Players: The Story of Sports and Money, and the Visionaries Who Fought to Create a Revolution

Futterman, a Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter and Wall Street Journal writer for sports, explains how sports evolved into big business in this smart, insightful, and pleasantly opinionated book. The road to corporate sponsorship and immense wealth was paved with good intentions (at least at first): Mark McCormack basically created the concept of the sports agent—launching Arnold Palmer as a brand, not a lackey for a corporation—and star tennis players withdrew from Wimbledon in 1973 so they could control their own schedules. As time progressed, the motivations behind this growing professionalism went from murky to purely materialistic; for example, Nike and Michael Jordan built the idea of the athlete as superhero, which shifted sports toward individuals, and teams began milking their fans’ passion (and their dollars) through cable networks. Clearly, the history of professional sports and the quest for cash is not over, but Futterman has provided an indispensable volume on what has happened so far. [em](Apr.) [/em]