Big Man on Campus: John Thompson and the Georgetown Hoyas

Thompson, the longtime basketball coach at Georgetown University, is a big man beyond his imposing size--610, 270 pounds. He hoisted himself out of a black Washington, D.C., ghetto and now, at age 49, sits at the front of a college-coaching bus once reserved for whites. This balanced, lucid biography, written without Thompson's cooperation, examines the chief Hoya and his program. Shapiro, sports editor of the Washington Post , covers the court: recruiting players for the great teams of the 1980s, charges of reverse discrimination, the paramilitary secrecy known as ``Hoya Paranoia.'' College athletics may be flawed, but Thompson tackled the system and won in grand style. This is a sports book that, like its subject, stands above the crowd. Photos not seen by PW. (Feb.)