The Last Temptation of Rick Pitino

The Last Temptation of Rick Pitino PDF Author: Michael Sokolove
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0399563296
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
From acclaimed New York Times Magazine author Michael Sokolove, the full inside story of the NCAA's epic corruption scandal that exposed the rot and hypocrisy at the heart of big-time college sports. In 2017, the FBI revealed that it had reached the endgame of a sprawling investigation of large-scale corruption involving Adidas, Louisville and a host of other colleges, in which large payments were laundered from Adidas through a network of coaches and fixers to athletes and their families to induce them to go to Adidas-branded college programs. In short order, Hall of Fame basketball coach Rick Pitino (salary: $8 million) and athletic director Tom Jurich were fired, and fear, trembling, and some high-profile litigation swept through the world of bigtime college athletics. In THE LAST TEMPTATION OF RICK PITINO, Michael Sokolove not only lifts the rug on the Louisville scandal but also places it in the context of the much wider problem, the farce of amateurism in bigtime college sports. In a world in which even assistant coaches can make high-six and seven-figure salaries, as long as they keep the "elite" athletes coming in, shoe deals can reach into the nine figures, and everyone is getting rich but the players, can it be surprising that unscrupulous parties would pay athletes, creating in effect a black market in young men, a veritable underground railroad of talent? But a few bad apples are one thing. In THE LAST TEMPTATION OF RICK PITINO, Michael Sokolove shows an elaborate, systematic machine, involving hundreds of thousands of dollars in illicit payments and connecting at least one of the largest apparel companies in the world with schools across the country. The Louisville-Adidas scandal has revealed a web of conspiracy whose scope has shaken big-time college sports to its core, delivering a devastating blow to the fantasy of amateurism, of "scholar athletes." A Shakespearean drama of greed and desperation involving some of the biggest characters in the arena of sports, THE LAST TEMPTATION OF RICK PITINO is the definitive chronicle of this scandal and its broader echoes.

The Last Temptation of Rick Pitino

The Last Temptation of Rick Pitino PDF Author: Michael Sokolove
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0399563296
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 290

Get Book Here

Book Description
From acclaimed New York Times Magazine author Michael Sokolove, the full inside story of the NCAA's epic corruption scandal that exposed the rot and hypocrisy at the heart of big-time college sports. In 2017, the FBI revealed that it had reached the endgame of a sprawling investigation of large-scale corruption involving Adidas, Louisville and a host of other colleges, in which large payments were laundered from Adidas through a network of coaches and fixers to athletes and their families to induce them to go to Adidas-branded college programs. In short order, Hall of Fame basketball coach Rick Pitino (salary: $8 million) and athletic director Tom Jurich were fired, and fear, trembling, and some high-profile litigation swept through the world of bigtime college athletics. In THE LAST TEMPTATION OF RICK PITINO, Michael Sokolove not only lifts the rug on the Louisville scandal but also places it in the context of the much wider problem, the farce of amateurism in bigtime college sports. In a world in which even assistant coaches can make high-six and seven-figure salaries, as long as they keep the "elite" athletes coming in, shoe deals can reach into the nine figures, and everyone is getting rich but the players, can it be surprising that unscrupulous parties would pay athletes, creating in effect a black market in young men, a veritable underground railroad of talent? But a few bad apples are one thing. In THE LAST TEMPTATION OF RICK PITINO, Michael Sokolove shows an elaborate, systematic machine, involving hundreds of thousands of dollars in illicit payments and connecting at least one of the largest apparel companies in the world with schools across the country. The Louisville-Adidas scandal has revealed a web of conspiracy whose scope has shaken big-time college sports to its core, delivering a devastating blow to the fantasy of amateurism, of "scholar athletes." A Shakespearean drama of greed and desperation involving some of the biggest characters in the arena of sports, THE LAST TEMPTATION OF RICK PITINO is the definitive chronicle of this scandal and its broader echoes.

Summary of Michael Sokolove's The Last Temptation of Rick Pitino

Summary of Michael Sokolove's The Last Temptation of Rick Pitino PDF Author: Everest Media,
Publisher: Everest Media LLC
ISBN:
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 36

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Book Description
Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 Tom Jurich, the University of Louisville’s athletic director, had taken over in 1997. He was a genius at forging relationships and understanding what his partners wanted. He was a coach whisperer who could identify young assistants from elsewhere and elevate Louisville teams to prominence. #2 The football stadium was undergoing a $63 million expansion. The university had a new interim president, Gregory Postel, a radiologist turned administrator who had come over from the medical school. But he was seated away from the podium at a table with executives from Thornton’s, a Louisville-based gas and convenience store chain. People noticed. #3 Rick Pitino was a New York native and a Sinatra-like posse member who kept late hours. He was often accompanied by what Jonathan Blue referred to as his Sinatra-like posse. He had control over the Louisville basketball program, down to the smallest detail. #4 Pitino was a basketball coach at his core, and he was the best college coach of his generation. He had been close to signing with Michigan, a more prestigious university and job, but he cowardice stopped him.

