Customer Reviews

Counterfeit Amateurs: An Athlete's Journey Through the Sixties to the Age of Academic Capitalism

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This book is poignant, shocking, and true.

I've read over a dozen books on the problems of college athletes and college athletics and all the hypocrisy and failed attempts to solve these problems.

What makes this book so fascinating is that it's not a dry study or philosophical discussion. This book is first-hand information. The author actually was a superlative football player at Notre Dame, who turned down an offer from the pros, and immediately entered graduate school and obtained his Ph.D.

Dr. Sack has devoted his professional life to the pursuit of the purity of amateur athleticism in college sports. You won't believe the obstacles he has encountered -- and overcome -- in becoming a true expert on the subject.

If you could own only one book about the power and politics of college athletics and how they have literally taken control over the NCAA, college presidents, athletic directors, coaches, boosters, players, and even the court system, GET THIS BOOK. You will see an old-boys' network that got started over a half century ago, and has created and nurtured a monster that is out of control -- and out of view of almost every fan in the country.

What's in this book, you will never see on ESPN or the mainstream media (sports or otherwise), who genuflect at the cash cow of college sports and refuse to upset the gravy train. If you think that entire major college sport dynasties can't come crashing down overnight -- and the wrecking crew may already be in Washington, D.C. -- GET THIS BOOK.

Bluntly, there is an incredible amount of hype and glitter to college sports. From outward appearances, it seems so strong, so vibrant, so pervasive. Closer inspection shows it's rotting from within and its influence is ruining the lives of college athletes. Dr. Sack doesn't just give you the problems, he gives you the solution, and that clarion call may be the only salvation for college athletics.

For those interested in big time college football and basketball played by students with actual academic standards versus semi-professional sports programs conducted on the fields of college campuses, this book is an easy yet interesting and important read.

Contrary to the NCAA's claim that all its collegiate members engage in amateur sports, Dr. Sack details how Division I college football and basketball programs are not academic-related, amateur sports. As a former big time college football player drafted by the Los Angeles Rams and, subsequently, as a university professor for over 35 years, he presents information from his extensive experience as a scholar and while working for the NCAA and on behalf of college players who submitted complaints against it. His work supports the important role of amateur and student-athletics in its true sense: athletic competition by students as part of the larger educational experience, not sports participation by young men aged 18 and over for the production of revenue rather than the emphasis being on their academic achievement foremost of which is earning a college degree.

Academic institutions, particularly institutions of higher learning, have a responsibility to uphold the public trust by striving for honesty and integrity in their pursuit of truth and scholarship. However, the current conduct of Division I football and basketball programs operate as a sham in portraying players in these sports as mere amateurs when levels academic efforts and graduation rates are so poor. In this evocative book, all that Allen Sack is asking for in his evocative book is honesty. Universities are purportedly one of our society's greatest bastions protecting against such hypocrisy.

Erosion of public trust has resulted from recent revelations of corporate greed and the too numerous illegal allegations of high level government officials over the past few years. Dr. Sack's work illuminates the similar type of actions that goes on in big time football and basketball programs today. Hopefully, this book will be one catalyst to help bring integrity to the way the NCAA operates and drives Division I football and basketball programs to be conducted in an honest way that encourages scholastic achievement as much as winning games and generating revenue.

Allen Sack's evolution from conventional scholar-athlete to college sports reformer, spanning a period of unprecedented social change on and off the playing fields of America makes for fascinating reading. His experiences as a varsity football player in the mid-1960's at the most prestigious program in college football - Notre Dame, his awakening as a radical thinker and many years of scholarship in sociology and the sports industry make him uniquely qualified to comment on the state of college athletics.

A consistent advocate of athletes rights, dating back most notably to his days leading the Center for Athletes Rights and Education, Dr. Sack takes on the NCAA and the money making machine that college athletics has become, addressing the insatiable appetite for more, despite the many abuses of the system.

While even the most traditional consumer of sports may not agree with the notion of organizing college athletes so they might gain a measure of the earnings generated by their performance and the marketing of their images, but after reading Counterfeit Amateurs, that fan will be given pause to reconsider long-held notions about the purity of our games.

Craig Mortali (North Haven, CT)

Allen Sack's book, Counterfeit Amateurs, is an insightful, first-hand account of the problems in intercollegiate sport. Sack masterfully intertwines his experiences as an athlete at Notre Dame with the problems facing collegiate sport today. He is able to go from the past to the present seemlessly and presents evidence that the the world of intercollegiate sport has become big business with a focus on commercialization and making money and away from the athletes who are producing the revenue. Thus, Sack makes a critical argument for athlete's rights.

This book is an incredibly important contribution to the field. I require it of my graduate course in Sport and Higher Education and the students loved it. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is a fan or teaches about collegiate sport.

There are three books in the history of collegiate sports reform that are must reads: Beer and Circus: How Big Time College Sports Has Crippled Undergraduate Education by Murray Sperber, College Athletes for Hire: The Evolution and Legacy of the NCAA Amateur Myth by Allen Sack and Ellen Staurowsky, and Confessions of a Spoilsport: My Life and Hard Times Fighting Sports Corruption at an Old Eastern University by William Dowling. Let's add a fourth book: Counterfeit Amateurs: An Athlete's Journey Through the Sixties to the Age of Academic Capitalism. In fact, I would say that if you are going to read one book in the field of collegiate sports reform in the year 2009 then it should be Sack's volume. It captures the history of the sports reform movement and discusses the major issues that continue to plague intercollegiate sports.

