assume my objections would have been considered).

You have a book coming out in October, Bowled Over, about college football; can you tell me a little bit about it?

My new book is a companion to Brand NFL. They started out as a single manuscript on football since the 1960s, until it became apparent that the subject was too large and that the NFL and college football were different (though related) worlds. Bowled Over is divided into two parts: the first on college football in the 1960s, with an emphasis on the integration of the Southeastern Conference and the black protests on northern campuses in the late 1960s; the second on the continuing struggle since the 1960s to untangle the contradiction at the heart of an extracurricular activity conducted as a popular entertainment. Criticism of distorted priorities in college football is nearly as old as the game itself, and I took on this topic somewhat reluctantly. But doing so forced me to come to terms with my own ambivalence about a sport that benefited me enormously but fails too many others, and it completed my multi-volume cultural history of American football.

*Photo courtesy of Oregon State University