Pitino

Pitino PDF Author: Rick Pitino
Publisher: Diversion Books
ISBN: 1635765633
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
On September 26, 2017, the biggest recruiting scandal in college basketball history sent shock waves through the world of sports. Caught up in a massive FBI and NCAA investigation—and the intense media spotlight—was Rick Pitino, the Louisville Cardinals’ Hall of Fame coach. Here, from Pitino himself, comes the real story of the ongoing case and the hard truth about how college hoops has been pushed to the brink of disaster by greed, bad actors, and shoe company money. Rick Pitino has spent a lifetime in basketball. He is the recruiting and coaching maestro behind Final Four appearances with three different teams, and National Championships at two of them. He worked the early days of the legendary Five-Star camp and scouted players without the influence of agents, runners, or shoe companies. And he has run today’s recruiting gauntlet of sports apparel marketing, corrupted assistant coaches, unethical youth coaches, and powerful organizations hellbent against him. Rick Pitino has seen it all, dealt with it all, and now tells it all. Pitino is the story of an epic coaching career and the evolution of NCAA basketball to the multi-billion-dollar enterprise it is today. It is also a master’s course on the arts of coaching and recruiting. And in the telling, the one and only Rick Pitino lays all his cards on the table in addressing scandals of his past and the current headline-grabbing investigation that led a packed Board of Directors at Louisville to derail his career.

Players First

Players First PDF Author: John Calipari
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 014312708X
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
Now with a new chapter on the Wildcats' legendary comeback in the 2014 Final Four John Calipari, one of the most successful coaches in NCAA history, presents the world of college basketball from the coach's chair, unvarnished and straight from the heart. Players First is Calipari's account of his first six years coaching the University of Kentucky men's team, leading it to a national championship in 2012 and the championship game in 2014, all while dealing with the realities of the "one-and-done" mentality and an NCAA that sometimes seems to put players last. Filled with revelatory stories about what it takes to succeed at the highest level of the college game, Players First is a candid look at the great players and rivalries that have filled Calipari's life with joy and a sense of purpose.

Love, Zac

Love, Zac PDF Author: Reid Forgrave
Publisher: Algonquin Books
ISBN: 1643752022
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
"The story of a young man from small-town Iowa who decided to take his own life rather than continue his losing battle against the traumatic brain injuries (CTE) he had sustained as a no-holds-barred high school football player, and at the same time a larger story about the hot-button issues that football raises about masculinity and violence, and about what values we want to instill in our kids"--

Illegal Procedure

Illegal Procedure PDF Author: Josh Luchs
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1608197220
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
For fifteen years, sports agent Josh Luchs made illegal deals with numerous college athletes, from top-tier, nationally recognized phenoms to late-round draft picks. Flagrantly flaunting NCAA and NFL Players Association rules, he made no-interest loans to players in exchange for the promise of representation on their lucrative pro contracts. After cleaning up his act in 2003, he moved to a new agency, only to be targeted and pushed out of the business for a new violation-one he arguably did not commit. Then, in October 2010, Luchs wrote a confessional article in Sports Illustrated, telling the truth about what he did and didn't do. Since then he has taken on a new role: whistle-blowing, truth-telling reformer. And in telling his own story, Luchs pulls back the curtain on the real economy of college football: how agents win players legally and otherwise, the staggering sums colleges make from an unpaid workforce, the shortfalls of supposed full-ride scholarships, and the myth of a college education given to scholarship jocks. Including new information about major players and scandalized programs such as USC, Auburn, and Ohio State, this book pulls no punches. It's a stunning and necessary read for anyone who loves the game, and the first step toward fixing a broken system. Praise for Josh Luchs' Sports Illustrated story: "There are no innocents in all this-including Luchs. The difference now is Luchs isn't claiming to be innocent." -John Feinstein, Washington Post "[Luchs pulls] the inner workings of an oily business out of the shadows."-Pat Forde, ESPN "A must-read."-New York Times

