Personal Fouls: The Broken Promises and Shattered Dreams of Big Money Basketball at Jim Valvano's North Carolina State [Hardcover]

Peter Golenbock (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Cancelled by Simon & Schuster earlier this year, Golenbock's book is due out from its new publisher in supposedly unaltered form, despite warnings from North Carolina State that the charges it makes are false and insufficiently substantiated. Among other allegations, Golenbock states that players' grades were fixed by Coach Valvano, positive drug tests were kept secret, and players received money, cars, etc., from a special fund. Golenbock is co-author of The Bronx Zoo (LJ 4/15/79) and other books. Watch for the fallout . -- MR
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 311 pages
• Publisher: Carroll & Graf Pub (November 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0881845264
• ISBN-13: 978-0881845266
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,781,449 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not just an "NC-thing", March 8, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Personal Fouls (Signet) (Paperback)

I'm compelled to write a review in direct response to a previous reviewer's comment that implies only people from the state of NC hold Personal Fouls in a poor light. First off, it stands to reason that the vast majority of negative responses would come from people closest to the issue. This, however, does not in any way detract from the majority of their concerns with the book. I read the original publication in college and was thoroughly unimpressed. It is laughable to mention this book in the same sentence as Season on the Brink...unless of course you are saying Personal Fouls can't hold a candle to Season on the Brink. The original text was riddled with misspellings, which certainly calls into question the book's overall validity. Are we to believe Golenbock's telling of the story when he and his editors cannot correctly spell the name of the men's basketball coach at Wake Forest University (ACC rival) during Valvano's tenure (Carl Tacy). How much research and editing does that take to get right? If you pick up Personal Fouls expecting a juicy scandal with informative looks into the seedy underworld of college basketball...prepare for ultimate disappointment.

18 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Much Ado About Nothing, May 21, 2001

By 

beowolf (Raleigh, NC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Personal Fouls: The Broken Promises and Shattered Dreams of Big Money Basketball at Jim Valvano's North Carolina State (Hardcover)

A fellow reviewer says "author Peter Golenbock gives us a side of college basketball that is rarely seen: corruption." Problem is, with "Personal Fouls" Golenbock gives book publishing something that is quite commonplace: fiction.

"Personal Fouls" tells of point-shaving and illegal recruitment at the NC State basketball program, but it is instructive to note that the original publisher of the manuscript, Pocket Books, rejected it for failing to meet company standards (and later published Valvano's account). "Personal Fouls" is filled with misspellings and factual errors. The book prompted multiple investigations of the NC State basketball program, including those by NC State, the UNC system and the NCAA, and nary a trace of the point-shaving, illegal recruitment, or any of the other big-time scandals alleged in the book. The bulk of the program's NCAA violations were that athletes sold complimentary tickets and shoes without the coaches' knowledge and that there was "a lack of institutional control" of the program. In fact, Jim Valvano, whose fame was arrogated to help sell this book, was not implicated by the NCAA in any of the violations, nor were any of the other coaches.

Furthermore, upon the conclusion of the NCAA investigation, the NCAA's chief investigator, David Didion, sent Jim Valvano a letter (dated October 26, 1989) in which he told Valvano that "If I had a son, I would feel comfortable with you as his coach and encourage him to learn from you" and that Valvano was "good for intercollegiate athletics, good for N.C. State and good for the NCAA."

Of course, the NCAA investigators actually talked to Jim Valvano, unlike Golenbock, who avoided Valvano in favor of running with anonymous interviews with people nursing grudges against him. Golenbock also avoided NC State Chancellor Bruce Poulton.

What Golenbock wrote may have shaken the world of college athletics, and certainly there was much that needed to be changed, but he did so by alleging high crimes and outrageous deeds at the personal expense of a man who did neither. Imagine, if you can, a world in which Chicken Little was taken seriously, and you'll have an understanding of what Peter Golenbock did. The sky was not falling, but the façades were erected to protect against it anyway. NC State basketball was not rife with corruption as Golenbock alleged, but it was gutted anyway. Arguably college athletics are better off now for the changes wrought after and in some part owing to the publication of "Personal Fouls." But the cost of those changes were borne unfairly by Valvano, NC State University, and on a higher plane, the truth.

Let's be careful here before saying that the changes made are so good they justify the scapegoating of Valvano and NC State. Because if we are suddenly to suggest that the end justifies the means, then we are to adopt the same standard Golenbock invents for NC State basketball under Valvano and then decries.

11 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Not worth reading!, May 21, 2001

By 

Walter Jones (Cary, NC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Personal Fouls: The Broken Promises and Shattered Dreams of Big Money Basketball at Jim Valvano's North Carolina State (Hardcover)

Though the book points out problems that have happened in big-time NCAA basketball, the example university, NC State University, was never found to be corrupt on the charges that this book focuses on. It is truly a tragedy that a book like this was allowed to be printed and cause the damage it did to the university athletics program at NC State. Authors should be held responsible for the content they state as fact...or else call it fiction...which this book truly is.