Customer Reviews

The 25 Greatest Sports Conspiracy Theories of All-Time: Ranking Sports' Most Notorious Fixes, Cover-Ups, and Scandals

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Elliott Kalb has done a lot of sports writing and a couple of videos that I can remember off-the-bat, too. He knows his stats, and when the sports stories get a good conspiracy thing going, you've got a lot of guys hooked.

This is great "toilet reading;" The kind of not-necessarily important reading one would need to know, but for the record, stuff I've sort of thought about and having seen so much of these pondered out loud for time immemorium, really cool.
Kalb covers everything from Sonny Liston through Nascar and all of it is awesome stuff worth not only reading but talking about.

The pluses: The facts, the side dope and a good dollup of color to history. Minuese: hate the lousy page layout (no chapter heads and text is too big, filling the page like a grandpa's large-print edition. Conclusions to a conspiracy get ranked, rated and opinionated by the author with a small Lee Harvey Oswald face for ranking of "maybe." Not a damned picture anywhere except little icons of a presidential assassin; a cute gimmick that wears thin without a photo, doodle or something for low attention span readers like me. Don't get me wrong: you'll love the read, but the publisher should've done a much better job and probably could've charged much more and I'da paid it.

[...]

This is a must-read for sports fans, who can learn more about the different conspiracy theories from the world of sports. Kalb wrote the book in a style that is filled with warmth and wit. I especially enjoyed how each chapter ends with one-to-five face shots of Oswald, to give a sense of how much stock the author believes in each conspiracy theory. There are several terrific chapters in here, including one on the 1985 NBA Draft and one on Super Bowl III. I highly recommend it

If you like conspiracy theories and you like American professional sports, this book is something you'll enjoy. Kalb writes well, and he gets his facts straight. Most of the stories are the ones you'd expect to read (1919 Black Sox scandal, Patrick Ewing's NBA draft, the Jets first Super Bowl, 1972 Olympic basketball final). But there are a few stories that surprised me. Kalb ends each story with his own 5-Oswald rating system, indicating the likelihood that a conspiracy really happened.

I got this book for Christmas from my mom as a surprise gift. She knows I love sports and sports trivia, but I probably could've done without her spending $20 on this book.

Maybe it's just me, but it seems like the writers sat down and named the most common conspiracies out there, and then proceeded to write a 1,500-2,000 word summary of each of them, ending each chapter (or subject) with their opinion on whether or not the conspiracy is possible.

Every chapter/subject was a summary of things most sports fans already know. The only chapter I found enlightening was the one on Dennis Rodman and if there's a group of people keeping him out of the Basketball Hall of Fame.

It reads easily and can be done in an afternoon, but, unless you've never heard of a single sports conspiracy, there isn't really anything new here. You can find most of this content for free online.

I guess you could argue that it is a nice compact version of the greatest sports conspiracies ever, but why would you need that...unless you were planning on writing a book about the 25 greatest sports conspiracies ever just to make a few bucks around the holiday season.

The New England SPYGATE scandal was the biggest and longest sports scandal in history... by far. They cheated their way into winning 3 Super Bowls, during a 7 year cheating scandal. How is this not #1 on your list? Apparently, this book is just as big of a fraud as their "dynasty" was. Laughable!