Paper Champions: The BCS on Trial [Paperback]

David T. Gaines (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 8, 2006

College football must establish playoffs where a true national champion emerges so that every school that puts a team on the gridiron has an opportunity to become national champion.

Anyone who has seen his favorite college football team kept out of the big bowl, dropped from the top twenty-five bowl rankings, or passed-over for a post season bowl bid is a natural friend of the court in David Gaines’ fantasy lawsuit to quell the BSC and right the wrongs of major college football.

In Paper Champions, Gaines creates the character, Coll Flemming, a Gaines alter-ego, who is a journalist and lawyer who despises journalists and lawyers. Coll argues his case before a federal judge in the Western District of Texas, Austin Division, "Your Honor," he proclaims, "the most obvious problem of the many obvious problems with the Bowl Championship Series is there is no series. There’s one game. One game! I can imagine no more clear definition of a monopoly than a system which declares the winner of one game, national champion over one hundred and seventeen football teams."

Paper Champions hits hard at the BCS for controlling who qualifies for that one so-called national championship game for Division 1-A football—even though the NCAA has never crowned a national champion in D-1 A football.

Product Details

• Paperback: 232 pages
• Publisher: Word Association (May 8, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1595711104
• ISBN-13: 978-1595711106
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,767,330 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Sorry excuse for a book!, December 22, 2008

By 

Carter D. Benton "Football Junkie" (Shreveport, LA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Paper Champions: The BCS on Trial (Paperback)

Do NOT waste your times....Mr. Gaines is a quack of a former judge who has a waste of time on his hands with this book! He writes it as if America loves reading law reviews...and trial summaries. Come on....useless and poorly written....there are so many ways to more forcefully argue against the BCS....this is a boring read...even for the most educated of fans! Mr. Gaines...stay out of the literary realm....PLEASE!!!!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Just a transcript, September 19, 2007

By 

Bookworm - See all my reviews

This review is from: Paper Champions: The BCS on Trial (Paperback)

This book is nothing more than a transcript of trail in Federal court. A trial lawyer may love it. It doesn't show a lot of work on behalf of the author.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars This is a good book to read when you're..., February 14, 2007

By 

Ken2001 (Memphis, TN) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Paper Champions: The BCS on Trial (Paperback)

...in the "john", in a restaurant or coffee shop while waiting on an order, riding the bus to work, or in any other situation where it's preferable to read a book in small portions. This is because unlike most books, which are divided into chapters, the formatting for this book was derived from testimony in a fictional trial where many witnesses testify before a Federal court in a civil suit brought about by the protagonist, who serves as his own lawyer, against the entity that makes up the Bowl Championship Series (BCS). The book starts out with a brief introduction about the protagonist and why he decided to bring his lawsuit against the BCS, and then the protagonist begins examining the various witnesses who are involved in Major College Football, including coaches, sports writers, players and others. Because the testimonies are mostly brief, a person can read a few pages and ingest a good point in the book. Personally, I like this format better than the typical chapter form in which you have to read long passages before getting to key points in the story. For folks not accustomed to reading long novels (and are football fans), this is a great book for them.

As for the book itself, I thought it raised some good points about why there should be a playoff in Major College (NCAA Division I) football. However, the "trial" only consisted of the protagonist examining witnesses without cross-examination by the defense (lawyers for the BCS). I believe the book could have been better if both sides of the argument could've been heard so that the reader could objectively make up his mind on the issue.

My only other criticism about the book was its many grammatical and spelling errors. For a journalist who also teaches English at a college in Texas, he could've done a better job at proofreading the final copy for his book. Actually, he didn't proofread the copy at all. According to the epilogue in the book, his son did! As someone who works in the printing business, that just doesn't make any sense. Despite this lack of professionalism, I still enjoyed the book and would recommend it to others.