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Title details for The Last Temptation of Rick Pitino by Michael Sokolove - Available

The Last Temptation of Rick Pitino

A Story of Corruption, Scandal, and the Big Business of College Basketball

by Michael Sokolove
Joshua Kane
Audiobook
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From acclaimed New York Times Magazine author Michael Sokolove, the astonishing inside story of the epic corruption scandal that has rocked the NCAA and exposed the rot and hypocrisy at the heart of big-time college sports.
At a lavish annual event in late August 2017, the University of Louisville athletic director, who made more than $5 million in compensation in 2016, announced an extension of his school's sponsorship deal with Adidas: $160 million for another 10 years. The invitees were city's gentry - horse breeders, bourbon distillers, partners at big law firms, the state's governor, Matt Bevin, and its most powerful politician, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. One month later, the FBI revealed that it had reached the endgame of a sprawling investigation of large-scale corruption involving Adidas, Louisville and a host of other colleges, in which large payments were laundered from Adidas through a network of coaches and fixers to athletes and their families to induce them to go to Adidas-branded college programs. In short order, Hall of Fame basketball coach Rick Pitino (salary: $8 million) and athletic director Tom Jurich were fired, and fear and trembling swept through the world of bigtime college athletics. Because there is another shoe, as it were, and it will fall.
In THE LAST TEMPTATION OF RICK PITINO, Michael Sokolove lifts the rug on the Louisville scandal and places it in the context of the much wider problem, the farce of amateurism in bigtime college sports. In a world in which even assistant coaches can make high-six and seven-figure salaries, as long as they keep the "elite" athletes coming in, shoe deals can reach into the nine figures, and everyone is getting rich but the players, can it be surprising that unscrupulous parties would pay athletes, creating in effect a black market in young men, a veritable underground railroad of talent?
But a few bad apples are one thing. In THE LAST TEMPTATION OF RICK PITINO, Michael Sokolove shows an elaborate, systematic machine, involving hundreds of thousands of dollars in illicit payments and connecting at least one of the largest apparel companies in the world with schools across the country. The Louisville-Adidas scandal has revealed a web of conspiracy whose scope has shaken big-time college sports to its core, delivering a devastating blow to the fantasy of amateurism, of "scholar athletes." A Shakespearean drama of greed and desperation involving some of the biggest characters in the arena of sports, THE LAST TEMPTATION OF RICK PITINO will be the definitive chronicle of this scandal and its broader echoes.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    September 25, 2018

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9780525640141
      • File size: 221826 KB
      • Duration: 07:42:08

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Joshua Kane narrates in a deep and steady tone without any imitations of the various athletes, coaches, shoe-company executives, and others who feature in this audiobook. While former basketball coach Rick Pitino and the entire University of Louisville program fall under scrutiny, this work mostly examines the bigger problems surrounding college basketball's current state of affairs. Kane stays consistent as the listener hears about the dark side of college athletics. His narration is just dramatic enough to express the gravity of what is going on, but not enough to camp it up. M.B. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      August 27, 2018
      Using the tarnished legacy of former University of Louisville basketball coach Rick Pitino as an anchor, Sokolove (Drama High) provides a lucid account of large-scale corruption in college basketball. In 2017, Louisville’s program was one of seven initially named by the FBI in an investigation of money laundering, bribery, and wire fraud involving shoe and apparel manufacturer Adidas. Since then, at least a dozen additional schools have been named in the investigation, which focuses on illegal payments made through a network of coaches and fixers to athletes and their families as encouragement to attend colleges with Adidas-branded sports programs. In the aftermath, Louisville athletic director Tom Jurich and Pitino were fired, although Pitino claims he is innocent of any wrongdoing and told Sokolove, “I’ve been assassinated.” Sokolove also digs into an unscrupulous subculture in which recruiters act as so-called “advisors” to players and their families in return for the potential of a big payoff. Such scenarios have destroyed young careers, Sokolove writes, including that of Brian Bowen Jr., a recruit to Louisville who was caught in the scandal’s crosshairs; after it was discovered that his family accepted payments for him to enroll at Louisville, he was kicked out of the program. Sokolove provides a richly detailed, enlightening account of college sports.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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