{"id":2860,"date":"2020-08-03T21:51:21","date_gmt":"2020-08-03T17:51:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/?p=2860"},"modified":"2020-08-03T21:51:21","modified_gmt":"2020-08-03T17:51:21","slug":"college-basketball-fix","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/?p=2860","title":{"rendered":"College basketball fix"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Over the weekend I finished reading John Feinstein&#8217;s latest book,\u00a0<em>The Back Roads to March: The Unsung, Unheralded, and Unknown Heroes of a College Basketball Season<\/em>. The book has been out since early March (when the world was very different), but of course I rely on my local library to provide me with a copy (waitlist!) and dang it&#8217;s tough to get people to return library books these days.<\/p>\n<p>Though it&#8217;s getting better every day, I&#8217;ll admit, we still live in a sports-starved world. I&#8217;m sure\u00a0<em>any<\/em> book I read about college basketball these days would be fantastic. Just an average book that any of us could write.<\/p>\n<p>And that&#8217;s what all of Feinstein&#8217;s books are, actually. Any of us could write them. It&#8217;s just that&#8230; he&#8217;s <em>John Feinstein<\/em>, and has a billion percent more access than any of us could dream. If one of us mortals went to a publisher and said, &#8220;I&#8217;d like to write a book about my experiences over a winter traveling around to a bunch of college basketball games,&#8221; he or she would say, &#8220;Who the hell are you?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Well, John Feinstein has an answer to that question.<\/p>\n<p><em>I&#8217;m John Feinstein<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>[Publisher: (Sigh.) When can I have it?]<\/p>\n<p>John Feinstein has written something like 40 books and I&#8217;ve probably read 30 or 35 of them. Actually most of the books are exactly the same, with passages recycled from one story to another. <em>The Back Roads to March<\/em>, a story of the 2018-19 college basketball season through mostly small-school lenses,\u00a0is basically a retelling of\u00a0<em>The Last Amateurs\u00a0<\/em>(with a little of\u00a0<em>A March to Madness\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0<em>A Season Inside,<\/em> etc. mixed in).\u00a0And yeah, I&#8217;m fine with that.<\/p>\n<p>Because he&#8217;s John Feinstein.<\/p>\n<p>And hey, I&#8217;ve gotta get my college basketball fix\u00a0<em>some<\/em>how.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Over the weekend I finished reading John Feinstein&#8217;s latest book,\u00a0The Back Roads to March: The Unsung, Unheralded, and Unknown Heroes of a College Basketball Season. The book has been out since early March (when the world was very different), but &hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/?p=2860\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2860"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2860\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2861,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2860\/revisions\/2861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}