Bump and Run

High-profile sportswriter Lupica goes for the gold with this quip-fueled romp through the private offices, secret clubs and luxury boxes of the NFL. Jack ""the Jammer"" Molloy's lifeDas a Las Vegas casino's ""go-to guy""Dis interrupted when his father suffers a fatal heart attack and stuns the sports world, to say nothing of Jack's evil twin siblings, by leaving the New York Hawks to his ne'er-do-well elder son. The NFL team is a potential contender, and in spite of the objections of nearly everyone, including Liz Bolton, the Hawks' president, Jack takes the team's helm with the understanding that the world of big-time sports is no different from high-rolling Vegas; it all revolves around money, sex, image and leverage. As the team marches its uneven way toward the Super Bowl, Jack maintains control by applying ""Vegas ways""Dblackmail, physical threats, bribery and sexual coercionDto whatever problems arise. Although he possesses the moral compass of a drunken frat jock, Jack is an endearing hero whose first-person narrative is crisp and idiomatically trendy. The brutal revelations about what goes on behind the game are hilarious but slightly disturbing, for the reader senses that beneath the satire and broadly drawn characters there is something more than a thin layer of truth, that somehow there is no hyperbole here. Reminiscent of Peter Gent's North Dallas Forty and Dan Jenkins's Semi-Tough, this is a deliciously wicked tale of contemporary professional sports and the people who, for better or worse, run the game. (Nov.)