Mike McIntire, Author of Champions Way

The Total Tutor Neil Haley will interview Mike McIntire, Author of Champions Way.

In 2014, when the Florida State Seminoles won college football’s national championship in rousing come-from-behind fashion, the school’s president—his face painted in FSU’s red and yellow colors—gushed to a television reporter about nerve and heart and Seminole spirit. But in truth, the victory was as much the work of an off-field team of “police and prosecutors, professors and administrators, business leaders and alumni, defense lawyers and lobbyists,” who sweep up messes, prop up grades and allow the university to keep its sights set on the pot of gold at the end of the college football rainbow. It is a support network, financed by well-heeled boosters, where criminal allegations are covered up, domestic violence is swept under the rug, and academics are sidelined to keep athletes eligible to play. CHAMPIONS WAY: Football, Florida, and the Lost Soul of College Sports [W. W. Norton & Company, September 5, 2017, $26.95 hardcover] is a searing exposé of how the multibillion dollar college sports empire fails universities, students, and athletes.

About the Author

Mike McIntire is a Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative reporter at the New York Times and teaches journalism at New York University. His reporting on corruption in college sports for the Times was a Pulitzer finalist. He lives in the New York City area.