When the World Cup comes to the United States in the summer of 2026, it will be the first time the tournament has been played in America in 32 years. It will also be the first time the tournament is held in Kansas City, Missouri, For Kansas City, it will be one of the biggest moments in the city's history. It will also be the culmination of a decades-long story: How Kansas City, an overlooked city in the Midwest, became the heart of American soccer. In Perfect Pitch, Nate Bukaty and Rustin...

Fresh off of a gutsy, thrilling 2023 Super Bowl win for the Kansas City Chiefs, two inspiring stories that fit perfectly together—a biography of superstar quarterback, Patrick Mahomes, who brought the Chiefs to their first Super Bowl win in fifty years in 2020 as well as a second in 2023, along with the historical struggles and recent resurgence of the former “Paris of the Plains,” Kansas City.There is nobody like Patrick Mahomes.In three seasons, he has wo...

Fresh off of a gutsy, thrilling 2023 Super Bowl win for the Kansas City Chiefs, two inspiring stories that fit perfectly together—a biography of superstar quarterback, Patrick Mahomes, who brought the Chiefs to their first Super Bowl win in fifty years in 2020 as well as a second in 2023, along with the historical struggles and recent resurgence of the former “Paris of the Plains,” Kansas City.There is nobody like Patrick Mahomes.In three seasons, he has wo...

A Shelf Awareness Best Book of the YearNCAA football is big business. Every Saturday millions of people file into massive stadiums or tune in on television as "athlete-students" give everything they've got to make their team a success. Billions of dollars now flow into the game. But what is the true cost? The players have no share in the oceans of money. And once the lights go down, the glitter doesn't shine so brightly. Filled with mind-blowing details of major NCAA football scand...

From New York Times bestselling author and Michigan football expert John Back, an analysis of the state of college football: Why we love the game, what is at risk, and the fight to save it.In search of the sport’s old ideals amid the roaring flood of hypocrisy and greed, bestselling author John U. Bacon embedded himself in four college football programs—Penn State, Ohio State, Michigan, and Northwestern—and captured the oldest, biggest, most stori...

“How can the NCAA blithely wreck careers without regard to due process or common fairness? How can it act so ruthlessly to enforce rules that are so petty? Why won’t anybody stand up to these outrageous violations of American values and American justice?”In the four years since Joe Nocera asked those questions in a controversial New York Times column, the National Collegiate Athletic Association has come under fire. Fans have begun to realize that the athl...

For fifteen years, sports agent Josh Luchs made illegal deals with numerous college athletes, from top-tier, nationally recognized phenoms to late-round draft picks. Flagrantly flaunting NCAA and NFL Players Association rules, he made no-interest loans to players in exchange for the promise of representation on their lucrative pro contracts. After cleaning up his act in 2003, he moved to a new agency, only to be targeted and pushed out of the business for a new violation-one he arguably di...

A THOUGHT-PROVOKING LOOK AT THE BIG BUSINESS AND IMMORAL PRACTICES BEHIND PROFESSIONAL SPORTS BY ACCLAIMED SPORTSWRITER DAVE ZIRIN, HAILED AS THE “CONSCIENCE OF AMERICAN SPORTSWRITING” (THE WASHINGTON POST )The fastest-growing sector of today’s sports audience is the alienated fan. Complaints abound: from inflated ticket prices, $6 hot dogs, and $9 beers to owners endlessly demanding new multimillion-dollar stadiums funded by public tax dollars. Those sitt...

*A Good Morning America Buzz Book****A LitHub Most Anticipated Book of 2022*The definitive biography of Charles Barkley, exploring his early childhood, his storied NBA career, and his enduring legacy as a provocative voice in American pop culture**He’s one of the most interesting American athletes in the past fifty years. Passionate, candid, iconoclastic, and gifted both on and off the court, Charles Barkley has made a lasting impac...

Explosive and controversial, this expos uncovers the exploitation of college, high school, and even junior high basketball players by the billion-dollar atheltic shoe companies competing for national endorsements. photo insert.

**• A Boston Globe Best Book of 2015 •“A penetrating examination of how the elite college football programs have become ‘giant entertainment businesses that happened to do a little education on the side.’”—Mark Kram, The New York TimesTwo-time Pulitzer-Prize-winning journalist Gilbert M. Gaul offers a riveting and sometimes shocking look inside the money culture of college football and how it has come to dominate a surprising number of colleges an...

Based on dozens of shocking interviews with some of the most influential names in sports, this is the urgent and revelatory examination of racial inequality in professional athletics America has been waiting for.Commentators, coaches, and fans alike have long touted the diverse rosters of leagues like the NFL and MLB as sterling examples of a post-racial America. Yet decades after Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their fists in a display of Black power and pride...