Then there's the intelligent, softspoken Bennie Bolton, whose anger mounts throughout the 1986 season and finally erupts before the ACC championship game:
"Fellas, we've had a hard season. We lost Drum. We had fights. We've had grade problems. Everyone here hates V. After this season, many of us are going to leave here. Some are going to graduate, others will transfer. All of us here think that V has burned us....
Three weeks ago, the fans were dogging us everywhere we went...Fuck V. Fuck the fans. We need to win this game for us...Today we have to put aside all the differences between black and white, who's playing and who's not, and let's go out there and give it a shot--for us. Scrap everyone else--school pride and all that garbage. Let's just try to play one game one time for us, just like the old days prior to the start of the season when we used to go down to the gym and play for the fun of it."
MOST of all, there's Valvano, professor of "the Art of the Big Con 101." A liar, a cheat, a turncoat, a PR mastermind--this is not the funny loudmouth we saw on CBS looking for someone to hug after winning the NCAA championship in 1983.
Golenbock's year-long investigation of the Wolfpack has left him jaded and furious with the corrupt N.C. State hoops program, and he vents his anger in his introduction--an attack on the materialistic, win-at-all-costs American value system that projects crack dealers and inside traders as the heroes of the 1980s.
Golenbock sees Personal Fouls as a quintessentially American tale of innocence, greed and power abuse. He offers two plans for revamping collegiate athletics--one cynical, one idealistic.
The cynical one is hardly original: drop the facade, face the music and pay the players their market value. Rather than let Nike pay Valvano $150,000 to force his players to wear Nike equipment on the court (And planes--for "team unity," according to Valvano.), let the "amateurs" endorse their own products. This plan, of course, will never happen.
Much of his idealistic 11-point plan is equally unrealistic. Eliminate weekday games? Split tournament TV revenue equally among all teams? Even Lehigh? Eliminate booster groups? Appoint Dan Quayle "ombudsman for college athletes?"
Earth to Golenbock--come in.
SOME suggestions do merit a look, though. Eliminating athletic dorms and coaching endorsements would be a constructive start. Giving coaches tenure might allow them to build character and teach basketball without alumni pressure to win.
But eliminating freshman eligibility would unfairly single out first-year students as the only athletes who need time to study and rearrange priorities. Expelling Proposition 48-victims with low college GPA's similarly misplaces the onus on a distinct group of athletes, this time those with SAT scores under 700. Athletic eligibility should depend solely on academic performance regardless of class year or SAT scores.
The real problem stems from high school, when teen superstars lose sight of academics in pursuit of the NBA money. Golenbock realizes that young athletes must be taught that they must study to become Michael Jordan, because most will never become Michael Jordan.
The body of the book, the story of a season of discontent, is where Golenbock excels. There are a few flaws, however: he does dwell unnecessarily on Valvano's coaching deficiencies, which are numerous but hardly immoral; and he also inserts a three-page chapter devoted solely to relaying rumors that Bias' died from smoking a crack-laced marijuana cigarette, not from snorting cocaine. Interesting, but irrelevant and unsubstantiated.
But when it comes to capturing a team's locker-room atmosphere, Golenbock, the co-author of Yankee-bashing books like Sparky Lyle's The Bronx Zoo and Graig Nettles' Balls, has no peer. If you're interested in college athletics or just want to read a horror story about power abuse, make a fast break to Personal Fouls.