Rating: 
Summary: Great Book
Review: As a Lafayette grad (93), this book was well worth reading. John captures the essence of athletics at Lafayette. All the passion and integrity can be found in every sport at Lafayette. Fran O'Hanlon has done a wonderful job as coach and he strives to make the program about the kids, not boosters, tv, or money.
Rating: 
Summary: Pure basketball: the real hoop dreams
Review: John Feinstein transports us to a world where in which Division I college basketball players care more about their grade point averages than points per game and are more likely to discuss the latest public utterances of Dick Cheney than Dick Vitale. It is a place where the players are all smarter than the vast majority of college students but must still work hard at thier studies-- regardless of their on-court skills. Best of all, this is not a world cleverly imagined by a gifted satirist, but rather the Patriot League as chronicled by an insightful observer.In detailing a season where there are no television millions, agents, shoe contracts, recruiting violations, NBA scouts, or academic scandals, the reader is rewarded with a book that deals solely with college basketball, its players, coaches, fans, and rivalries. As such, it is the best book about college hoops, or for that matter college sports, that I've ever read. It's a must read for the cynical, the jaded, or merely those who love a great sports story.
Rating: 
Summary: Another Feinstein love note to himself
Review: Please please please please please never let this pretentious fop write another book again. In typical fashion, Feinstein glorifies anyone who cooperated with him for this book and denigrates anyone who didn't. You wonder how this classless writer has any time to write books anymore - he's on TV so often he must carry a clip-on microphone at all times. Feinstein is the most unprofessional sportswriter working today. Having burned bridges in the golf world and in major college basketball, among many other areas, he is forced to write a book about the Patriot League. Don't get me wrong - there are great stories to be told about the schools and kids in that league. Unfortunately, it still hasn't been told. No story is bigger than Feinstein's massive and unwarranted ego, and this book is simply the latest example.
Rating:
Summary: An uplifting account of what basketball is all about
Review: I bought the book because I'm a Lafayette alum, and wanted to read an account of the season that they ultimately won. While the partisan in me loved reading about Lafayette's trip to the NCAA tournament, I thoroughly enjoyed the information about each of the teams and the players at each school. Feinstein has a gift for finding the numerous stories inside the story - and The Last Amateurs is no exception. You'll get to know the students, their coaches, their challenges, and the numerous successes. The Last Amateurs detalis a league untainted by shoe contracts, agents, and TV money. It looks at true student athletes, most of whom will play their last basketball game when the Patriot League season ends their senior year. This was a fantastic book. Definitely worth a read.
Rating:
Summary: A positive book about college sports. What a change!
Review: If you're down on the cesspool that college sports has become, this is the book for you! I had never heard of the Patriot League (although everyone knows Army, Navy and Holy Cross)but I really liked Feinstein's other stuff. Reading this, though, you realize there are still schools out there where the term "student-athlete" makes sense. These players' stories are at least as interesting as those in the big time conferences... especially considering they have basketball in the right perspective. Read this book!
Rating:
Summary: Best Feinstein Book
Review: I am a current student at the Patriot League school of Bucknell and know intimately the details of the basketball programs Feinstein chronicles. The book is a perfect recreation of the life of a Patriot League player and a perfect tribute to the league that enjoys little fame. From the descriptions of the arenas that our teams play in to the rivalries that we hold so close to our hearts, this is a true winner. If you are a fan or real basketball, where fame doesn't come and agents don't either, read this book. Our basketball is special and Feinstein captures it perfectly. This is Feinstein's best work yet!!!
Rating: 
Summary: not his best, but a fun read
Review: Just finished this book last night, spent nearly 4 months on it. It really takes a lot of work to get into it, but as the season winds down and you get to know the players and coaches a bit better, it takes on a life of its own. So, that's to say the last 150 pages or so are worth the time. Problem is, you need to read the first 250 to have a good idea what is going on.
The message, as always with Feinsteid, is clear. College b-ball ain't what it should be. But as someone coming from a D3 school, I've know this for a long time.
Rating:
Summary: One shinning moment
Review: ESPN exploded college basketball in the 1980's. Every night there is a game being televised on their network. Triple-headers have become the norm. And when a viewer hasn't had enough after the late game, on comes the late-late game between Hawaii and some other WCC team.
In "The Last Amateurs: Playing for Glory and Honor in Division I College Basketball" John Feinstien follows the teams and players of the Patriot League (then a non-scholarship conference). The players he meets are nameless and their schools are footnotes in big-time Division I athletics. But their stories are engaging and their pursuit of athletic and academic achievement is inspiring.
