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3.0étoiles sur 5
Good stories, poor organization, Déc 8 2003
John Feinstein took the time to get to know the coaches, players, and competition style of the Patriot League, and makes a valiant effort to present the PL experience. Having read the book, I feel like I know the "flavor" of the Patriot League, perhaps as well as I know the flavor of my own ACC (Maryland graduate and diehard basketball fan, class of 1987). Feinstein really communicates the feel of being in the PL: the love of the game, but all in balance with academics and the rest of life. These schools, these players, this league, are all of very high quality of character, and glorifying high character quality is certainly a worthwhile endeavor.However, for anything beyond the general feel and character of the league, Feinstein's occasionally brilliant, frequently overly-detailed writing gets lost in the horrible disorganization of the book. Feinstein says he follows a season in the PL, and that's certainly true. The trouble is that the league has seven schools, seven coaches (and multiple former coaches), seven athletic directors, seven school presidents, seventy-or-so players, and each school plays 20-odd games per season. Most of those mean little or nothing to the average reader who would pick up this book. While Feinstein, having lived the season, watched the games, and developed relationships with the people, can keep them all straight, I don't know Fran Fraschilla from Ralph Willard, and I don't remember which one coaches where, and I couldn't tell the difference between Lafayette and Lehigh. Feinstein does absolutely nothing to make these clear to the reader. It seems to me that the obvious organization for telling the much needed story of the Patriot League would have been to write about each team, individually, over the course of their season. Then, after that, use the conference tournament as a means for tying the seven stories together. Instead, Feinstein wrote it as he lived it -- a game at Colgate means telling about them, then off to Holy Cross, over to Bucknell, down to Navy, back to Colgate -- oh they're playing Bucknell, gotta tell more about them... Meanwhile, readers are going crazy trying to figure out which team is which, which coach goes with which school, which player goes with which coach, etc. The result of the disorganization is utter confusion. It is telling that what I remember best from the book is a quote from Duke's Coach K (who was a former Army coach, but the quote is from his time at Duke). He spoke glowingly to his players about the high quality of the character of the players on the Navy team, and then emphasized the need to BEAT them, because they're NAVY and he was ARMY. Which is a great story, but why do I remember that better than any of the actual Patriot League stories? Because I was so lost in the whos, wheres, and whichs of Feinstein's disorganization. There are excellent anecdotes, funny stories, and character-telling quotes and actions described throughout the book, and for that, it's worth reading. But, I recommend one of two ways for reading: Either 1) read lightly, look for the good stories and ignore the flood of names, dates, and details; or 2) take notes as you read, and make a list of a) school, b) coach, c) other school administrators or former coaches, and d) players, just so you have a handy reference sheet to keep them all straight when Feinstein refers back to someone he wrote about 150 pages ago.
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