Gutcheck!, An Anthropologists Wild Ride Into the Heart of College Football

Sands, Robert R.

ISBN 10: 0967297303 / ISBN 13: 9780967297309

Published by Rincon Hill Books, Carpinteria, 1999

About this Item

Seller Inventory # 024039

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Gutcheck!, An Anthropologists Wild Ride Into the Heart of College Football
• Publisher: Rincon Hill Books, Carpinteria
• Publication Date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0967297303
• ISBN 13: 9780967297309
• Binding: Soft cover
• Edition: First Edition
• Condition: Very Good+
• Signed: Inscribed by Author(s)
• Seller catalogs:
  • Science
  • Sports

About this title

Synopsis

Beyond the TV cameras of college football, the male fantasy images of pin-up cheerleaders and adoration garnered by marquee players plays thousands of the real gridiron gladiators. Huge football stadiums seating whole cities give way to humble fields of dreams. On these uneven turfs toil the many private four year colleges and junior college players who try to delay then inevitable death of their football careers by playing a few more seasons. The end comes not in bowl games or the draft or like gypsies chasing professional careers in Europe or elsewhere, but in the last game where tomorrow brings the rest of the player1s life and the last completion or tackle will remain so very vivid in just in his mind. Sport anthropologist Robert Sands, Ph.D.following in the footsteps of the classic anthropologists as Margaret Mead or Bronislaw Malinowski, spurred on by George Plimpton1s three decade old football journey and seasoned by the Gonzo journalist, Hunter S. Thompsonchose to enter the unheralded world of the real football, not the hype witnessed on Saturday afternoons in Columbus or Lincoln. Sands wanted to experience college football from the inside out, but more interesting to the anthropologist was to discover just how close this hidden world of pads, helmets and pigskins is to the world outside the 100 by 54 yard rectangle that players call home. At age 37, and an anthropology professor at Santa Barbara City College, Sands enrolled in the necessary 12 units for four consecutive semesters at SBCC so that he could live out what he writes is the 3ultimate American male rite of passage. With no organized football experience, but with plenty of heart and desire, Sands becomes a second team wide receiver and emotional leader, elder statesman and finally in his second season a contributing statistic to the team1s story