Download or read book Becoming a True Champion written by Kirk Mango and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2012 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Becoming a True Champion offers a path to achieving athletic excellence, longevity, and dignity through the values and hard work that once distinguished athletes as true role models. Providing an antidote to images of misbehaving athletes, this book guides readers through the ethics and standards that will set them apart both on and off the field.

Download or read book Varsity Green written by Mark Yost and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2009-12-03 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Varsity Green, Mark Yost cuts through clichés and common misconceptions to take a hard-eyed look at the current state of college athletics. He takes readers behind the scenes of the conspicuous and high-revenue business of college sports in order to dissect the enormous television revenues, merchandising rights, bowl game payoffs, sneaker contracts, and endorsement deals that often pay state university coaches more than the college president, or even the governor. Money in college sports is nothing new. But readers will be amazed at the alarming depth and breadth of influence, both financial and otherwise, that college sports has within our culture. Readers will learn how academic institutions capitalize on the success of their athletic programs, and what role sports-based revenues play across campus, from the training room to the science lab. Yost pays particular attention to the climate that big-money athletics has created over the past decade, as both the NCAA's March Madness and the Bowl Championship Series have become multi-billion dollar businesses. This analysis goes well beyond campus, showing how the corrupting influences that drive college athletics today have affected every aspect of youth sports, and have seeped into our communities in ways that we would not otherwise suspect. This book is not only for the players, policymakers, and other insiders who are affected by the changing economics of college athletics; it is a must-read for any sports fan who engages with the NCAA and deserves to see the business behind the game.

Download or read book Grown and Flown written by Lisa Heffernan and published by Flatiron Books. This book was released on 2019-09-03 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: PARENTING NEVER ENDS. From the founders of the #1 site for parents of teens and young adults comes an essential guide for building strong relationships with your teens and preparing them to successfully launch into adulthood The high school and college years: an extended roller coaster of academics, friends, first loves, first break-ups, driver’s ed, jobs, and everything in between. Kids are constantly changing and how we parent them must change, too. But how do we stay close as a family as our lives move apart? Enter the co-founders of Grown and Flown, Lisa Heffernan and Mary Dell Harrington. In the midst of guiding their own kids through this transition, they launched what has become the largest website and online community for parents of fifteen to twenty-five year olds. Now they’ve compiled new takeaways and fresh insights from all that they’ve learned into this handy, must-have guide. Grown and Flown is a one-stop resource for parenting teenagers, leading up to—and through—high school and those first years of independence. It covers everything from the monumental (how to let your kids go) to the mundane (how to shop for a dorm room). Organized by topic—such as academics, anxiety and mental health, college life—it features a combination of stories, advice from professionals, and practical sidebars. Consider this your parenting lifeline: an easy-to-use manual that offers support and perspective. Grown and Flown is required reading for anyone looking to raise an adult with whom you have an enduring, profound connection.

Download or read book Designing the New American University written by Michael M. Crow and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2015-03-15 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A radical blueprint for reinventing American higher education. America’s research universities consistently dominate global rankings but may be entrenched in a model that no longer accomplishes their purposes. With their multiple roles of discovery, teaching, and public service, these institutions represent the gold standard in American higher education, but their evolution since the nineteenth century has been only incremental. The need for a new and complementary model that offers broader accessibility to an academic platform underpinned by knowledge production is critical to our well-being and economic competitiveness. Michael M. Crow, president of Arizona State University and an outspoken advocate for reinventing the public research university, conceived the New American University model when he moved from Columbia University to Arizona State in 2002. Following a comprehensive reconceptualization spanning more than a decade, ASU has emerged as an international academic and research powerhouse that serves as the foundational prototype for the new model. Crow has led the transformation of ASU into an egalitarian institution committed to academic excellence, inclusiveness to a broad demographic, and maximum societal impact. In Designing the New American University, Crow and coauthor William B. Dabars—a historian whose research focus is the American research university—examine the emergence of this set of institutions and the imperative for the new model, the tenets of which may be adapted by colleges and universities, both public and private. Through institutional innovation, say Crow and Dabars, universities are apt to realize unique and differentiated identities, which maximize their potential to generate the ideas, products, and processes that impact quality of life, standard of living, and national economic competitiveness. Designing the New American University will ignite a national discussion about the future evolution of the American research university.