However, what makes this book so important and unique is its author: Allen Sack. As a former football player at Notre Dame, a college faculty member, a father of college athletes, a leader of the sports reform minded Drake Group, and an organizer for athletes rights, Sack has walked the walk and can speak to the issues from multiple perspectives. Throughout the narrative, Sack shows great concern for the athletes who play the games but are not being educated or who receive phony degrees from complicit faculty in easy majors that require little effort. Indeed, college athletes, especially African-Americans, in the modern era are being exploited like never before. The rampant commercialism of intercollegiate sports, the lax oversite organization (the NCAA) that runs the entire perversion like a wealthy corporation interested in profits rather than a sports governing body interested in athlete welfare, and colleges and universities who have shamelessly sold their souls to boosters and corporate America, share equally in this ongoing tragedy.

This is a very passionate book written by an author who has advocated reform for the past 30 years. It should be read by anyone who cares about young athletes and their desire to become educated like any other student. The one universal fear expressed by many however is that it is simply too late to reform something that is so corrupt and yet so firmly implanted in the American culture.

This is a great journey into the "good ol' days" of college football but furthermore a mandatory read for any college sport enthusiast who wants to better understand how big time college sports have transformed into what they are today and what is to be expected in the future stemming from incomparable first hand experiences starting in the 60's right through today. I highly recommend this book!

Allen Sack's first hand account of the dilemma facing big-time college athletes is insightful. The fact that our country's best athletes have to choose between their "contractual obligation" (in the form of a "scholarship") verses that of their academic well-being is disheartening. Sack's book is a must read for sports enthusiasts! Counterfeit Amateurs lends itself well to discussions pertaining to the ethical, legal and sociological implications of commercial business entities continued exploitation of thousands of young, talented men. Seemingly, a case of Capitalism at its finest? Alas, a shame for our institutions of higher education.

We think Dr. Larry Forness is correct in calling Dr. Allen Sack's book, Counterfeit Amateurs, "the best book ever written on money, power and politics of college sports.
Sack takes us from his personal experiences as a scholarship defensive end at Notre Dame in the 60s, a period he could easily have called the plantation era of college sports, right up to what he calls, in these first years of the 21st century, "academic capitalism."
We've come, in short, from the plantation system to the factory system, under which big-time athletes are, in effect, factory workers, employees in a multi-billion dollar sports-entertainment-university complex, all under the NCAA dictate of "amateurism," which Sack calls "a fraudulent myth." Sack maintains that true amateurism now exists only in NCAA Division III and the Ivy League, where there are, voila, No Scholarships.
The current one-year, renewable scholarship system prevailing country-wide renders big-time players underpaid employees, indentured to coaches, and having next to no share in the revenues generated by the games they play.
Sack's analysis, though he doesn't specifically lay it out in class-analysis terms, amounts to a description of good old class exploitation:
a proletariat(players),exploited by management(coaches) and ownership
(universities, TV networks, sporting goods and apparel manufacturers, etc.)
And Dr. Sack, unlike many social science writers, serves all of this up in a prose that is lively and clear, occasionally sarcastic, but never unintelligible, jargon-ridden, or boring. Counterfeit Amateurs builds a convincing case, and Allen Sack delivers the goods.
Cecilia and Robert Berner

This book was magnificent. Very easy reading. I gained a perspective on college sports that I didn't have previously. If you are interested in gaining a perspective on amateur sports that is heartfelt, from an author who has lived the story, then this book is for you. It was difficult to put down.

National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) rules are clear: College athletes are amateurs and should not be part of these new business enterprises." However, NCAA rules do not amateurs make, no matter how clearly NCAA rules say that college athletes are amateurs--at least not in the NCAA's big-time programs, as well as in many of their lesser programs. To claim otherwise is disingenuous at best. Allen Sack tells why this is so and how this came to be in his superb book, Counterfeit Amateurs.

Sack describes how the NCAA's bedrock amateurism principles of many years ago--which required colleges and their business partners to treat athletes like other students, and not as commodities--were long ago undermined by unrestrained commercialism and related academic corruption.

Apparently, the NCAA's tax-free moneymaking and blatant hypocrisy goes virtually unchallenged--so as to let sleeping dogs lie and not have school and government officials risk losing contributions or getting turned out of office by boosters or sports fans who are addicted to being entertained by college teams that play at a professional level by counterfeit amateurs, a.k.a. student-athletes. These counterfeit amateurs are passed off as legitimate students so as to create the illusion that NCAA operations fit the academic mission of their schools--generating $billions of tax-exempt revenues for the NCAA and its member schools.

All the while, America's colleges and universities continue on their march of folly: defiling their academic integrity and warping their academic mission, denying academically qualified citizens access to a college education because of preferential admission of recruited athletes, fleecing American taxpayers who help pay for $multimillion coaches salaries, jocks-only academic eligibility centers, stadiums, and arenas, as well as short changing our nation that deserves a world-class system of higher education that values academics well above athletics

This is a revealing book. The reader might very well be led to ask: How can the presiding officials at the NCAA and its member colleges and universities continue to get away with their obvious amateur lie and obvious tax scam involving the exploitation of so-called student athletes in NCAA sponsored big-time football and men's basketball programs?

Here is a must read for all members of Congress and the Department of Justice that are concerned with tax policy, but most of all for taxpayers who must bear the costs.