Champions Way: Football, Florida, and the Lost Soul of College Sports

by Mike McIntire

Overview

A searing exposé of how the multibillion dollar college sports empire fails universities, students, and athletes.

With little public debate or introspection, our institutions of higher learning have become hostages to the rapacious, smash-mouth entertainment conglomerate known, quaintly, as intercollegiate athletics. In Champions Way, New York Times investigative reporter Mike McIntire chronicles the rise of this growing scandal through the experience of the Florida State Seminoles, one of the most successful teams in NCAA history.

A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for his Times investigation of college sports, McIntire breaks new ground here, uncovering the workings of a system that enables athletes to violate academic standards and avoid criminal prosecution for actions ranging from shoplifting to drunk driving. At the heart of Champions Way is the untold story of a whistle-blower, Christie Suggs, and her wrenching struggle to hold a corrupt system to account. Together with shocking new details about prominent sports figures, including NFL quarterback Jameis Winston and former FSU coach Bobby Bowden, Champions Way shines a light on the ethical, moral, and legal compromises inherent in the making of a championship sports program.

Beyond the story of Florida State, McIntire takes readers on a journey through the history of college football, from its origins as a roughneck pastime coached by nineteenth-century professors to its current incarnation as a gold-plated behemoth that long ago outgrew its scholastic environs. Illuminated in rich and disturbing detail is the hidden financial ecosystem that nourishes hundred-million-dollar teams, from the hustlers who recruit players for schools and the athletic departments controlled by rich boosters to the universities whose academic mission and moral authority have been undermined. More than pointing out flaws, McIntire examines their causes and offers hope to those who would reform college sports.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393292619
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	09/05/2017
Pages:	272
Sales rank:	1,095,711
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Mike McIntire is a Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative reporter at the New York Times and teaches journalism at New York University. His reporting on corruption in college sports for the Times was a Pulitzer finalist. He lives in the New York City area.

Editorial Reviews

06/12/2017
New York Times investigative reporter McIntire painstakingly lays out a damning case that Florida State University and its sports program abet sexual assaults and academic fraud as the price for producing championship football teams. McIntire introduces relevant individuals (such as FSU president Eric Barron, who would later become president of Penn State) and story lines early in the book as he carefully lays a foundation for his argument. He effectively weaves together emails, police reports, court transcripts, and interviews with whistle-blowers and victims to show a pattern in how Seminole stakeholders handled scandals. The rape allegation against star quarterback Jameis Winston in 2013 is the most-well-known episode in the book (Winston was cleared the next year), but McIntire delves deeper into that and many other events to show negligence by campus and local police, grade manipulation and deceit by FSU administrators, and shadowy mess cleaning by attorneys and boosters in order to keep star players on the field. McIntire summarizes the history of college sports and the social and economic culture of football in American universities, particularly in the South, convincingly arguing that these transgressions are widespread. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

"Investigative reporter Mike McIntire has written a smart and fearless exposé of the madness and corruption undermining college football. From widespread academic fraud to the sexual predators to the hypocrisy of college presidents, it's all here in shocking detail and highly readable prose. A timely and important book."

Gilbert M. Gaul

"College athletic programs are prisms revealing the priorities of our schools, and our society. In Champions Way, Mike McIntire focuses his first-rate reporting skills on Florida State’s football team—the good, the bad, and the ugly—and tells us what he found in a fast-paced detective story. Whether you’re interested in college athletics, higher education, or just a damn good story, you’ll love Champions Way."

John U. Bacon

"In a damning, taut narrative, Champions Way shows how easy it is for college athletes to game the legal system for their own benefit. In merciless prose, Mike McIntire exposes how nuisances like sexual assaults and fake classes are no match for the big dollars associated with a winning football program."

William D. Cohan

"Relentlessly reported, Champions Way is a rich, powerful, and at times chilling page-turner. More than giving us an exposé, McIntire serves up a first-rate narrative that will forever change the way readers look at one of the top college football programs in America."

Jeff Benedict

"A deeply unsettling exposé."

Booklist (starred review)

"McIntire paints a grim picture of a culture of malfeasance, particularly in its treatment of women, at the heart of college athletics."

New York Times Book Review

09/01/2017
Investigative reporter McIntire analyzes the ever-accumulating scandals plaguing U.S. college athletics by taking a closer look at Florida State University's football team. He explores the murky journey of Hall of Fame coach Bobby Bowden's four-decade tenure, which ended in 2009. Florida State players were accused of dozens of offenses under Bowden, including academic cheating, gambling, and sexual assault. McIntire attempts to tie these previous transgressions to recent sexual assault scandals, noting the apathy by campus and local police to uncover any wrongdoings along with the team's boosters' blatant attempts at misdirecting and deflecting—all in the name of winning. The discussion of campus sexual assault by college athletes is notable and heartrending. McIntire concludes by listing ways of changing this broken system, in which despite student athletes being exploited, colleges and coaches continue to gain wealth. Source notes are included, and the author states that interviews with many coaches and players were not available to him, leaving the book with a tinge of polarization. VERDICT Fans of investigative journalism will admire McIntire's stances, while football fans might learn more about the inner-workings of the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association).—Keith Klang, Port Washington P.L., NY

Library Journal

★ 2017-06-14
Digging into the massively successful football program at Florida State University and finding the whole project nearly irredeemable."College football is deadly serious business, nowhere more so than Florida State," writes award-winning New York Times investigative reporter McIntire (Journalism/New York Univ.) in this examination of the Seminoles dominant yet often academically and legally troubled football team. "How else do allegations of rape, attempted murder, academic fraud, domestic abuse, and other scandals…go unnoticed, uninvestigated, and unpunished?" As the author clearly shows, coaches, administrators, staff, boosters, and even local police have often looked the other way when it comes to rationalization or excuses for reprehensible player behavior—not to mention the demonization of anyone who might reveal the abuses or get in the way of the coverups set in motion to protect star athletes. According to the author, these myriad, multiplying sins seem to be the hallmarks of FSU athletics, especially the football program. In his deep dive into this cesspool, FSU comes to represent the situation throughout much of big-time college football, which brings in hundreds of millions of dollars at top schools such as FSU, Alabama, Ohio State, and elsewhere. Indeed, readers will get the impression that FSU is not even an outlier, which might be the scariest element of all. McIntire shows that FSU is not the only school pursuing the "champions way," as his diversions to similar case studies in other athletic programs make clear. Naturally, the author ran into resistance nearly everywhere he turned, so he was unable to get the complete story of any of the many cases he investigated. While this may provide grist for detractors to try to pick apart his reportage, any honest reader will come away appalled—and rightfully so. A depressing but eye-opening and important book about the deteriorating heart of college athletics.

Kirkus Reviews