Onward to Victory The Creation of Modern College Sports eBook Murray Sperber
Download As PDF : Onward to Victory The Creation of Modern College Sports eBook Murray Sperber 
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 big-time college sports in America. Drawing on a wide variety of sources, including press accounts, letters and diaries, historical papers, and interviews with many who were there, Murray Sperber recounts how the myths created by Hollywood studios were embellished and codified by a hungry press, infiltrating the collective unconscious with epic stories of players, coaches, and teams. As college sports became a mainstay of popular entertainment, they also were fertile ground for near-fatal scandal, ultimately giving rise to the modern NCAA. Sperber vividly re-creates the world of postwar America, with its all-powerful radiomen, its lurid press, its growing prosperity, and, of course, the infancy of television. Onward to Victory is a brilliant, detailed, and engrossing work of social history for not only sports fans, but anyone interested in the development of modern American culture.
Onward to Victory The Creation of Modern College Sports eBook Murray Sperber
I could only make it a third of the way into the book. The themes are just too repetitive and the ratio of moralizing to anecdotes is too high. The simultaneous exposé of Notre Dame missteps and lauding of current affairs (despite recent well-publicized incidents of misbehavior at Notre Dame with only hand-slapping punishments) gives an impression of only regional rather than national focus.Product details
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Tags : Buy Onward to Victory: The Creation of Modern College Sports: Read 4 Kindle Store Reviews - Amazon.com,ebook,Murray Sperber,Onward to Victory: The Creation of Modern College Sports,Henry Holt and Co.
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Onward to Victory The Creation of Modern College Sports eBook Murray Sperber Reviews
A good book on the progression of college athletics through the years. Sperber looks behind the scences in college athletics with somewhat of a true eye. The major problem with the book is the stories and references to ND. Several chapters are devoted to ND history. ND is a great school but I did not buy Onward to Victory to get a detailed history of ND.
Other than the overrun of ND stories a good not great book.
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.
Sperber is extremely knowledgeable about college sports and I enjoyed his earlier book, College Sports Incorporated. In this book the author writes endlessly and in overwhelming detail about the movie Knute Rockne-All-American as a cause and symbol of the changing attitudes towards collegiate sports. The section unbalances the book and in my case made me lose interest.
I could only make it a third of the way into the book. The themes are just too repetitive and the ratio of moralizing to anecdotes is too high. The simultaneous exposé of Notre Dame missteps and lauding of current affairs (despite recent well-publicized incidents of misbehavior at Notre Dame with only hand-slapping punishments) gives an impression of only regional rather than national focus.
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