Product Description

Like millions who love college basketball, John Feinstein was first drawn to the game because of its intensity, speed and intelligence. Like many others, he felt that the vast sums of money involved in NCAA basketball had turned the sport into a division of the NBA, rather than the beloved amateur sport it once was. He went in search of college basketball played with the passion and integrity it once inspired, and found the Patriot League. As one of the NCAA's smallest leagues, none of these teams leaves college early to join the NBA and none of these coaches gets national recognition or endorsement contracts. The young men on these teams are playing for the love of the sport, of competition and of their schools. John Feinstein spent a season with these players, uncovering the drama of their daily lives and the passions that drive them to commit hundreds of hours to basketball even when there is no chance of a professional future. He offers a look at American sport at its purest.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #303486 in Books
• Published on: 2001-11-01
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 8.25" h x 1.25" w x 5.50" l, .96 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 480 pages

From Amazon.com
If there's any doubt about John Feinstein being one of sport's true believers, The Last Amateurs readily dispels it. After years of smartly dissecting our games at their highest levels in bestsellers like The Majors, A Good Walk Spoiled, and A Season on the Brink, he returns to dissecting our games at their purest level, ground he first staked out quite stirringly in A Civil War, his chronicle of Army-Navy football.

In The Last Amateurs, he mines the 1999-2000 season of Patriot League basketball. Given the high-stakes, high-profile, and often dirty world of college hoops these days, Feinstein comes up with a remarkably refreshing place to visit, a sporting environment short on scandals, prima donnas, and sneaker contracts, but long on a pure passion for the game that complements achievement in the classroom. In the league's seven schools--Bucknell, Lehigh, Lafayette, Colgate, Holy Cross, Army, and Navy--academics come first, the hardwood second. These are campuses populated by students who happen to be athletes, not athletes stopping off on the way to lucrative careers in professional sports. Indeed, these are young athletes who have their post-college focus on the rest of their lives, not the NBA. Sports, for them, builds character, not bank accounts.

Still, the Patriot League is a Division I conference, with its champion earning an automatic berth in the NCAA tournament. It takes the games seriously--often, as Feinstein reveals, heartbreakingly so--even if it doesn't necessarily play to ACC, SEC, Big 10, and Pac-10 standards. Feinstein's interviewing, skillful as ever, brings the players, coaches, and administrators of the colleges in this league to full form, making The Last Amateurs a rarity among sports books--a smart volume about smart people with their heads and priorities pointed in the right direction. Like the conference itself, it's in a league of its own. --Jeff Silverman

From Publishers Weekly
Army, Navy, Lafayette, Lehigh, Bucknell, Holy Cross and Colgate: these seven colleges make up the Patriot League, basketball's smallest Division I conference. In this book, NPR commentator and bestselling sportswriter Feinstein (A Season on the Brink, The Majors, etc.) gives an exhaustive account of the Patriot League's 1999-2000 season. He illustrates that exciting basketball can be played in front of crowds that can be as small as 1,000 and that rivalries such as Lafayette-Lehigh can be just as intense as those played by colleges in major conferences on national television. But Feinstein's intent is to do more than just provide details about the year's important games; he uses the Patriot League as an example of "what college sports are supposed to be about." Feinstein maintains that the conference's members are among the few colleges that can call their players 'student-athletes' with a straight face. Patriot League colleges hold athletes to rigorous entrance and academic standards and most scholarships are offered on a need-basis (although some schools are giving a limited number of basketball scholarships). Moreover, players regularly attend class since they are smart enough to know that there is little chance they will be playing ball at the professional level after graduation. Feinstein's portraits of these players and their coaches, his exploration of why they stay in the game and their encounters playing against soon-to-be-pro athletes of other teams bring an unusual emotional depth to this accountDwhich, like Feinstein's earlier books, should make a run toward, or on, the lists. (Nov.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
The Patriot League consists of colleges that, with rare exception, do not give athletic scholarships. The league's teams, however, do compete in NCAA Division I along with Duke, UCLA, Syracuse, and all the other big-name basketball factories. The Patriot team that emerges from the season-ending tournament receives an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament, where they are promptly seeded sixteenth in a 16-team bracket and get trounced by a top seed, usually a school with at least a couple of players headed to the NBA. Feinstein, the best-selling author who does this type of focused, incisive sports journalism better than anyone, spent the 1999-2000 season traveling between various Patriot schools, including Army, Navy, Lafayette, Holy Cross, and Bucknell. He interviewed coaches, assistant coaches, players, coaches' wives, trainers, and school administrators in order to present an objective (but very sympathetic) portrait of a world on the periphery of the big-time where athletes compete for a love of the game. Feinstein presents the season chronologically but supplies context along the way--sidebars on the schools' basketball histories, the most-heated rivalries, and the relationships among the coaches. He also captures the rhythm of the season: the anticipation of preseason practice; the ultimate drudgery of preseason practice; the nonconference schedule; the holiday tournaments; the intensity of the conference games; and, finally, the conference tournament--the goal to which these players have devoted their basketball lives. The book is typical Feinstein: excellent. Seldom will one get a chance to know so many fine young men--if only at a distance--and share their unique experience in educational environments where athletic prowess is respected but not worshiped. Wes Lukowsky
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