Download or read book Sports Crazy written by Steven J. Overman and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2019-02-11 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sports Crazy: How Sports Are Sabotaging American Schools exposes the excesses of middle and high school sports and the detrimental effects our sports obsession has on American education. Institutions are increasingly emulating college and professional sports models and losing sight of a host of educational and health goals. Steven J. Overman describes how this agenda is driven largely by partisan fans and parents of athletes who exert an inordinate influence on school priorities, and he explains how and why school administrators shockingly and consistently capitulate to these demands. The author underscores the incongruity of public schools involved in an entertainment business and the effects this diversion has on academic integrity, learning, life experience, and overall educational outcomes. Overman examines out-of-control school sports within the context of a school’s educational mission and curriculum, with telling reference to impacts on physical education. He explores as well the outsized place of interscholastic sports beyond the classroom and scrutinizes the distorted relationship between intramural or recreational sports and elitist, varsity athletics. Overman’s chapter on tackle football explains many reasons why this sport should be eliminated from the school extracurriculum and replaced by flag or touch football. Overman presents a brief history of interscholastic sports, and he compares and contrasts the American experience of school-sponsored sport to the European model of community-based clubs. Which approach better serves students? Overman recommends reforms in the context of a radical proposal to phase out interscholastic sports in favor of an intramural or club model. This approach would alleviate such problems as elitism and gender bias and reign in hypercompetitiveness while freeing schools to educate students rather than provide public entertainment.

Download or read book Big Time Sports in American Universities written by Charles T. Clotfelter and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-02-21 with total page 403 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book expands on the argument that spectator sports, despite their problems, have become a central function of American universities.

Download or read book Changing the Game written by John O'Sullivan and published by Morgan James Publishing. This book was released on 2013-12-01 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The modern day youth sports environment has taken the enjoyment out of athletics for our children. Currently, 70% of kids drop out of organized sports by the age of 13, which has given rise to a generation of overweight, unhealthy young adults. There is a solution. John O’Sullivan shares the secrets of the coaches and parents who have not only raised elite athletes, but have done so by creating an environment that promotes positive core values and teaches life lessons instead of focusing on wins and losses, scholarships, and professional aspirations. Changing the Game gives adults a new paradigm and a game plan for raising happy, high performing children, and provides a national call to action to return youth sports to our kids.

Download or read book Varsity Seven written by Peter Hawkins and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "What football is to the South, distance running is to the Northwest. And in Spokane, Washington cross country running is king. Each fall thousands of elementary, middle and high school students traverse the roads and trails, training and competing for their chance to win. Just as some of the greatest Kenyan runners in the world come from one small town, in an area called the Rift Valley, Spokane continues to supply some of America's greatest runners." -- back cover

Download or read book The King of Sports written by Gregg Easterbrook and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2013-09-24 with total page 435 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gridiron football is the king of sports – it's the biggest game in the strongest and richest country in the world. In The King of Sports, Easterbrook tells the full story of how football became so deeply ingrained in American culture. Both good and bad, he examines its impact on American society. The King of Sports explores these and many other topics: * The real harm done by concussions (it's not to NFL players). * The real way in which college football players are exploited (it's not by not being paid). * The way football helps American colleges (it's not bowl revenue) and American cities (it's not Super Bowl wins). * What happens to players who are used up and thrown away (it's not pretty). * The hidden scandal of the NFL (it's worse than you think). Using his year-long exclusive insider access to the Virginia Tech football program, where Frank Beamer has compiled the most victories of any active NFL or major-college head coach while also graduating players, Easterbrook shows how one big university "does football right." Then he reports on what's wrong with football at the youth, high school, college and professional levels. Easterbrook holds up examples of coaches and programs who put the athletes first and still win; he presents solutions to these issues and many more, showing a clear path forward for the sport as a whole.

Download or read book How College Athletics Are Hurting Girls Sports written by Rick Eckstein and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2023-02-08 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Featuring a new preface by the author, this book looks closely at college sports and how they shape the athletic and personal landscape for girls and young women. Filled with interviews from female athletes of all ages, this book chronicles how college and youth sports have become more corporate, to the detriment of participants.

Download or read book Billion Dollar Ball written by Gilbert M. Gaul and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2016-09-06 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A penetrating examination of how the elite college football programs have become ‘giant entertainment businesses that happened to do a little education on the side.’”—Mark Kram, The New York Times Two-time Pulitzer-Prize-winning journalist Gilbert M. Gaul offers a riveting and sometimes shocking look inside the money culture of college football and how it has come to dominate a surprising number of colleges and universities. Over the past decade college football has not only doubled in size, but its elite programs have become a $2.5-billion-a-year entertainment business, with lavishly paid coaches, lucrative television deals, and corporate sponsors eager to slap their logos on everything from scoreboards to footballs and uniforms. Profit margins among the top football schools range from 60% to 75%—results that dwarf those of such high-profile companies as Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft—yet thanks to the support of their football-mad representatives in Congress, teams aren’t required to pay taxes. In most cases, those windfalls are not passed on to the universities themselves, but flow directly back into their athletic departments. College presidents have been unwilling or powerless to stop a system that has spawned a wildly profligate infrastructure of coaches, trainers, marketing gurus, and a growing cadre of bureaucrats whose sole purpose is to ensure that players remain academically eligible to play. From the University of Oregon’s lavish $42 million academic center for athletes to Alabama coach Nick Saban’s $7 million paycheck—ten times what the school pays its president, and 70 times what a full-time professor there earns—Gaul examines in depth the extraordinary financial model that supports college football and the effect it has had not only on other athletic programs but on academic ones as well. What are the consequences when college football coaches are the highest paid public employees in over half the states in an economically troubled country, or when football players at some schools receive ten times the amount of scholarship awards that academically gifted students do? Billion-Dollar Ball considers these and many other issues in a compelling account of how an astonishingly wealthy sports franchise has begun to reframe campus values and distort the fundamental academic mission of our universities.

