Onward to Victory: The Creation of Modern College Sports

by Murray A. Sperber

Book Overview

From the acclaimed author of Shake Down the Thunder . With the 1940 release of the classic film Knute Rockne, All American, the myth of the hero scholar-athlete was born, and with it came the age of... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0805038655
• ISBN13: 9780805038651
• Release Date: November 1998
• Publisher: Henry Holt & Company
• Length: 614 Pages
• Weight: 2.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.8" x 6.5" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

Another outstanding book from Murray Sperber

Murray Sperber has become one of my favorite authors. I really liked his first book, College Sports Inc., and also his second, Shake Down the Thunder. The first one focused on the problems in contemporary college sports, especially how schools lose money in it, and the second book showed the history of the phenomenon from the point of view of the only school that has actually made money in college sports, Notre Dame. Both books were very well-researched but, although Sperber is a college professor, he writes really well and always entertains and enlightens the reader. Onward to Victory combines the best elements of Sperber's first two books--he exposes the scoundrels in college sports, particularly the NCAA, and also reveals the "true history" of the phenomenon. This book is set in the 1940s and 1950s, and again Notre Dame comes off very well--it never cheated because it could do so well and win by playing it straight. But the book is so much more--if you love stories about what crooks the sports media are and have always been, this book is for you. At the end of this book, Sperber outlines his next one, Beer & Circus: The Impact of Bigtime College Sports on Undergraduate Education. I really look forward to that one. It's great that there is someone around like Sperber willing to puncture holes in the sanctimonious greedheads who run college sports and the media people who promote it so relentlessly.

Best book about the "business" of college sports

I graduated from a school that now has an active movement towards moving up in Division 1-A football and another movement towards returning to "pure" non-scholarship sports. This book showed me that the worst abuses in college sports are well behind us. The chapters about Red Blaik's Army powers and the post-college military teams were especially enlightening-showing how an emphasis on winning and power gets too far out of hand. I like to watch college football and accept it for what it is-entertainment. But at least we are more "honest" today with the best players who are not serious students by allowing them to turn pro early. Sperber's book showed me that while we have had little or no "reform"-we are at least more aware.

Excellent

Author Murray Sperber has proved, once and for all, that he is America's pre-eminent college sports historian. In his archeological research digs, Sperber picks far below the level of accepted myths and comfortable oversights. Fuelled by a healthy dose of skepticism and an insatiable appetite for research, he keeps digging until he reveals corrupt truth after corrupt truth. In his first book on this subject, "College Sports, Inc.," he destroyed most of the myths which prop up the present-day university athletics temple. In "Shake Down The Thunder," he showed conclusively that corruption and hypocrisy kicked off with the first football in 1869. And in his newest work, "Onward to Victory," Sperber reveals for the first time the despicable political machinations which gave rise to the NCAA following the Second World War. Among Sperber's new insights, he exposes such long-hailed reform measures as the "Purity Code" and "Sanity Code" for the bankrupt public-relations exercises they were, measures which merely allowed the more powerful, slicker cheats to prevail. Indeed, the most common thread running through the history of the organized college athletics is hypocrisy. Although you could scarecly find a single athletic department employee in all of America who would agree, American higher education is better off because of Murray Sperber's writings.John Kryk, author of "Natural Enemies: The Notre Dame-Michigan Football Feud." Toronto, Ontario, Canada.