"Both dispatch and dissertation, NPR contributor Diane Roberts, an English professor at Florida State University, gives a insider's account of a big time college football program in the midst of controversy, while examining the impact and legacy of the sport's popularity in America today"--

Looks at the 1967 football season leading up to that year's black college championship between Grambling College and Florida A&M, and how it fit into the civil rights struggles of the time.

"The powerful story of a college basketball team, the City College Beavers, who carried an era's brightest hopes--racial harmony, social mobility, and the triumph of the underdog--but whose success was soon followed by a shocking downfall."--

"At the height of the Great Depression, Sam Babb, the charismatic basketball coach of tiny Oklahoma Presbyterian College, began dreaming. Like so many others, he wanted a reason to have hope. Traveling from farm to farm, he recruited talented, hardworking young women and offered them a chance at a better life: a free college education if they would come play for his basketball team, the Cardinals. Despite their fears of leaving home and the sacrifices...