MAKING IT TO #1: How College Football and Basketball Teams Get There

Yet another recapitulation of the evils of big-time college athletics--i.e., the much-promising recruiters, flesh peddlers, generous alumni, and the coaches themselves who often end up bending the NCAA rules as a result of competitive pressures and job insecurity. The author illustrates how an Oral Roberts U. becomes a basketball power in a few short years while a Long Beach State does the same thing a bit more flagrantly and gets caught. Most interesting perhaps are the experiences of a few highly-recruited jocks like Rich Allocco (a ""three-sport hero madly pursued by 265 colleges"") and black basketballer Les Carson (""a flunk who never did mature in basketball or in the classroom""). Not nearly as cogent as Joseph Durso's The Sports Factory: An Investigation Into College Sports (p. 416) even though Benagh does provide some constructive advice for the high school athlete who ""needs all the help he can get.