Personal Fouls: The Broken Promises and Shattered Dreams of Big Money College Basketball at North Carolina State

by Peter Golenbock

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• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0881845264
• ISBN13: 9780881845266
• Release Date: January 1989
• Publisher: Carroll & Graf Publishers
• Length: 311 Pages
• Weight: 1.50 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Very insightful

This book was written prior to Jimmy's bout with cancer. The media never mention his dark side. This books details Jiommy V and how he was before he got sick. A recommended read for all.

Entertaining, Controversial look at College Hoops

This readable narrative takes an unpleasant look at college hoops by focusing on the North Carolina State basketball team during the 1986-1987 season. The NC state players seem pampered and immature, with many troubling jealousies and conflicts. The coaches seem egotistical, focused only on victory, and uncaring about academics - but then, college coaches are paid to win games, not produce graduates. We fans may dislike the subject, but big-money NCAA college sports (basketball & football) will always be corrupt, because paying athletes in scholarships while everybody else cashes in is fraudulent, and an invitation to cheating. Many reviewers from North Carolina have attacked this book and its author for making fraudulent claims. Perhaps they're correct, or maybe they dislike the realities uncovered in this book. I don't really know, but suspect it's a little of both. Let the public read this entertaining book and decide for themselves.

A classic of investigative reporting

A measure of how splendid a job Golebock did in Personal Fouls is the intense hatred he stirred up among both NCSU fans and those who support similar programs at a hundred Div I institutions across the country.The lies and misrepresentations in other reviews on this board are evidence of the lengths these people will go to discredit a book that put them in a state of blind terror simply by telling the truth. Readers who want to know the whole story should get the Signet paperback edition, which has a 50 page afterword detailing how the Wolfpack Club and NCSU came down on Simon & Schuster, the publishers who originally contracted to do the book, with threats of multi-million dollar lawsuits (to be undertaken at NC taxpayer expense), and threats from the NC State Attorney General's office.None of it worked. When Carol & Graf published the hardback, the threats and bluster melted away like a snowball under an August sun -- Div I sports boosters are bullies, and bullies are almost always cowards -- Valvano was investigated and fired, Chancellor Poulton resigned, and new revelations (about point shaving, for instance), which were NOT covered in Golenbock's book, surfaced almost weekly. What came to light was one of the filthiest programs in the history Div I sports,and the dishonesty and cynicism of a sociopath who used his "charm" to inveigle subliterate basketball players into providing him with a multi-million dollar lifestyle.Read Personal Fouls. If you do it with an open mind, you'll never watch the "March Madness" TV spectacle with the same naivete again.To the NCSU supporters and Valvano apologists who try to shout you down, here's a simple answer. Valvano's biggest potential star was a player named Chris Washburn. When Washburn was tried in court for having stolen a stereo system, his SAT scores came out in the trial process. His combined SAT: 470. (For those who don't understand the SAT scoring system, this equals functional illiteracy -- inability to read the newspaper or follow the directions on a can of soup.) But Washburn was kept academically eligible during the entire period up to his indictment for burglary and larceny.And so were any number of players who operated at the same academic and intellectual level. If some NCSU booster tells you that the whole Valvano episode was "just about a couple of sneakers," or that NCSU was vindicated because Simon & Schuster caved under the threat of deeply dishonest legal intimidation, just ask a simple question: "What was Chris Washburn's SAT score?" Follow it with another: "Is NCSU a place where 'students' with 470 SATs can pass their classes?"If he says it is, your adversary will just have admitted that NCSU is a place where education is carried out at a 3rd-grade level. Not a proud boast even for a pretty low-level state institution. If he says it isn't, he's just admitted that Valvano and his willing accomplice B.R. Poulton were sleazy operators who remained unrepentant about the damage t

GREAT READ.....unless, of course, you are a ncsu fan/alum!

big time college basketball at its best! my cousin was recruited by mr. valvano and i can say without any doubt that this book is factual and its a pleasure to see a writer that was willing to tackle the billion dollar ncaa industry. ncsu found a way to keep up with their hated rival, unc, on the basketball court by recruiting players that could barely read and promising them that they would not have to attend classes, just play ball! on top of this, the so called lack of institutional control allowed the players to accumulate large sums of cash by selling their tickets and basketball shoes. after a complete investigation by the ncaa, ncsu was placed on a severe probation that their basketball program has yet to fully recover.the most ironic part of the story is that jim valvano is still viewed a saint by the wolfpack faithful as one can see in the other reviews of this book.Highly recommended!

Simply The Best!

I read "Personal Fouls" when it was first released. My brief assessment: along with John Feinstein's "A Season on The Brink" it is the best sports volume ever written! Not only is he the best sports author in America, but Peter Golenbock is also an extremely brave man: as you can read by the previous customer reviews, it is not easy or pleasant to tell the truth about a local hero who has become something of a martyr since his premature death from cancer. Is it purely coincidental that all of the people who trashed this book live in North Carolina?