{"title":"Rick Telander","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"heaven-is-a-playground-book-rick-telander-9780803294271","title":"Heaven is a Playground","description":"In 1974, Rick Telander intended to spend a few days doing a magazine piece on the court wizards of Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant. 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Continuing the tradition in a long line of notable guest editors is Rick Telander, acclaimed journalist, author, and champion of the written word. His choices are defined by one shared thread: effort, on the part of athletes and writers alike. The physical strength it takes to play professional hockey and football, or for a forty-two-year-old writer to learn how to dunk in six months. The mental and emotional toughness needed to turn around a losing team, or to speak out about a coach. The careful striving to make everything seem effortless. This edition encompasses it all.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e The Best American Sports Writing 2016 includes Don Van Natta Jr. and Seth Wickersham,  L. Jon Wertheim and Ken Rodriguez,  Mark Fainaru-Wada and Steve Fainaru, Brett Popplewell, Alexandra Starr, Wright Thompson and others\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e RICK TELANDER is a Chicago Sun-Times senior sports columnist and the Basketball Evangelist for Slam magazine. 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In 1989, when Rick Telander first published The Hundred Yard Lie, he proposed that big-time college football should be professionalised.  In doing so, Telander was ahead of his time, for the problems that he outlined more than thirty years ago are still relevant today - and in some cases are more severe. In The College Football Problem, a newly revised edition of the 1989 book, Telander reveals that more than thirty years later there still exists the dominance of multimillionaire coaches whose only goal is winning regardless of cost to athletes; the presence of wealthy boosters, board members, and athletic department big shots who have little regard for the academic side of universities; and, of course, the exploited players themselves - many of whom are impoverished minorities - who too often leave school without degrees or real world working skills but with physical injuries and mental betrayals that often will haunt them for the rest of their lives. Many of these concerns have come to a head in California, where in the Fall of 2019 the governor passed the Fair Pay to Play Act, whereby college athletes can hire agents to help them with business deals.  With a new foreword by Rick Reilly, this book frames these longtime issues in a new light and offers solutions from Telander in an attempt to put an end to the corruption once and for all.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49796217241873,"sku":"CIN1683583523VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50143296291089,"sku":"CIN1683583523G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1683583523.jpg?v=1751120703"},{"product_id":"heaven-is-a-playground-book-rick-telander-9781683583608","title":"Heaven Is a Playground","description":"Heaven Is a Playground, now in its fifth edition to include more information on Fly Williams, was the first book on the uniquely American phenomenon of urban basketball.   Rick Telander, a photojournalist and former high school basketball player, spent part of the summer of 1973 and all of the summer of 1974 in Brooklyn living the playground life with his subjects at Foster Park in Flatbush. 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'The best basketball book I've ever read.' - Barack Obama","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49905895964945,"sku":"CIN1683583604G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1683583604.jpg?v=1751058283"},{"product_id":"heaven-is-a-playground-book-rick-telander-9780803226784","title":"Heaven Is a Playground","description":"Heaven Is a Playground was the first book on the uniquely American phenomenon of urban basketball. Rick Telander, a young photojournalist and former high school basketball player, spent part of the summer of 1973 and all of the summer of 1974 in Brooklyn living the playground life with his subjects at Foster Park in Flatbush. 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In this third edition, thirty-five years after Telander discovered New York's kings of basketball, the author provides a retrospective of the game and times.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49968896868625,"sku":"CIN0803226780G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50423126360337,"sku":"CIN0803226780VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51691182620945,"sku":"GOR007044524","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0803226780.jpg?v=1750702523"},{"product_id":"heaven-is-a-playground-book-rick-telander-9781613213940","title":"Heaven Is a Playground","description":"Heaven Is a Playground was the first book on the uniquely American phenomenon of urban basketball. 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Sweet Dreams is a gift to all children, the way the best illustrated words can be.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51032148541713,"sku":"NIN9781510778337","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51327912706321,"sku":"CIN1510778330VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1510778330.jpg?v=1751085897"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/author-books-by-rick-telander.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}