Off the Rim: Basketball and Other Religions in a Carolina Childhood

Off The Rim is, in my opinion, better than last years's "To Hate Like This Is To Love Forever." Both the author and I grew up in small towns in North Carolina in the fifties, and I could see my town and my friends on every page.

I recommend this book to anyone who grew up playing basketball in the 1950s and 1960s. This is a fascinating story of the rural south and the fervent culture that developed around college basketball.

Is there anything stranger than the psychology of the sports fan? Are there human beings other than religious martyrs that endure more suffering for such ephemeral, fleeting rewards? Before we had Nick Hornsby's Fever Pitch; now, in Fred Hobson's immensely entertaining new memoir, we have an American version of the lifelong sports fan. Even Hobson's title, Off the Rim, suggests the pain of it all - the near-miss that in the end may count more than the perfect shot, the swish. This is truly a guy's book--a book by and about a guy. Indeed, allow me to confess that, in this age of gender equality, I for one find it difficult to imagine a female version of the inveterate, die-hard fan that Hobson so painstakingly paints, maybe because I think too highly of women. Nonetheless, this is also a tale for women readers--a cautionary tale in which they can gain a glimpse into the interior life of the men in their lives, those fans whose love of sports is part of an elaborate strategy to protect their inner boy. It also seems not to matter that Hobson has been a lifelong fan of a team, the University of North Carolina Tarheels, with an incredible winning record. Maybe that's why Cubs fans seem so patient--do they already know the evanescent nature of the pleasure of victory, compared to the deep, lingering angst (the joy?) of losing? Hobson's book is a great read, even in the middle of summer and hence as far from the winter season of college basketball as one can get, for as Hobson informs us, for the true fan, there is no off-season, no time without dread. Basketball, like life, is all about getting ready as a youngster . . . and then enjoying a lifetime of reminiscing. Put a stethoscope to Hobson's heart, and what would one expect to hear if not the echoing bounce of a basketball in a musty summer gym?