SPORTS AND MONEY: It's a Sellout!

The facts are illuminating in this fascinating entry in the Issues in Focus series: Each year about 1,000,000 students play football, but only 150 will ever make it to an NFL team--odds of 6,000 to 1. Young basketball players have even less chance of making the pros. Yet in 1992, US households spent $45 billion on sports equipment and clothing. A 1993 Little League champ, age 12, sold autographed baseballs for $35 apiece, the same year 264 major league baseball players earned $1,000,000 or more annually. Judson (Computer Crime, 1994, etc.) ably and repeatedly demonstrates how money and sports are linked in every way, at every level; among a host of issues, she raises moral and ethical questions and covers the social and health consequences that the pressure to win brings. While the author includes positive aspects of the 1990s sports scene in her book, illustrated with periodic black-and-white photographs, the statistics and anecdotes paint a dismal picture: Playing for fun is obsolete and winning at all cost are the sad messages this hard-hitting book delivers.