NINE SATURDAYS MAKE A YEAR

If Dave Camerer doesn't come off as the Cameron Hawley of the gridiron, it isn't because he hasn't given it that old college try. His hero, Simon Burke, is the hard nose coach of the hard-nose squad from Atlantis U., who play hard-nose ball to survive in the gruelling, competitive, you're-only-as-good-as-your-last-hard-nose-scrimmage world of big business ball. We go through a significant season with Burke, a season which comes in with a blaze of winning glory and goes out with a decided whimper. In between the blaze and the whimper, maniacally devoted Coach Burke loses his wife, his team, his job, and pretty nearly his own self-confident image...No doubt about Mr. Camerer's knowledge of the trappings of the million dollar business that college football has become. There's the cut-throat competition among coaches for the high school hero, the tragic lot of the boy who is only as good as his flesh, the public relations campaigns for support, the battles between Administration and campus sports. Unfortunately, Mr. Camerer suffers from an ailment quite common among writers of this preoccupation with ""guts"" and/or gutsiness, ""He wants four years of college, but he's not ready to pull his guts for it"", and a penchant for sensual comparisons between the game and women. ""Football is a time-consuming bitch that demands too much and gives too little"". If Camerer had stayed out of the bedroom, this might have at least been a good boys' book.