The Last Amateurs: Playing for Glory and Honor in Division I College Basketball

The Patriot League has billed itself as "the Poor Man's Ivy League" with an accent on academics and no athletic scholarships. Anyone reading this book will be reminded of Feinstein's earlier work, "A Civil War" which chronicled an entire football season for both Army and Navy, finalizing in the Army-Navy game. From the opening moments of this book, where Patriot League champ, Lafayette, is preparing to meet nationally ranked Temple in the opening round of the NCAA tournament, we know we are about to begin a special journey.In this book we meet different heroes. We meet Don DeVoe, who after a successful career coaching winning teams at Tennesssee and Florida, now runs a successful program at Navy where he turns in 20-victory seasons with players who would be walk ons at these other schools; we meet Ralph Willard, a former Rick Pitino apprentice who, after a run at bigger schools like Western Kentucky and Pittsburgh, returned to his alma mater, Holy Cross, and now coachs for the fun of it; and, finally, we meet Adrian Foyle, a player recruited on the national level, who chooses Colgate because of the ACADEMICS."The Last Amateurs" is a refreshing look at collegiate athletics the way they were meant to be. A way, however that they will unfortunately, never be again.

For anyone who has become fed up with the hyperbole and hypocrisy of college athletics these days, this book will be a welcome antidote. While too many Division I schools have translated Juvenal's famous motto of "mens sana in corpore sano" as "sound mind, sound body, take your pick!", it is refreshing to read of schools and their students who have not treated the term "student/athlete" as an oxymoron. Feinstein shows the reader that it is possible to care deeply about athletics and the lessons learned from vigorous and fair competition without losing sight of the true purpose of a college education. His three dimensional profiles of the students and their coaches might well rekindle the old-fashioned idea that athletics can and should help build character rather than the bank accounts of the schools. I can attest to the veracity of the picture that he paints of the values of the Patriot League schools since I am a Holy Cross graduate and have been a faculty member there for over thirty years. Academics always came first, and I even remember one year in which I had taught Organic Chemistry to four of the starting five players on the Holy Cross basketball team. I doubt that many other schools in the country had even two players who had chosen such a challenging schedule. I have been proud of all of the student/athletes that I have known or taught over the years, and I believe that their careers have been helped immeasurably by their participation in athletics. However, this book makes it clear that they came to Holy Cross or Colgate or Bucknell, etc. because a first rate education was uppermost in their minds. Read this book and share in the joy of students who play for the love of the game while keeping their eyes on the real prize, an education that will last for the rest of their lives.

John Feinstein transports us to a world where in which Division I college basketball players care more about their grade point averages than points per game and are more likely to discuss the latest public utterances of Dick Cheney than Dick Vitale. It is a place where the players are all smarter than the vast majority of college students but must still work hard at thier studies-- regardless of their on-court skills. Best of all, this is not a world cleverly imagined by a gifted satirist, but rather the Patriot League as chronicled by an insightful observer.In detailing a season where there are no television millions, agents, shoe contracts, recruiting violations, NBA scouts, or academic scandals, the reader is rewarded with a book that deals solely with college basketball, its players, coaches, fans, and rivalries. As such, it is the best book about college hoops, or for that matter college sports, that I've ever read. It's a must read for the cynical, the jaded, or merely those who love a great sports story.

I bought the book because I'm a Lafayette alum, and wanted to read an account of the season that they ultimately won. While the partisan in me loved reading about Lafayette's trip to the NCAA tournament, I thoroughly enjoyed the information about each of the teams and the players at each school. Feinstein has a gift for finding the numerous stories inside the story - and The Last Amateurs is no exception. You'll get to know the students, their coaches, their challenges, and the numerous successes.The Last Amateurs detalis a league untainted by shoe contracts, agents, and TV money. It looks at true student athletes, most of whom will play their last basketball game when the Patriot League season ends their senior year.This was a fantastic book. Definitely worth a read.

If you're down on the cesspool that college sports has become, this is the book for you! I had never heard of the Patriot League (although everyone knows Army, Navy and Holy Cross)but I really liked Feinstein's other stuff. Reading this, though, you realize there are still schools out there where the term "student-athlete" makes sense. These players' stories are at least as interesting as those in the big time conferences... especially considering they have basketball in the right perspective. Read this book!