Sole Influence: Basketball, Corporate Greed, and the Corruption of America's Youth
This book examines a particularly seedy side of contemporary sports: the devious, distorted, duplicitous multibillion dollar search for the next Michael Jordan. That is, not for the next great basketball player but for the supreme corporate pitchman for the new millennium. According to Wetzel (managing editor, Basketball Times) and Yeager (a staff writer at Sports Illustrated), the principal players in this debased drama are Nike, Adidas, NCAA athletics, prep schools, summer basketball camps, and AAU teams and tournaments. Strikingly, all these influences are coming in contact with younger and younger kids, dipping down to the junior high school ages of 12 and 13. When these kids go to choose a college, a contributing factor is whether that institution's shoe endorsement contract matches their own. The story is very convincingly laid out and makes the ironic point that the phenomenon of Mr. Jordan so changed the landscape that there probably never will be another player with the same drive and relative innocence who so appeals to such a wide demographic. Highly recommended for all libraries.-John M. Maxymuk, Robeson Lib., Rutgers Univ., Camden, NJCopyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.