Rolls of Hundred Dollar Bills... Custom Jewelry... Exquisite Gifts... Designer Clothes...
Where did all that money come from?
The truth behind the scandal that rocked Ann Arbor!
"What a great book. Reads like a novel. Opened my eyes into who Ed Martin really was, went from hating him to loving him. Glad Carl took the time to explain what really happened. Would like to know what Carl thinks of the Fab Five ever getting back together again."
Paul Hecht - Customer Review
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And where did it go?
How and why did an auto-plant electrician dole out a fortune to teenage kids and their families?
If you were Eddie L. Martin.. if you got thrills from excellence in basketball… if you loved hanging with some of the game’s greatest young stars—you found a way.
They called you Big Ed, Uncle Eddie, the man with the fifty-dollar handshake… the Super Booster.
You were the stylish money-man to budding superstar athletes. And more than that. You were there with a handout and a hand up for the kids from broken families who had no heat in the house, no food in the fridge.
In Carl Martin’s take-no-prisoners examination of big-time college basketball and the money machine it has become, he peels back the veneer. Now for the first time the soft underbelly of big-time college hoops is probed by someone who has actually been there, done that. Martin tells the full and true story of what drove his father’s obsession to open his heart and his wallet to those kids.
What really happened before and after the roll-over accident that triggered an FBI investigation of the University of Michigan’s Fab Five and triggered a nationwide scandal? That question and many other mysteries are resolved in these compelling pages.
THE BOOSTER goes well beyond the Fab Five fallout to lay bare the exploitation of black athletes by forces far bigger and more sinister than an over-generous booster. Author Martin exposes the double standard that bars kids from even a meager share of the billions they generate for elite college athletic programs, the NCAA, and sports apparel companies.
It is a revealing and riveting story on many levels, powerfully told.
A portion of the book's proceeds will be donated to the Tarence Wheeler Foundation. Learn More
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WHAT THEY’RE SAYING ABOUT
THE BOOSTER
"Ed had one of the purest hearts of anyone you will ever want to meet. He was a genuinely good guy. You know, people who got an angle, they always trying to get something out of you. That wasn’t Ed at all."
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Jimmy King
"The Booster examines more details than I expected about the relationship between players and their benefactors. It is insightful to know Ed’s truth."
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Gus Johnson, FOX Sports Play-By-Play Announcer
"It was like the Chariots of Fire movie. Everybody in the neighborhood is at my house, all my boys. We’re standing around talking when all of sudden that big green Benz pulls up. It was amazing! Here I was in high school, about to roll off to Detroit like I was some big-time NBA guy or whatever. Ed didn’t just show up like he said he would. He showed up in style! Everybody was pumped. My boys were jumping up and down like, ‘We can’t believe this!’"
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Doyle Calahan, Southwestern Prospector 1987
"We weren’t like those bitches who took Ed’s money and then told on him. He gave us plenty, but with Ed you always knew he didn’t want anything in return. He did it for everybody equally because that’s how much he cared about us having what we needed. If Ed could do it for you, he did. That’s how he was."
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Johnny Johnson, Southwestern Prospectors, 1984
"What a great book. Reads like a novel. Opened my eyes into who Ed Martin really was, went from hating him to loving him. Glad Carl took the time to explain what really happened. Would like to know what Carl thinks of the Fab Five ever getting back together again."
Paul Hecht - Customer Review