AN
EXPLOSIVE AND REVELATORY PORTRAIT REPORTED FROM DEEP BEHIND THE SCENES OF
BIG-TIME NCAA COLLEGE FOOTBALL: THE PASSION, THE THRILLING ACTION—AND THE
SHOCKING REALITIES THAT LIE BENEATH THIS COLOSSAL, MULTIBILLION-DOLLAR BUSINESS
COLLEGE
FOOTBALL has never been more popular—or more chaotic. Millions fill
100,000-seat stadiums every Saturday; tens of millions more watch on television
every weekend. The 2013 Discover BCS National Championship game between Notre
Dame and Alabama had a viewership of 26.4 million people, second only to the
Super Bowl. Billions of dollars from television deals now flow into the game;
the average budget for a top-ten team is $80 million; top coaches make more
than $3 million a year; the highest paid, more than $5 million.
But behind this glittering success are
darker truths: “athlete-students” working essentially full-time jobs with no
share in the oceans of money; players who often don’t graduate and end their
careers with broken bodies; “janitors” who clean up player misconduct; football
“hostesses” willing to do whatever it takes to land a top recruit; seven-figure
black box recruiting slush funds. And this: Despite the millions of dollars
pouring into the game, 90 percent of major athletic departments still lose
money. Yet schools remain caught up in an ever-escalating “arms race”—at the
expense of academic scholarships, facilities and faculty.
Celebrated investigative journalists Jeff
Benedict and Armen Keteyian were granted unprecedented access during the 2012
season to programs at the highest levels across the country at a time of
convulsive change in college football. Through dogged reporting, they explored
every nook and cranny of this high-powered machine, and reveal how it operates from
the inside out. The result: the system through the eyes of athletic directors
and coaches, high-flying boosters and high-profile TV stars, five-star recruits
and tireless NCAA investigators and the kids on whom the whole vast enterprise
depends.
Both a celebration of the power and
pageantry of NCAA football and a groundbreaking, thought-provoking critique of
its excesses, The System is the definitive book on the college game.
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