Download or read book Sports in America written by James A. Michener and published by Dial Press. This book was released on 2014-04-15 with total page 562 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 1976, James A. Michener’s explosive, spectacular Sports in America is a prescient examination of the crisis in American sports that is still unfolding to this day. Pro basketball players are banned for narcotics use, while a Major League pitcher is arrested for smuggling drugs across the Mexican border. The NFL’s “injury report” grows longer every Sunday. Corruption and recruiting violations plague collegiate sports as the “winning is everything” mentality trickles down to the Little League level. With his lifelong enthusiasm for sports in evidence, the incomparable Michener tackles this subject thoroughly and leaves us amazed and appalled by what we’ve learned, yet still loving the games we grew up on. BONUS: This edition includes an excerpt from James A. Michener's Hawaii. Praise for Sports in America “A comprehensive, controversial examination of sports as a major force in American life.”—Los Angeles Times “Michener’s life was saved by sports twice. In return, he has issued a long, lovingly critical, prodigiously researched account of the passions and politics of America at organized play. Rich in anecdote, source material and his own shrewd commentary.”—The New York Times Book Review “Like just about everything James Michener has produced, Sports in America is a thoughtful, well-written document that’s thoroughly researched. . . . For anyone interested in how the ball bounces in the U.S. of A., the answers are all here.”—The Wall Street Journal “Encyclopedic . . . amusing and sometimes alarming.”—The Washington Post

Download or read book Double Yoi written by Myron Cope and published by Sports Publishing LLC. This book was released on 2006 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now lengthily updated to include Myron Cope's odyssey into retirement and the Steelers' breathtaking Super Bowl XL run, this entertaining, revealing memoir of the Pittsburgh writer-turned-broadcaster recounts memories and behind-the-scenes stories from a career that many call truly special. No broadcaster has come even close to matching his stretch of 35 years as radio color analyst for an NFL team's games -- in Cope's case, the five-time Super Bowl champion Pittsburgh Steelers. He now returns to his earlier profession of writer-author and gives you even further insight into the performers who have inspired the Steelers Nation. Their path to the top is reflected in observ-ations he offers with admiration, amusement, and blunt criticism.Seasoned with laugh-out-loud anecdotes and touching vignettes, Double Yoi! shares Cope's most personal moments, from labor pains in birthing the "Terrible Towel" to the reason behind his charity work with the physically and mentally afflicted -- among them, his son Danny -- to his emotional dedication to his late wife, Mildred, who died after a long battle with cancer. The author's most embarrassing moments, including getting the hook during his Pro Football Hall of Fame acceptance remarks, are here as well.Famed for his raspy voice and incendiary style, Myron Cope transcended mere broadcasting to become part of the Pittsburgh Steelers mythos and a football legend. From firsthand experiences, Cope brings his takes on the famous, such as Terry Bradshaw, Muhammad Ali, the Dallas "Cryboys," and Bill Cowher. Cope also explains how he helped John F. Kennedy become America's first Catholic President and how Frank Sinatra nearly cost him his job. You'll alsolearn why he was kidnapped by Franco's Italian Army and how his birth name was deemed "too Jewish" to be his byline. Double Yoi! is the ultimate collector's item for the Pittsburgh-loyal and the standard for accomplished sportswriters

Download or read book 15 Sports Myths and Why They re Wrong written by Rodney Fort and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2013-08-07 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 15 Sports Myths and Why They're Wrong, authors Rodney Fort and Jason Winfree apply sharp economic analysis to bust some of the most widespread urban legends about college and professional athletics. Each chapter takes apart a common misconception, showing how the assumptions behind it fail to add up. Fort and Winfree reveal how these myths perpetuate themselves and, ultimately, how they serve a handful of powerful parties—such as franchise owners, reporters, and players—at the expense of the larger community of sports fans. From the idea that team owners and managers are inept to the notion that revenue-generating college sports pay for athletics that don't attract fans (and their cash), 15 Sports Myths and Why They're Wrong strips down pervasive accounts of how our favorite games function, allowing us to look at them in a new, more informed way. Fort and Winfree argue that substituting the intuitive appeal of emotionally charged myths with rigorous, informed explanations weakens the power of these tall tales and their tight hold on the sports we love. Readers will emerge with a clearer picture of the forces at work within the sports world and a better understanding of why these myths matter—and are worthy of a takedown.

