October 2009

Reuben A. Buford May is a self-confessed basketball junkie. He played the sport as a young boy and, later, as a student-athlete at Aurora University. While working as a sociology professor at the University of Georgia, he spent years as an assistant coach with a high school basketball program located in a metro area outside of Atlanta. This experience led to his second book, “Living Through the Hoop: High School Basketball, Race, and the American Dream” (New York University Press; Amazon).

In “Living Through the Hoop,” May examines the appeal of basketball among youth at Northeast High School. (May has changed the actual name of the school, as well as the names of the students and other coaches in the book, for confidentiality purposes.) At the predominantly African-American school, May observes the players’ lives, on and off the court, and chronicles their triumphs and failures. And, as documented in the film “Hoop Dreams,” May notes that the promise of NBA riches and fame continues to exert a powerful and, at times, dangerous pull.

“Basketball offers young black men . . . a chance to hope for better in spite of their dismal starting point,” May writes. “These young men should no more be derided than any of us who invest our lives in long-shot dreams. After all, such dreams are conceived in a society that says to all, ‘you all can achieve whatever you want if you work for it.’ The sad reality is that young black men continue to be disproportionately blocked from achieving alternatives to hoop dreams.”

Part memoir, part ethnography, “Living Through the Hoop” was the co-winner of the Book of the Year award from the Association of Humanist Sociology.

May is a professor of sociology at Texas A&M University. Currently, he is a fellow at the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University.

SportsLetter recently spoke with Professor May by phone.

— David Davis

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In 1988 reporter H.G. “Buzz” Bissinger journeyed to West Texas to write a book about the town of Odessa and its mania over the storied football team at Permian High School. Published the next year, “Friday Night Lights” was a reportorial triumph that, at once, captured the glory and the ignominy of youth athletics.

“Friday Night Lights” was an instant bestseller and, twenty years after its initial publication, remains a cultural touchstone. In 2002, Sports Illustrated ranked it as the fourth best sports book of all time. In 2004, it was made into a successful film; currently, it serves as the basis for a television show that airs on NBC.

Bissinger won the Pulitzer Prize while he was a reporter with the Philadelphia Inquirer; he now contributes to Vanity Fair magazine. He has also written “Three Nights in August” (2005), a journey into baseball strategy as seen through the eyes of St. Louis Cardinals’ manager Tony LaRussa.

Most recently, Bissinger has co-written “Shooting Stars” (Penguin; Amazon) with Cleveland Cavaliers superstar LeBron James. The book chronicles James’ successful and controversial high school basketball career in Akron, Ohio, and the enduring friendship he continues to share with four teammates-friends (collectively known as the “Fab Five”).

SportsLetter spoke to Bissinger about LeBron James and “Shooting Stars” as well as the legacy of “Friday Night Lights.”

— David Davis

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