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Raw Recruits
Exposes the high-stakes, big-money world of college basketball recruiting, detailing specific violations at UCLA, Missouri, Syracuse, and other institutions
- GenresSportsBasketball
318 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 1990
3 people are currently reading
104 people want to read
About the author
Alexander Wolff
25 books41 followersThanks for your interest in my books and me!
I spent 36 years at Sports Illustrated, leaving in 2016 as the longest-tenured writer on staff. Besides covering basketball at all levels, I filed from the Olympics, soccer’s World Cup, the World Series, every Grand Slam tennis event, and the Tour de France. SI story assignments took me to China, Cuba, and Iran, and dealt with such issues at the intersection of sport and society as race, ethnicity, gender, drugs, the environment, education, youth development, business, armed conflict, and ethics, as well as cultural themes like art, style, food, and the media.
I’m the author or co-author of seven books about basketball. They include Raw Recruits, a New York Times bestseller that examined college basketball recruiting; Big Game, Small World: A Basketball Adventure, an account of a year spent chasing the game around the globe to take the measure of its impact, which was named a 2002 New York Times Book Review Notable Book; and The Audacity of Hoop: Basketball and the Age of Obama. I also edited and introduced a collection of basketball writing for the Library of America, Basketball: Great Writing About America’s Game, published in 2018.
In March 2021 Atlantic Monthly Press and Grove UK will publish Endpapers: A Family Story of Books, War, Escape, and Home, with DuMont Buchverlag of Cologne releasing a German edition in Fall 2021. The book explores the lives of my grandfather and father, both German-born men who became American citizens. Kurt Wolff, a book publisher of Jewish descent, went into exile to escape the Nazis and founded Pantheon Books in New York in 1941; his son, who because of a divorce remained behind in Germany, was left to fight in Hitler’s army before landing in the U.S. in 1948.
My writing for Sports Illustrated includes three pieces that appeared in The Best American Sports Writing. In 1996, with Hoop Dreams filmmakers Steve James and Peter Gilbert, I collaborated on Team of Broken Dreams, an Emmy-nominated documentary short that detailed the impact of the Yugoslav crisis on basketball players from the Balkans. Broadcast on NBC and based on one of my SI articles, the film won the International Olympic Committee’s Media Award.
As a Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton in 2002, I taught a seminar called Writing About Sports and the Wider World. In 2010 I served as commencement speaker at Springfield College, and the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame honored me in 2011 with its Curt Gowdy Media Award for contributions to the game as a print journalist.
At Brighton High School in Rochester, N.Y., I co-captained the varsity basketball team. In 1980 I earned a B.A. in History with honors from Princeton after having taken a leave to play basketball with a club team in Switzerland. In 2006 my wife Vanessa and I founded the Vermont Frost Heaves of the American Basketball Association, whose birth and life I chronicled in SI and on SI.com.
I love hearing from readers and am happy to speak with book clubs, collaborate with bookstores, libraries, and festivals on events, and otherwise affirm and spread literary culture. Books are in the family blood!
I spent 36 years at Sports Illustrated, leaving in 2016 as the longest-tenured writer on staff. Besides covering basketball at all levels, I filed from the Olympics, soccer’s World Cup, the World Series, every Grand Slam tennis event, and the Tour de France. SI story assignments took me to China, Cuba, and Iran, and dealt with such issues at the intersection of sport and society as race, ethnicity, gender, drugs, the environment, education, youth development, business, armed conflict, and ethics, as well as cultural themes like art, style, food, and the media.
I’m the author or co-author of seven books about basketball. They include Raw Recruits, a New York Times bestseller that examined college basketball recruiting; Big Game, Small World: A Basketball Adventure, an account of a year spent chasing the game around the globe to take the measure of its impact, which was named a 2002 New York Times Book Review Notable Book; and The Audacity of Hoop: Basketball and the Age of Obama. I also edited and introduced a collection of basketball writing for the Library of America, Basketball: Great Writing About America’s Game, published in 2018.
In March 2021 Atlantic Monthly Press and Grove UK will publish Endpapers: A Family Story of Books, War, Escape, and Home, with DuMont Buchverlag of Cologne releasing a German edition in Fall 2021. The book explores the lives of my grandfather and father, both German-born men who became American citizens. Kurt Wolff, a book publisher of Jewish descent, went into exile to escape the Nazis and founded Pantheon Books in New York in 1941; his son, who because of a divorce remained behind in Germany, was left to fight in Hitler’s army before landing in the U.S. in 1948.
My writing for Sports Illustrated includes three pieces that appeared in The Best American Sports Writing. In 1996, with Hoop Dreams filmmakers Steve James and Peter Gilbert, I collaborated on Team of Broken Dreams, an Emmy-nominated documentary short that detailed the impact of the Yugoslav crisis on basketball players from the Balkans. Broadcast on NBC and based on one of my SI articles, the film won the International Olympic Committee’s Media Award.
