The Bob Verga Shift: How One Man's Illness Changed History and Saved Duke Basketball By Michael B. Layden
Thanks to BookSirens and the author for the ARC to read But this just wasn t a book for me Too much of the book is What if or or editorial commentary I expect historical nonfiction books to be based on nothing but the facts It wasn t a horrible book but also not something that d I d recommend This book felt like a editorial series you d read in a weekly monthly sports paper magazine I received an advance review copy for free and I am leaving this review voluntarily Paperback Liked the writing on the three main teams in the book and some of the racial and social implications But I didn t like all of the what if s It just made it feel too much like a wish instead of the actual facts which when covered were very good I did learn a lot about Duke basketball in the days before Coach K Paperback This book was well written and it was like a walk down memory lane for me I am a big Duke basketball fan and I loved ACC basketball when I was growing up. The book was written on a couple different levels that made it a bit confusingFirst Layden did a very good job of explaining the civil rights temperature of the times not only the country but the North Carolina basketball triangle. That absolute strength was how the Texas Western story was told I remember as a 16 year old cheering my heart out for that team and was so excited when they won Little did I know then and now after the book I know even of how that impacted the future of sports. It was well written and a little bit untidy in its flow Fortunately I had a good background of all of it being part of the civil rights movement and a huge basketball fan I m not sure others would get as much out of it as I did. I received an advance review copy for free and I am leaving this review voluntarily Paperback Few college basketball games have been as memorable or important as the 1966 NCAA Tournament Championship An all black Texas Western now Texas El Paso team beat the legendary Adolph Rupp s all white Kentucky team But Texas Western and Kentucky didn t just show up at the championship site to play Instead they had to work through their brackets to the championship game Kentucky beat a possibly better and also all white Duke team the night before in the opening round of the Final Four Duke was not at full strength in that contest though as one of its top players Bob Verga had a nasty cold and wasn t nearly as effective as usual But what if Duke with a healthy Verga had beaten Kentucky and then played Texas Western That s the question author Michael Layden asks in his new book The Bob Verga Shift The book is exhaustively researched and will provide many readers with new insight into the state of basketball and race relations at Duke Kentucky and the country at large in the mid 1960s However it s also haphazardly organized repetitive and needs better editing. The author is a lifelong Duke basketball fan whose earliest sports memories include following the team during that fateful 1966 season As a seven year old he was devastated by Duke s loss to Kentucky He didn t get to watch the championship game because it aired past his bedtime Over the years he wondered what might have been if Verga had not been ill that day The Bob Verga Shift isn t a losing fan s lament over a bad break Instead the author analyzes what actually happened from both a sports and civil rights perspective Then he looks at what a Duke appearance in the championship game win or lose might have meant for the school the Durham area and racial relations in the country. I won t review the author s findings and analysis in depth here I grew up in the South a few years after the author and I m familiar with the racial climate of the time in general However much of what he includes in the book is peculiar to North Carolina and I was often surprised In 1966 Durham was tobacco country with an active Klan presence Duke a private school wasn t especially beloved by the community many of whom were North Carolina fans The author fills in many details here recounting why the ACC in general and Duke in particular lagged well behind the rest of the country in recruiting black college athletes He also looks at Kentucky specifically Kentucky basketball at that time The team and to a large extent the school were defined by Adolph Rupp an aging legend who was actively hostile to the notion of Blacks on his team After the loss to Texas Western Rupp became an easy villain for the national media. Many people are familiar with the results of the championship game and the teams racial makeup However sports fans especially younger fans may find the author s background details fascinating Some will be surprised to learn how limited the TV coverage of the games was considering the wall to wall March Madness broadcasts we have today The championship game began at 10 00 and aired on tape delay in much of the country The in depth discussion of the various players careers concentrates on basketball As such it s probably of interest only to hardcore fans especially fans of the schools involved And since the Duke players didn t play in that championship game their perspective is limited Brief recaps of Kentucky and Texas Western players reactions are interesting for fans in general The most notable name here is Kentucky star Pat Riley who later became a player and coach for the Lakers The Bob Verga Shift is successful when it looks at the game s effects on the subsequent recruiting efforts at Duke Kentucky and other ACC and SEC schools Soon both Duke and Kentucky had black players and all stars like David Thompson and Charlie Scott attended other North Carolina schools Also black students viewed college athletics as a great way to get ahead although many had limited success The author also looks at some significant events in the civil rights movement at that time from the March on Washington to the big city riots This material is at best background information but a lot of it is interesting The author includes several references to Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell who was a law student when the championship game was played. As far as the author s thesis regarding what would have happened had Duke played in the championship I find that somewhat farfetched The championship game didn t represent a sea change in race relations but was just one step Teams with multiple black players had been competing and winning NCAA championships since at least the days of Bill Russell s San Francisco teams What gave the 1966 game its greater significance was the presence of Adolph Rupp and what he represented on the Kentucky sideline A game between Texas Western and a white Duke team wouldn t have had the same impact or memorability Further any rancor resulting from a Duke win would have been largely forgotten the following year when Lou Alcindor Lucius Allen and Michael Warren started the UCLA dynasty. Although there s a lot of good information in The Bob Verga Shift the book is often annoying The organization is slapdash with material seemingly thrown in at random sometimes Some trivia although interesting like the references to Mitch McConnell has little to do with what the author is discussing at the time The book also contains considerable repetition sometimes repeating the same thoughts and words a page or two later At the end the author includes a chapter on the 1992 Duke Kentucky NCAA tournament game which many consider the greatest of all time It s one of the interesting chapters in the book but the author strains to find any relevance to his central theme other than that the same two teams were involved in a great game a quarter of a century later One thing I wish the author had included of was the effect the 1966 game and Duke basketball had on him over the years That s information I ll never get anywhere else and the personal element makes it some of the most relatable material in the book The Bob Verga Shift may struggle to find an audience It s probably most interesting for those who knew who Bob Verga was before reading the book However basketball fans may be put off by the large amount of material dedicated to the civil rights struggle and the racism of the times Similarly readers interested in those issues may not find the author s analysis of the skills and weaknesses of various players exciting I found the author s thesis intriguing and was impressed by the amount of research that went into the book However I was often frustrated by the sloppy organization and excessive repetition I m giving The Bob Verga Shift a three star rating and a mild recommendation for fans of the subject matter and issues It s a unique book but I wish it had had better editing NOTE The publisher graciously provided me with a copy of this book through BookSirens However the decision to review the book and the contents of this review are entirely my own Paperback
| The Bob Verga Shift: How One Man's Illness Changed History and Saved Duke Basketball By Michael B. Layden |
| 1611532418 |
| 9781611532418 |
| English |
| 288 |
| Paperback |
.. Secondly I was a bit disappointed that I didn t learn much about Bob Vega. Finally I think there was too much what if ing and overall speculation