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Onward to Victory
by Murray Sperber
Murray Sperber can be reached at
sperber@indiana.edu.
Onward to Victory--
The Crises That Shaped College Sports
"Murray Sperber is the conscience of American sports. In comparison,
most of the superstar journalists who critique college sports sound timid,
compromised, or plain uninformed."
"Part history, part cultural study, part indictment, Sperber's
Onward to Victory will inform, entertain, and provoke anyone seriously
interested in understanding college sports.
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It is the best book ever written, not just on the disparity between
college sports' public image and its darker reality, but also on the specific
ways in which that disparity was created. "
-- Michael Oriard, Distinguished Professor of Literature and Culture,
Oregon State University, author of Reading Football
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"Murray Sperber now stands alone in his ability to unravel and
describe the forces that have given us the dismaying spectacle of big-time
college sports. Surveying the damage, the embarrassment and the hypocrisy
that now poison American universities, Sperber documents the erosion of
the once-noble ideal of the 'scholar-athlete.' This is an important book
that should worry anyone concerned with what is really wrong about American
higher education."
--William M Chace, President, Emory University
"I love Murray Sperber. He looks a big-time college,
sports,
sees the myth-making, the fabrication, the wild-eyed emotion that
is churned
out, and he tells us why these things happen. Don't mess
with Sperber --
his research is imposing, his insights dead on, his logic impeccable.
He is nothing less than the conscience for a vast entertainment industry
that seems to have been born without one."
--Rick Telander, writer for Chicago Sun-Times and ESPN
Magazine
"Murray Sperber, in Onward to Victory, does a
better job than
any writer of showing how deeply big-time college sport is embedded in
American life and culture. Sperber draws on a variety of sources ranging
from film to football programs to illuminate how heroes are created. Sperber's
most disturbing thesis is that the current system has become so entrenched
that it is most likely beyond reform. This book presents fascinating new
material and original insights regarding collegiate sport that are bound
to hold the attention of sports fans and scholars alike.
--Allen L. Sack, coauthor, College Athletes for Hire: The Evolution
and Legacy of the NCAA's Amateur Myth
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Click on the book
to read about
Beer and Circus
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Click
on the photo
to go
back to the
Home Page
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Click
on the book
to read about
Shake Down the Thunder
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Click
on the book
to read about
College Sports, Inc.
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The cover photograph of Knute Rockne is courtesy of
The University of Notre Dame Archives, and the cover design is by Raquel
Jaramillo.
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This page updated July 14, 2004.
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