Engrossing as a cautionary tale for would-be football players and as an inside look at the rough-and-tumble world of college...
A TV newsman looks back on his years as a struggling college football player in a tale equal parts perspiration and inspiration.
Stewart recounts his trials and occasional triumphs, sometimes on the field but more often on the sidelines, at Northwestern University, a school better known for journalists than jocks. The book chronicles the bruising emotional and physical pain an athlete can endure while trying but mostly failing to become great. For Stewart, a walk-on—a player not deemed worthy of scouting or a scholarship—it’s four years of “torment and torture.” He survives agonizing injuries, grueling workouts, nasty tongue-lashings from coaches who sometimes can’t even remember his name, “toxic fumes of body odor” in the locker room and occasional hazing by teammates who like to throw cups of urine around in the showers. A teetotaling Lutheran from suburban Omaha, Stewart has to adapt to players who drink, smoke pot, take steroids and fix games. Meanwhile, desperate coaches use any means necessary—from motivational speakers to painting the locker room pink—to turn around the perennially losing team whose fans chant “We are the worst!” Somehow, it all works out; by Stewart’s junior year, he and the team go all the way to the Rose Bowl, even though he’s a benchwarmer for much of the game and the season. He sometimes comes off as a prattling pundit of positivism—“One of our best practices ever!”—but there’s reason for it. He starts his college career as a fifth-string safety, and after four years of “pain, soreness, and fatigue,” he finishes on the second string. Yet he summons a stoic acceptance of his lot: “I realized I would never be as good as I wanted to be.” In a way, the message may be curiously appropriate for our dismal times. Even so, Stewart can’t give up without an optimistic parting shot: “Set high goals because even if you fall short, you’ll still go farther than you ever imagined.”
Engrossing as a cautionary tale for would-be football players and as an inside look at the rough-and-tumble world of college football.Pub Date: May 29, 2008
ISBN: 978-1105612060
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Lulu
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A convincing case for the societal benefits of sports fandom.
A Fox Sports executive and the founder of a consulting firm explore the social value of fandom in this nonfiction book.
Chicago Cubs season ticket holder Nick Camfield’s fandom “runs at least three generations deep,” and every trip to Wrigley Field “transports” him back to his childhood experience of watching games with his father. In conducting interviews with the Cubs enthusiast and others for this well-researched work, Valenta and Sikorjak came across dozens of individuals like Camfield whose emotional well-being and favorite memories revolved around sports—from Little League coaches and fantasy football leaguers to local fan club members and season ticket holders. In addition to anecdotal oral histories, the authors (self-described data geeks) convincingly deploy a host of statistical data to back their argument that not only do sports fans “have more friends,” they also “exhibit stronger measures of wellbeing, happiness, confidence, and optimism than non-fans.” Not only does fandom bring families closer together, the volume argues, but it is also an essential tool—for instance, it is used by immigrants to find a welcome home in new cities or countries. And as much as rivalry is central to the world of sports, fandom, the book contends, can actually “soften the hardened boundaries between ‘us’ and ‘them.’ ” Valenta, the senior vice president of strategy and analytics for Fox Sports, and Sikorjak, the founder of an analytics consulting firm and a former executive with Madison Square Garden, combine their career insights into American sports with a firm grasp of data-driven analysis that is accompanied by a network of scholarly endnotes. At times their prose can revel in the sappy nostalgia of sports history, which may alienate more objective sociologists while gripping the average fan. Still, their writing effectively blends keen storytelling with erudite statistical analysis that will appeal to both scholars of human behavior and lifelong sports enthusiasts. The book’s readability is enhanced by an ample use of full-color charts, graphics, diagrams, and other visual aids that support its overall message that the value of sports goes far beyond its mere entertainment value, as its “social power” has the potential to “heal an ailing world.”
A convincing case for the societal benefits of sports fandom.Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2022
ISBN: 979-8-9858428-1-4
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Silicon Valley Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.
A study of swimming as sport, survival method, basis for community, and route to physical and mental well-being.
For Bay Area writer Tsui (American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods, 2009), swimming is in her blood. As she recounts, her parents met in a Hong Kong swimming pool, and she often visited the beach as a child and competed on a swim team in high school. Midway through the engaging narrative, the author explains how she rejoined the team at age 40, just as her 6-year-old was signing up for the first time. Chronicling her interviews with scientists and swimmers alike, Tsui notes the many health benefits of swimming, some of which are mental. Swimmers often achieve the “flow” state and get their best ideas while in the water. Her travels took her from the California coast, where she dove for abalone and swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco, to Tokyo, where she heard about the “samurai swimming” martial arts tradition. In Iceland, she met Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, a local celebrity who, in 1984, survived six hours in a winter sea after his fishing vessel capsized, earning him the nickname “the human seal.” Although humans are generally adapted to life on land, the author discovered that some have extra advantages in the water. The Bajau people of Indonesia, for instance, can do 10-minute free dives while hunting because their spleens are 50% larger than average. For most, though, it’s simply a matter of practice. Tsui discussed swimming with Dara Torres, who became the oldest Olympic swimmer at age 41, and swam with Kim Chambers, one of the few people to complete the daunting Oceans Seven marathon swim challenge. Drawing on personal experience, history, biology, and social science, the author conveys the appeal of “an unflinching giving-over to an element” and makes a convincing case for broader access to swimming education (372,000 people still drown annually).
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61620-786-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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