Feinstien tackles the notion of why these players, most of whom are paying their way through college, spend so much energy playing college basketball. Patriot League players have little aspiration of making basketball their livelihood, yet make the same physical sacrifice as big-time players all the while not allowing their academic endeavors to slip in the process.
The Patriot League is hardly ever on ESPN. The ultimate pursuit of every program is to win the league title so they can become the 15th or 16th seed in the NCAA tournament. And be the sacrificial lamb of a major college basketball program in the first round.
To people not involved in athletics, it is difficult to understand the purpose of it all. After reading "The Last Amateurs: Playing for Glory and Honor in Division I College Basketball", those outsiders should begin to get a glimpse into why athletics fosters greatness off the court.
It is noble to fight through adversity when there is no tangible reward at the end. Patriot Leaguers know this notion better than anyone in college basketball...and are better for it.
Rating:
Summary: Real College Ball
Review: John Feinstein is one of the big names in sports journalism. He's written books on a number of headline-getting sports stories and consequently can be heard often on sports radio as an expert guest. Feinstein's background is as a newspaper guy, writing for the Washington Post among others. The Last Amateurs is about college basketball in the Patriot League, a (mostly) non-scholarship league that struggles to survive in the world of big time college ball. To Feinstein, this is one of the last bastions of unadulterated amateur basketball in the United States. These kids play for little more than the love of the game and the glory of winning the league's one berth to the NCAA Tournament. He follows the seven teams from schools like Holy Cross, Lehigh, and Navy through a whole season, focusing on the personalities, on the struggles peculiar to this one of a kind league, and on the great basketball games that never came close to showing up on a Sportscenter highlight reel. Feinstein's newsy writing and copious background anecdotes keep the book moving at a fast pace. It isn't, however, the transcendent sports writing of a Roger Angell. Instead, the book reads like a dozen Sports Illustrated articles strung end to end. As such, this is a fantastic book for fans of college basketball, as it really captures what is best about that game.
Rating:
Summary: Good stories, poor organization
Review: John Feinstein took the time to get to know the coaches, players, and competition style of the Patriot League, and makes a valiant effort to present the PL experience. Having read the book, I feel like I know the "flavor" of the Patriot League, perhaps as well as I know the flavor of my own ACC (Maryland graduate and diehard basketball fan, class of 1987). Feinstein really communicates the feel of being in the PL: the love of the game, but all in balance with academics and the rest of life. These schools, these players, this league, are all of very high quality of character, and glorifying high character quality is certainly a worthwhile endeavor. However, for anything beyond the general feel and character of the league, Feinstein's occasionally brilliant, frequently overly-detailed writing gets lost in the horrible disorganization of the book. Feinstein says he follows a season in the PL, and that's certainly true. The trouble is that the league has seven schools, seven coaches (and multiple former coaches), seven athletic directors, seven school presidents, seventy-or-so players, and each school plays 20-odd games per season. Most of those mean little or nothing to the average reader who would pick up this book. While Feinstein, having lived the season, watched the games, and developed relationships with the people, can keep them all straight, I don't know Fran Fraschilla from Ralph Willard, and I don't remember which one coaches where, and I couldn't tell the difference between Lafayette and Lehigh. Feinstein does absolutely nothing to make these clear to the reader. It seems to me that the obvious organization for telling the much needed story of the Patriot League would have been to write about each team, individually, over the course of their season. Then, after that, use the conference tournament as a means for tying the seven stories together. Instead, Feinstein wrote it as he lived it -- a game at Colgate means telling about them, then off to Holy Cross, over to Bucknell, down to Navy, back to Colgate -- oh they're playing Bucknell, gotta tell more about them... Meanwhile, readers are going crazy trying to figure out which team is which, which coach goes with which school, which player goes with which coach, etc. The result of the disorganization is utter confusion. It is telling that what I remember best from the book is a quote from Duke's Coach K (who was a former Army coach, but the quote is from his time at Duke). He spoke glowingly to his players about the high quality of the character of the players on the Navy team, and then emphasized the need to BEAT them, because they're NAVY and he was ARMY. Which is a great story, but why do I remember that better than any of the actual Patriot League stories? Because I was so lost in the whos, wheres, and whichs of Feinstein's disorganization. There are excellent anecdotes, funny stories, and character-telling quotes and actions described throughout the book, and for that, it's worth reading. But, I recommend one of two ways for reading: Either 1) read lightly, look for the good stories and ignore the flood of names, dates, and details; or 2) take notes as you read, and make a list of a) school, b) coach, c) other school administrators or former coaches, and d) players, just so you have a handy reference sheet to keep them all straight when Feinstein refers back to someone he wrote about 150 pages ago.
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