College Basketball

When college basketball teams make it to the NCAA tournament, they say they're "going to the dance". John Feinstein's riveting new book is the story of the last dance: the Final Four. There is no event in sports quite like it. The Final Four draws millions to their televisions and thousands to a chosen city; attendance is topped only by the Super Bowl. It is the epicenter of sports madness, a circus of media, coaches, and fans swirling around the four teams talented enough to have made it to the end.

As the revenues generated by big-time college sports continue to skyrocket, virtually all of the debate involves whether (and how much) student-athletes should be paid for play. Kenneth L. Shropshire and Collin D. Williams Jr., argue that "student" has to come first: the focus should be on prioritizing a meaningful education. They draw on new research to reveal that it has become increasingly difficult for college athletes to balance school and sports, much less a social life, leading to serious economic, professional, and emotional consequences for young people.

The college basketball scandals of 1951 were to basketball what the 1919 Black Sox scandals were to baseball - a loss of innocence, after which the game would be permanently tarnished, its relationship to power and big money firmly established. In Scandals of '51, Charley Rosen identifies all the major figures - including players, coaches, gangsters, clergymen, politicians - that made up the elaborate network that controlled the outcomes to many games or protected those who did so.

Discover the David vs. Goliath rise of Catholic college basketball, from Villanova to Georgetown to Gonzaga, where small schools perennially shoot past the big power conference programs.

When basketball fans hear the words Final Four, they probably think of the buzzer-beaters, Cinderella stories, and bracket-busters that have thrilled people for years. However, you don't need to be a die-hard fan to know that the NCAA men's basketball tournament is one of the most popular sports events in the United States. By the time the tournament of 64 teams has been whittled down to the Final Four, excitement reaches a fever pitch.

Er will einfach nur vergessen. Ihr Job ist es, all seine Geheimnisse zu lüften. Austin Fields ist der neue Spitzenspieler der Hopeville Dragons. Er hat keine Zeit für Ablenkungen, erst recht nicht für die ebenso hartnäckige wie hübsche Sportjournalistin Joyce, die einfach nicht aufhören kann, Fragen zu stellen. Wenn es nach seiner Mitbewohnerin (aka Großmutter) geht, sollte er sich dem blonden Wirbelwind mit dem frechen Mundwerk einfach öffnen. Das kommt gar nicht in Frage, denn er will mit seiner Zeit in Chicago nur noch abschließen und nach vorne sehen.

During the 1980s, Black athletes and other athletes of color broadened the popularity and profitability of major college televised sports by infusing games with a "Black style" of play. At a moment ripe for a revolution in men's college basketball and football, clashes between "good guy" white protagonists and bombastic "bad boy" Black antagonists attracted new fans and spectators. And no two teams in the 1980s welcomed the enemy's role more than Georgetown Hoya basketball and Miami Hurricane football. The Hoyas and the 'Canes made the bad-boy image look good. Pop culture took notice.

After solving a crime blamed on Vodou in New Orleans’s French Quarter, Vodou priestess turned amateur detective Reina Dumond has returned to her benevolent work as a healer. But when her friend and enigmatic client Evangeline “Vangie” Stiles comes to her for a spell, Mambo Reina quickly realizes what Vangie really needs is a sleuth.

Among many legendary episodes from the life and career of men's basketball coach Dean Smith, few loom as large as his recruitment of Charlie Scott, the first African American scholarship athlete at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Drawn together by college basketball in a time of momentous change, Smith and Scott helped transform a university, a community, and the racial landscape of sports in the South.