Last Dance

I just finished reading Last Dance, by John Feinstein. The book is a look behind the scenes at college basketball's Final Four. Using the events of the 2005 Final Four as his backdrop, Feinstein looked at the history and present day realities of the Final Four from just about every angle you could think of. The stories he conveyed profiled players, coaches, officials, members of the media, even the highly "mysterious" tournament committee.

It took me longer to get through this one than I had taken for any of my last several books, but that is more of a testament to a crunch on available reading time than anything else, because I really enjoyed the book. Feinstein has a reputation as one of the finest storytellers in sports, and it is clearly well earned. College hoops is probably my second favorite sport to follow, behind baseball, and so it was a great trip through the history of the event, and I found it especially enlightening to get a look at some of the faces that have defined the Final Four for years, but that don't necessarily often get any real attention. It was also great to get a look back at the days before the Final Four became the event and spectacle that it is today. It's really hard to think of the Final Four as anything other than one of the biggest events of the sporting calendar, but it didn't start that way, nor did it get there overnight.

One thing that really stuck out for me as I read through was that for someone who enjoys the college game as much as I do, I'm not really as familiar with some of the basic history as I would think I should be. I've even managed to miss a lot of things that have taken place in the 20 years since I first remember watching the Final Four. Many of the events that were conveyed in this book were such that I'd either seen or heard touched on many times, but never really looked into what they were. I'd like to rectify that situation to a degree as soon as possible.

To that end, I ran out last night and picked up Glory Road, in which legendary coach Don Haskins tells the story of his team's victory in the 1966 NCAA championship game, a game that is often credited as being the most important title game in college history. Haskins defeated an all-white Kentucky team with a team that started 5 African-Americans. I know the basics of this story, and I've seen the movie that was based off this book, but I'm really looking forward to getting a more in depth look at this team and their story.