If

If PDF Author: Christopher Benfey
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0735221448
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
A New York Times Notable Book of 2019 A unique exploration of the life and work of Rudyard Kipling in Gilded Age America, from a celebrated scholar of American literature At the turn of the twentieth century, Rudyard Kipling towered over not just English literature but the entire literary world. At the height of his fame in 1907, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, becoming its youngest winner. His influence on major figures—including Freud and William James—was pervasive and profound. But in recent decades Kipling’s reputation has suffered a strange eclipse. Though his body of work still looms large, and his monumental poem “If—” is quoted and referenced by politicians, athletes, and ordinary readers alike, his unabashed imperialist views have come under increased scrutiny. In If, scholar Christopher Benfey brings this fascinating and complex writer to life and, for the first time, gives full attention to Kipling's intense engagement with the United States—a rarely discussed but critical piece of evidence in our understanding of this man and his enduring legacy. Benfey traces the writer’s deep involvement with America over one crucial decade, from 1889 to 1899, when he lived for four years in Brattleboro, Vermont, and sought deliberately to turn himself into a specifically American writer. It was his most prodigious and creative period, as well as his happiest, during which he wrote The Jungle Book and Captains Courageous. Had a family dispute not forced his departure, Kipling almost certainly would have stayed. Leaving was the hardest thing he ever had to do, Kipling said. “There are only two places in the world where I want to live,” he lamented, “Bombay and Brattleboro. And I can’t live in either.” In this fresh examination of Kipling, Benfey hangs a provocative “what if” over Kipling’s American years and maps the imprint Kipling left on his adopted country as well as the imprint the country left on him. If proves there is relevance and magnificence to be found in Kipling’s work.

Drama High

Drama High PDF Author: Michael Sokolove
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1594632804
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 371

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Book Description
The inspiration for the NBC TV series "Rise," starring Josh Radnor, Auli'i Cravalho, and Rosie Perez — the incredible and true story of an extraordinary drama teacher who has changed the lives of thousands of students and inspired a town. By the author of The Last Temptation of Rick Pitino. Why would the multimillionaire producer of Cats, The Phantom of the Opera, and Miss Saigon take his limo from Manhattan to the struggling former steel town of Levittown, Pennsylvania, to see a high school production of Les Misérables? To see the show performed by the astoundingly successful theater company at Harry S Truman High School, run by its legendary director, Lou Volpe. Broadway turns to Truman High when trying out controversial shows such as Rent and Spring Awakening before they move on to high school theater programs across the nation. Volpe’s students from this blue-collar town go on to become Emmy-winning producers, entertainment executives, newscasters, and community-theater founders. Michael Sokolove, a Levittown native and former student of Volpe’s, chronicles the drama director’s last school years and follows a group of student actors as they work through riveting dramas both on and off the stage. This is a story of an economically depressed but proud town finding hope in a gifted teacher and the magic of theater.

Led to Follow

Led to Follow PDF Author: Cal Turner JR.
Publisher: Abingdon Press
ISBN: 1426728522
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 137

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Book Description
With an open, honest, and conversational style, a minister who also manages and a manager who also ministers share insights they've gained through failures, successes, and struggles in their personal and professional journeys. From crises in the family business to existential struggles in the face of recurring cancer, what they show us is this: the heart and soul of leadership is found in following: following your call, following others' input, following your failures, following change, and even following the unknown. If you seek wisdom for your journey, if you seek a life of deep dedication and fulfillment, this book is for you.

The Ticket Out

The Ticket Out PDF Author: Michael Sokolove
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439129045
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 426

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Book Description
The year was 1979 and the fifteen teenagers on the Crenshaw High Cougars were the most talented team in the history of high school baseball. They were pure ballplayers, sluggers and sweet fielders who played with unbridled joy and breathtaking skill. The national press converged on Crenshaw. So many scouts gravitated to their games that they took up most of the seats in the bleachers. Even the Crenshaw ballfield was a sight to behold -- groomed by the players themselves, picked clean of every pebble, it was the finest diamond in all of inner-city Los Angeles. On the outfield fences, the gates to the outside stayed locked against the danger and distraction of the streets. Baseball, for these boys, was hope itself. They had grown up with the notion that it could somehow set things right -- a vague, unexpressed, but persistent hope that even if life was rigged, baseball might be fair. And for a while it seemed they were right. Incredibly, most of of this team -- even several of the boys who sat on the bench -- were drafted into professional baseball. Two of them, Darryl Strawberry and Chris Brown, would reunite as teammates on a National League All-Star roster. But Michael Sokolove's The Ticket Out is more a story of promise denied than of dreams fulfilled. Because in Sokolove's brilliantly reported poignant and powerful tale, the lives of these gifted athletes intersect with the realities of being poor, urban, and black in America. What happened to these young men is a harsh reminder of the ways inspiration turns to frustration when the bats and balls are stowed and the crowd's applause dies down. Just as Friday Night Lights portrayed the impact of high school sports on the life of a Texas community, and There Are No Children Here examined the viselike grip of poverty on minority youngsters, The Ticket Out presents an unforgettable tale of families grasping for opportunities, of athletes praying for one chance to make it big, of all of us hoping that the will to succeed can triumph over the demons haunting our city streets.