Download or read book Reclaiming the Game written by William G. Bowen and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2011-06-27 with total page 497 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Reclaiming the Game, William Bowen and Sarah Levin disentangle the admissions and academic experiences of recruited athletes, walk-on athletes, and other students. In a field overwhelmed by reliance on anecdotes, the factual findings are striking--and sobering. Anyone seriously concerned about higher education will find it hard to wish away the evidence that athletic recruitment is problematic even at those schools that do not offer athletic scholarships. Thanks to an expansion of the College and Beyond database that resulted in the highly influential studies The Shape of the River and The Game of Life, the authors are able to analyze in great detail the backgrounds, academic qualifications, and college outcomes of athletes and their classmates at thirty-three academically selective colleges and universities that do not offer athletic scholarships. They show that recruited athletes at these schools are as much as four times more likely to gain admission than are other applicants with similar academic credentials. The data also demonstrate that the typical recruit is substantially more likely to end up in the bottom third of the college class than is either the typical walk-on or the student who does not play college sports. Even more troubling is the dramatic evidence that recruited athletes "underperform:" they do even less well academically than predicted by their test scores and high school grades. Over the last four decades, the athletic-academic divide on elite campuses has widened substantially. This book examines the forces that have been driving this process and presents concrete proposals for reform. At its core, Reclaiming the Game is an argument for re-establishing athletics as a means of fulfilling--instead of undermining--the educational missions of our colleges and universities.

Download or read book SportsWorld written by Robert Lipsyte and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2018-06-01 with total page 405 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tough and witty, SportsWorld is a well-known commentator’s overview of the most significant form of mass culture in America—sports. It’s a sweaty Oz that has grown in a century from a crucible for character to a complex of capitalism, a place where young people can find both self-fulfillment and cruel exploitation, where families can huddle in a sanctuary of entertainment and be force fed values and where cities and countries can be pillaged by greedy team owners and their paid-for politicians. But this book is not just a screed, it’s a guided visit with such heroes of sports as Muhammad Ali, Billie Jean King, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Joe Namath, who the author knew well, and with some he met in passing, like Richard Nixon, who seemed never to have gotten over missing the cut in college varsity football, a major mark of manhood. We see how SportsWorld sensibilities help elect our politicians, judge our children, fight our wars, and oppress our minorities. And now featuring a new introduction by the author,SportsWorld is a book that will provide the foundation for understanding today’s world of sports and the time of Trump. In the America of 2017—where the SuperBowl is worth billions, athletes are penalized or forced out of sports for political and anti-racist activism, and Title IX is constantly questioned and undermined—Robert Lipsyte’s 1975 critique remains startlingly and intensely relevant.

Download or read book The Varsity Dad Dilemma written by Lex Martin and published by Lex Martin. This book was released on 2021-07-20 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A USA TODAY BESTSELLER! I’ll just ignore Rider and those soul-searing looks he gives me every time I reach for the baby. He broke my heart three years ago… he won’t get a second chance. What’s worse than having Rider Kingston, the hotshot quarterback on your college football team, give you the big brushoff because he doesn’t want to get serious? You’d probably think living across the street from him, where you get a first-hand view of his hookups, right? That’s what I thought, until someone drops off a surprise baby with a note pinned to her blanket that says one of those jocks—either Rider or one of his numbskull roommates—is the father. I wouldn’t care one bit about their paternity problems—except my brother lives there, too… which means that adorable squawking bundle might be my niece, and there’s no way I’m leaving her unattended with those bumbling football players. They need my help, even if they don’t know it yet. Once we solve this dilemma and figure out who the daddy is, I’m out. * * * The Varsity Dad Dilemma is a sexy, small-town sports romance novel from USA Today best-selling author Lex Martin. Over three thousand readers are raving about the passionate, angst-filled enemies-to-lovers romance, and the smoking-hot chemistry between Gabby, the slightly nerdy Latina with a take-charge attitude and her surprisingly sweet ex-boyfriend Rider. Who knew that he actually had a heart of gold underneath that deliciously ripped, well-defined exterior? “Gabby and Rider have great chemistry and their banter is HOT. While she had loathed everything about Rider since freshman year, there was no denying the physical attraction they had towards each other… If you are looking for a college romance that brings the laughter, with loads of sexual tension and plenty of heart melting moments, check this book out!” – Reader Review