2025-02-24
Kaufman, the assistant vice president of clinical affairs for the Office of Health Science at Michigan State University,recaps his earliest days navigating the organized chaos that is college football.
In 2010, the author writes, public awareness about the horrific impact of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) injuries in football players and other athletes was reaching new heights: “a true public panic was brewing, one that threatened to eventually turn the sport of football into something unrecognizable—or maybe even kill it all together.” That same year, Kaufman became the newest member of the Michigan State football team’s medical staff as a neurologist. His initial charge was simple: Try not to get run over by players during games, and help the coaching staff figure out a way to make football safer. The doctor’s consistently engrossing memoir doesn’t skirt the CTE issue, by any means, but it shines brightest when it tackles the emotional drama of collegiate football itself. In 2014, after years of disappointment, MSU made it back to “the Granddaddy of them all”: the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California, under the leadership of head coach Mark Dantonio. Overall, Kaufman’s careful chronicle may be among the best sports-related books that readers will find this year. His account makes the drama of each game palpable, and starkly shows how high the physical stakes are—exemplified early on by the life-threatening broken neck that MSU’s star fullback Josh Rouse sustained during the author’s first season on the job. “Even when sitting in the upper deck, I understood violence was part of it all. I wasn’t a total idiot,” the always self-effacing author writes. “I just did not understand how bad the violence could be until I came down for that closer look.” His personal journey gives the memoir an emotional depth that will appeal to a wide readership. Many who’ve played for the Spartans are no doubt glad that Kaufman took this journey, and so will readers who’ve always wondered what it’s really like down on the field with the big game on the line.
A highly engrossing account, and not just for sports fans.
