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.
