About this item
For more than a half century, television has played a primary role in securing college football's place as one of America's most popular spectator sports. But it has also been the common denominator in the sport's rise as a big business. Television, which multiplied the number of people who cared about the game, simultaneously increased the stakes.The colleges, who once feared television's ability to create free tickets, gradually became addicted to its charms. Through the years, the medium manufactured money, greed, dependence, and envy; altered the recruiting process, eventually forcing the colleges to compete with the irresistible force of National Football League riches; aided the National Collegiate Athletic Association's explosion from impotent union to massive bureaucracy; manipulated the rise and fall of the College Football Association; fomented the realignment of conferences; and seized control of the post-season bowl games, including the formation of the lucrative and controversial Bowl Championship Series.
About the Author
Keith Dunnavant is the author of seven books, including SPY PILOT, a true story of Cold War intrigue and redemption (which he co-authored with Francis Gary Powers, Jr.) , and definitive biographies of football icons Paul "Bear" Bryant, Bart Starr and Joe Montana. His books often explore the collision of sports and culture, including THE MISSING RING, which focused on the 1966 University of Alabama football team's pursuit of perfection in an imperfect world. Dunnavant started his career as a teenage sportswriter, sports announcer and media entrepreneur in small-town Alabama--the youngest credentialed reporter in the SEC--and was recruited to the University of Alabama as a writer/editor on athletic scholarship. He covered national college football and other major sports for THE NATIONAL, LOS ANGELES TIMES, and SPORTS INC. before moving into magazine management and ownership in New York and Atlanta: inventing a new way of publishing and building several successful editorial brands while specializing in narrative journalism and directing coverage of media, sports, business, politics and culture. The writer/director/producer of the award-winning documentary film THREE DAYS AT FOSTER, Keith has been a featured historian on ESPN, CBS, HBO, Showtime, and SEC Network.