As a Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton in 2002, I taught a seminar called Writing About Sports and the Wider World. In 2010 I served as commencement speaker at Springfield College, and the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame honored me in 2011 with its Curt Gowdy Media Award for contributions to the game as a print journalist.
At Brighton High School in Rochester, N.Y., I co-captained the varsity basketball team. In 1980 I earned a B.A. in History with honors from Princeton after having taken a leave to play basketball with a club team in Switzerland. In 2006 my wife Vanessa and I founded the Vermont Frost Heaves of the American Basketball Association, whose birth and life I chronicled in SI and on SI.com.
I love hearing from readers and am happy to speak with book clubs, collaborate with bookstores, libraries, and festivals on events, and otherwise affirm and spread literary culture. Books are in the family blood!
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
May 28, 2021
This was an insightful and well-detailed book. Any die-hard hoops fan will appreciate the stories and characters mentioned throughout the piece.
February 21, 2016
The book was interesting to me because, although dated, it contained info about players I remember from my youth. I was a big fan of the NBA and college basketball in the late 80's when these alleged events occurred.
I don't dispute that there are all sorts of transgressions going on then and now that violate the NCAA's rules. Not only that, but I expect that these things go on. It seems like something that everyone knows about but yet the rules still stand because of some moral compass argument.
What astonishes me is that the amounts of money discussed in most of the stories are relatively small compared to the million dollar plus crimes that I'm used to reading about. It seems like a waste of a lot of time and energy (on the part of conspirators and investigators on the other side). I support allowing payments to college athletes. I don't know what the right balance is, but I'd say it isn't the status quo.
As prior reviewers stated, the book is a little tedious because it tells roughly the same story over and over. For me, it was tolerable because I knew most of the names from my youth.
I don't dispute that there are all sorts of transgressions going on then and now that violate the NCAA's rules. Not only that, but I expect that these things go on. It seems like something that everyone knows about but yet the rules still stand because of some moral compass argument.
What astonishes me is that the amounts of money discussed in most of the stories are relatively small compared to the million dollar plus crimes that I'm used to reading about. It seems like a waste of a lot of time and energy (on the part of conspirators and investigators on the other side). I support allowing payments to college athletes. I don't know what the right balance is, but I'd say it isn't the status quo.
As prior reviewers stated, the book is a little tedious because it tells roughly the same story over and over. For me, it was tolerable because I knew most of the names from my youth.
May 2, 2018
Exposing recruiting in the 80’s
November 20, 2011
Yeah, this one was pretty brutal. It was mentioned in the bibliographies of a bunch of other recruiting books I'd read... so I thought I'd pick it up. The first few chapters are mildly interesting... then it just becomes incredibly repetitive. Same violations story, different school/recruit. If their point was that recruiting violations go on all the time, in every school, then I would say: maybe that was news when this book was written... but I doubt it. The problem is, it's written by journalists... and reads like journalism. On very few occasions during the book do they dive deep into character, and that lack of any personality to hold onto is what makes it a long slog of names, dates, and schools, and opposed to a recruitment-gone-wrong story we can care about. Also, it's written by two different journalists. The chapters alternate styles, so I can only assume they switched off. I don't know whom wrote which chapters... but only one of these writers is any good. You can skip it.
March 9, 2011
This book looked to expose the corruption involved in landing big time high school basketball stars on college campuses (this was before HS players were jumping straight to the NBA).
The main story they follow deals with the Kentucky Wildcats going on probation at the end of the 80s and 1990. They keyed in on Big Blue too much and I enjoyed when the authors jumped around to different programs and different regions of the country much more. I thought a strength of the book was that they attempted to discuss the problems from a variety of points of view. When they strayed from that it felt a little moralizing at times.
The main story they follow deals with the Kentucky Wildcats going on probation at the end of the 80s and 1990. They keyed in on Big Blue too much and I enjoyed when the authors jumped around to different programs and different regions of the country much more. I thought a strength of the book was that they attempted to discuss the problems from a variety of points of view. When they strayed from that it felt a little moralizing at times.
January 2, 2018
Story of the dark underside in the world of big-time college basketball. While the NCAA can outlaw some things, they can't possibly fathom all of the alternative methods by which improprieties occur. Very dated, but still very relevant.
January 3, 2010
An interesting behind-the-scenes peek into college basketball recruiting. Rather sordid, but then, big money and corporate interests tend to do that.
September 18, 2014
Not that well written and poorly organized. It could have had potential with a better touch since subject is interesting.
October 7, 2014
I'm late to the party on this one but still amazed at the level of dishonesty displayed by top colleges recruiting top players. I doubt much has changed
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews