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Big Time
Welcome to Coors State University, a cash-strapped college that sold naming rights, academic programs, and, ultimately, its soul to a beer company just to keep the lights on. At Coors, the engineering professors are expanding the stadium, criminal justice faculty are the campus cops, and the history profs sell popcorn at concession stands. It’s the world turned upside down—yet not very far from the truth at today’s big state schools. Big Time is—ruefully and hilariously—a novel for Our Time.
- GenresFiction
296 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 19, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
August 8, 2024
Incisive satire. Social commentary. Dystopian fiction. Bradburd nailed it with a somewhat prescient exploration of the intersections of American sports, commercialism, and higher education.
Big Time hits — and it smarts a bit, too. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Big Time hits — and it smarts a bit, too. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
August 22, 2025
Could anything be more terrifying to lovers of the Humanities than having your beloved university taken over by a multi-national beer company just for the sake of pushing alcohol sales through the school’s football and basketball programs? (Wait, you ask, isn’t that already the norm?) In Rus Bradburd’s latest book, Big Time, a hilarious satire about the impact of mega-dollar athletic programs on American colleges, we get to imagine how this dystopian vision might look if the “sports and sponsorships trump everything” ideal were taken to its logical conclusion on higher education campuses.
As a noted sports writer who has coached and taught at the collegiate level, Bradburd brings intimate knowledge of the inner workings of the university, enhancing the realism and incisiveness of what is otherwise a facetious send-up about the uncomfortable relationship between education and sports at US colleges. But it is never heavy-handed. He offers a nuanced portrayal of the way the different characters respond to the sportification of the university, making it feel like this is just as much an exploration into unknown moral territory as it is a Swiftian rebuke of the excesses afforded to collegiate sports. Because this is complex ethical terrain, you never quite know where the characters will go as they confront the pressures of the Division I Sports Industrial Complex.
The story centers around five staff and students at the newly rebranded Coors State University, a former state school bought for a billion dollars by the beverage behemoth: a timid, middle-aged history professor, Eugene Mooney, who hawks copies of his book about the cultural appropriation of salsa alongside huge bags of artificially flavored popcorn at the football stadium concession stand; his best friend, Peter Braverman, a pony-tailed radical whose latest book laments the plight of American draft dodgers during the Vietnam War; a new Poetry professor, Layla Sillimon (branded a sellout by her “slam poetry sisters” in the Bay Area for taking the job), whose book of poems went viral because it was mentioned by Taylor Swift on TV; quarterback of the Coors State Silver Bullets, Trevor Knighton, who can’t quite get used to the perks (food, beer, cars, high grades, steroids) that are given to all the football players; and his Croatian teammate, Sasha Dimitrievic, who looks like Shrek and desperately wants to get an English degree to impress his family in the Balkans.
This quirky group of individuals, deftly elaborated in the book, is forced to navigate an upside-down world in which the university mission is to promote football and basketball above all else. Academic funding has been completely cut and staff are required to pay for their own salaries by selling beer, popcorn, programs, and merchandise at home games, or providing some other relevant service. Agriculture profs cut the grass of the football field, Environmental Science profs perform janitorial duties, Criminal Justice profs run security, Poetry profs sell game programs, and English profs…well…they were all axed after they refused to clean the stadium toilets. The football coach decided that. He is effectively in charge of the school.
Each of these characters has their own reasons for why they are uneasy with the new direction the university is taking. The academics face bleak prospects, clearly, but the football players are also worried because, even though they are treated like gods, they can see that this mission inversion is, ultimately, not very beneficial. Even they understand that it is not great that they would have more power than their professors, or even the university president.
As each of them tries to resist and/or make peace with their awkward relationships with the school (and their own interior selves), they explore the limits of what purposeful action might look like in a situation of growing absurdity. How should they respond when their college has been captured by a predatory commercialism that undermines the traditional educational enterprise of the university? And what possible difference could they make as a small group of individuals?
I’ll refrain from laying out the plot of the story, as it would spoil the genuine surprises and hilarity that develops along the way. But, in essence, the five main characters embark, almost inadvertently, on a Quixotic quest to change Coors State so that it better balances education and athletics. With grandiose visions of re-enacting the heroic deeds of Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Pancho Villa, and so forth, they are soon forced to confront just how compromised they are as agents of change, and just how difficult it will be to even have their voices heard. After all, how do you take a stand against your employer when you still seek tenure? How do go against the team when you still need a football scholarship? How do you take big risks if you have nothing to fall back on? And who would care what they think anyway?! At a more basic and tactical level, what approach would be best: to enact change from within, through committees, or from the outside, through public agitation? And what about the use of violence?
These are questions that many activists face, but the book handles them in quite sensitive and insightful ways. As we readers laugh our way through this truly humorous novel, we are asked to think through the competing pressures that would-be change agents face when taking on large institutional forces. These characters are complicated, flawed, normal(ish) people just trying to make their little corner of the world better, but their situation is not black and white. It is blandly oppressive and dumb (conjuring elements of 1984 and Brave New World). And, as is so true in real life, the decisions they ultimately make have massive, life-altering unintended consequences.
When I first started reading the book, I thought it would be mainly about sports and the impact that sponsorship deals have on institutions of higher learning. But I was pleasantly surprised that it was about far more than just that. The sports dystopia scenario serves as a fascinating and fun setting for exploring more intimate and consequential questions concerning collegial relationships, mentor-mentee relationships, the mission of the university, the role of protest and resistance in shaping institutions, the tactics that should be employed to engender social change, and how to process both success and failure in a social activism campaign (and in one’s own life). While the story does not grapple with contemporary instances of similar protest actions (thankfully), through humor and compelling writing, the book invites a broad consideration of these topics.
Clocking in at just under 300 pages, Rus Bradburd’s Big Time is an engaging, laugh-inducing satire that develops its characters, charts a satisfying plot, and ignites deeper thinking about social issues in an open-handed manner. It’s good writing from a good storyteller who knows his subject-matter. Highly recommended.
Review by Henry Trotter
As a noted sports writer who has coached and taught at the collegiate level, Bradburd brings intimate knowledge of the inner workings of the university, enhancing the realism and incisiveness of what is otherwise a facetious send-up about the uncomfortable relationship between education and sports at US colleges. But it is never heavy-handed. He offers a nuanced portrayal of the way the different characters respond to the sportification of the university, making it feel like this is just as much an exploration into unknown moral territory as it is a Swiftian rebuke of the excesses afforded to collegiate sports. Because this is complex ethical terrain, you never quite know where the characters will go as they confront the pressures of the Division I Sports Industrial Complex.
The story centers around five staff and students at the newly rebranded Coors State University, a former state school bought for a billion dollars by the beverage behemoth: a timid, middle-aged history professor, Eugene Mooney, who hawks copies of his book about the cultural appropriation of salsa alongside huge bags of artificially flavored popcorn at the football stadium concession stand; his best friend, Peter Braverman, a pony-tailed radical whose latest book laments the plight of American draft dodgers during the Vietnam War; a new Poetry professor, Layla Sillimon (branded a sellout by her “slam poetry sisters” in the Bay Area for taking the job), whose book of poems went viral because it was mentioned by Taylor Swift on TV; quarterback of the Coors State Silver Bullets, Trevor Knighton, who can’t quite get used to the perks (food, beer, cars, high grades, steroids) that are given to all the football players; and his Croatian teammate, Sasha Dimitrievic, who looks like Shrek and desperately wants to get an English degree to impress his family in the Balkans.
This quirky group of individuals, deftly elaborated in the book, is forced to navigate an upside-down world in which the university mission is to promote football and basketball above all else. Academic funding has been completely cut and staff are required to pay for their own salaries by selling beer, popcorn, programs, and merchandise at home games, or providing some other relevant service. Agriculture profs cut the grass of the football field, Environmental Science profs perform janitorial duties, Criminal Justice profs run security, Poetry profs sell game programs, and English profs…well…they were all axed after they refused to clean the stadium toilets. The football coach decided that. He is effectively in charge of the school.
Each of these characters has their own reasons for why they are uneasy with the new direction the university is taking. The academics face bleak prospects, clearly, but the football players are also worried because, even though they are treated like gods, they can see that this mission inversion is, ultimately, not very beneficial. Even they understand that it is not great that they would have more power than their professors, or even the university president.
As each of them tries to resist and/or make peace with their awkward relationships with the school (and their own interior selves), they explore the limits of what purposeful action might look like in a situation of growing absurdity. How should they respond when their college has been captured by a predatory commercialism that undermines the traditional educational enterprise of the university? And what possible difference could they make as a small group of individuals?
I’ll refrain from laying out the plot of the story, as it would spoil the genuine surprises and hilarity that develops along the way. But, in essence, the five main characters embark, almost inadvertently, on a Quixotic quest to change Coors State so that it better balances education and athletics. With grandiose visions of re-enacting the heroic deeds of Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Pancho Villa, and so forth, they are soon forced to confront just how compromised they are as agents of change, and just how difficult it will be to even have their voices heard. After all, how do you take a stand against your employer when you still seek tenure? How do go against the team when you still need a football scholarship? How do you take big risks if you have nothing to fall back on? And who would care what they think anyway?! At a more basic and tactical level, what approach would be best: to enact change from within, through committees, or from the outside, through public agitation? And what about the use of violence?
