Men in White: The Gutsy, Against-All-Odds Return of Penn State Football

This rousing debut oral history from sports reporter Raymond traces how the Penn State Nittany Lions rebounded following former coach Jerry Sandusky’s 2011 arrest for child sex abuse. Documenting the fallout from the scandal, Raymond notes that the players were left doubly shaken by the death of once-beloved coach Joe Paterno from cancer mere months after he was fired for failing to prevent Sandusky’s abuses, and that the NCAA’s decision to release players from “all obligations to the school” resulted in a “feeding frenzy” for recruiters. The players who stayed had a shaky return to the field in 2012 (“We were just so high-strung,” remembers defensive back Stephon Morris), but they gradually regained their groove under the stewardship of head coach James Franklin and won the 2016 Big Ten championship after triumphing against Wisconsin. The detailed play-by-plays of games excite (“You could feel it throughout your whole body. The whole stadium kind of just lifted up,” offensive lineman Brendan Mahon remembers of a touchdown scored on a blocked kick), and Raymond highlights the poignant stories of individual players, describing, for instance, how starting quarterback Christian Hackenberg’s red-hot career was derailed by a shoulder injury. A fine-grained account of how a beloved program reinvented itself, this scores. Agent: David Halpern, Robbins Office. (Aug.)