“The System” by Jeff Benedict and Armen Keteyian – The Rise of College Football
Hundreds of thousands of stadium seats are filled on Saturday college football games, with the final’s viewership only being trumped by the Super Bowl.
From the outside, it would just seem like the public developed a deeper interest into what many refer to as America’s game. However, things are looking rather different from the inside, something Jeff Benedict and Armen Keteyian aim to show us in The System.
The System basically chronicles the two journalists’ venture behind the scenes into the world of College Football, giving us the real picture of what is happening. We witness players working full-time jobs and never seeing a dime of the industry’s money, players who literally break their bodies for a meager chance at stardom, players who don’t graduate, the economic reality which states that most major athletic departments still lose money and cut back on education, academics, scholarships and faculty members.
The System basically chronicles the two journalists’ venture behind the scenes into the world of College Football, giving us the real picture of what is happening. We witness players working full-time jobs and never seeing a dime of the industry’s money, players who literally break their bodies for a meager chance at stardom, players who don’t graduate, the economic reality which states that most major athletic departments still lose money and cut back on education, academics, scholarships and faculty members.
In other words, we see how a game, a stepping stone for the great players of tomorrow, is turned into a giant economic machine bent on generating as much revenue as possible all while disregarding the consequences for human life.
The information we can gather from The System is really quite impressive, especially considering that most of it comes from the people who are working inside the whole thing, including coaches, athletic directors, television stars, the players themselves, NCAA investigators, and others. I’m certainly not going to spoil the findings in this book, but I will say that most of us have been wearing our pink glasses for far too long.
I’m not even a big fan of the game of American Football, and I found this book to be quite insightful on the nature of man in regards to money and how the capitalist way of thinking puts us against one another and drives us to give it all we have in the name of the dollar.
The information we can gather from The System is really quite impressive, especially considering that most of it comes from the people who are working inside the whole thing, including coaches, athletic directors, television stars, the players themselves, NCAA investigators, and others. I’m certainly not going to spoil the findings in this book, but I will say that most of us have been wearing our pink glasses for far too long.
I’m not even a big fan of the game of American Football, and I found this book to be quite insightful on the nature of man in regards to money and how the capitalist way of thinking puts us against one another and drives us to give it all we have in the name of the dollar.
 | Jeff BenedictPersonal site Jeff Benedict is an American author, public speaker and highly-distinguished professor at the Southern Virginia University. His main topic of interest is mass media, sports, and contemporary issues, and he has written more than twelve critically-acclaimed books, including How to Build a Business Warren Buffet Would Buy and Pros and Cons: The Criminals Who Play in the NFL. |
 | Armen KeteyianArmen Keteyian is a recognized American author and television journalist, currently working as the lead correspondent for “60 Minutes Sports”. He spent most of his career with various sports news programs, and he is the co-author of The System, alongside with Jeff Benedict. |
Comments
Post a Comment