These are questions that many activists face, but the book handles them in quite sensitive and insightful ways. As we readers laugh our way through this truly humorous novel, we are asked to think through the competing pressures that would-be change agents face when taking on large institutional forces. These characters are complicated, flawed, normal(ish) people just trying to make their little corner of the world better, but their situation is not black and white. It is blandly oppressive and dumb (conjuring elements of 1984 and Brave New World). And, as is so true in real life, the decisions they ultimately make have massive, life-altering unintended consequences.
When I first started reading the book, I thought it would be mainly about sports and the impact that sponsorship deals have on institutions of higher learning. But I was pleasantly surprised that it was about far more than just that. The sports dystopia scenario serves as a fascinating and fun setting for exploring more intimate and consequential questions concerning collegial relationships, mentor-mentee relationships, the mission of the university, the role of protest and resistance in shaping institutions, the tactics that should be employed to engender social change, and how to process both success and failure in a social activism campaign (and in one’s own life). While the story does not grapple with contemporary instances of similar protest actions (thankfully), through humor and compelling writing, the book invites a broad consideration of these topics.
Clocking in at just under 300 pages, Rus Bradburd’s Big Time is an engaging, laugh-inducing satire that develops its characters, charts a satisfying plot, and ignites deeper thinking about social issues in an open-handed manner. It’s good writing from a good storyteller who knows his subject-matter. Highly recommended.
Review by Henry Trotter
February 25, 2025
If you have followed college sports at all in the past 10 years you know how increasingly commercial it has become. Companies are sponsoring every bowl game, every conference has their own TV network, NIL (name image and likeness) deals that are making college players millionaires and players are transferring to different schools year after year in search of more lucrative deals. "Big Time" turns it all on its head by asking, "What if a big big beer company just outright buys the naming rights to a school?" How would that change the landscape of academics? How would is alter the economics of the school? And, what would the staff, players and fans do about it? This novel is about a fictional school where this exact thing happens. We get to follow the lives of 3 professors and 2 athletes very closely to see how they deal with this big change. We wonder, along with the characters, if it is even possible to "take back their school?" The novel is not an indictment of the current college system, but acts as a stark warning of the possibilities that await if we keep pushing schools and athletics toward a corporate model...ultimately abandoning why they are there in the first place...education. This book is a great read. It challenges you to think from front to back. If college sports is your thing, if you are in any way associated with a college or university with an athletics program, or if you are a casual fan wondering where college sports are headed, this book is for you. Give it a read, you will be glad you did.
February 2, 2025
Great read
It’s been awhile since I’ve read a fictional book, but this was a great read and didn’t always feel fictional given the direction that “Big Time” college sports are colliding with professionalism and corporate greed leaving the academic world in the dust.
Rus Bradford’s storytelling kept me engaged until the end. Felt like a very satirical version of 1984 in describing the direction of the college sports/academia landscape.
Highly recommended.
It’s been awhile since I’ve read a fictional book, but this was a great read and didn’t always feel fictional given the direction that “Big Time” college sports are colliding with professionalism and corporate greed leaving the academic world in the dust.
Rus Bradford’s storytelling kept me engaged until the end. Felt like a very satirical version of 1984 in describing the direction of the college sports/academia landscape.
Highly recommended.
March 16, 2025
Worst book ever. And did the book reviewers (which gave 4-5 star ratings even read it????). Tried to return to Amazon but even they won’t take it back!!! Great concept and the blurb/reviews showed it had so much promise but a waste of time and BS that this was actually published. I love a good satire but this took it too far to the point of absurdity. I did laugh a few times but it was ridiculous and a waste of time. Very disappointed and annoyed that I even paid for this crap.
February 16, 2025
Too much emphasis on sports on U campuses? Certainly at the Coors State of this book. I liked the premise and the setup, but for me, it disintegrated into silliness. Maybe this sort of farce is the only possible treatment for a theme like this, but I found myself skimming—interested enough to want to know how it all ended but just wanting to get to the end…
May 2, 2025
A satirical story of the increasing influence of big money sports (football & men’s basketball) in college athletics. Athletics are the power and driver of the colleges and their budgets rather than academics. Some of the characters and side stories are bizarre and I found it tedious to read.
December 9, 2024
This preposterous plot is a clever and witty satire of contemporary academia.
July 27, 2025
Clever and not that far off from reality in some schools.
Read
October 5, 2025An utterly bizarre book, but not unenjoyable.
November 7, 2025
While it started off as an interesting parody of the world of college sports it soon deteriorated into a slapstick Marx Brothers story. Disappointing to say the least.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews