JOCK: a memoir of the counterculture

JOCK: a memoir of the counterculture

"JOCK: a memoir of the counterculture" is a coming-of-age story about a college athlete, but also an unexpurgated account of how the counterculture, war, politics, anti-authoritarianism, sex, drugs and rock â€˜nâ€™ roll impacted the world of big-time college athletics in the late Sixties and early Seventies.

JOCK tells about a walk-on from Seabrook, Texas who arrives at Stanford University in the fall of '68 and unexpectedly blossoms into a distance running star. He encounters hippiedom in his freshman dorm and race and anti-war politics on campus; a right-wing Head Coach and U.S. Olympic team leader with a Paleolithic worldview; a Head Trainer who slaps a freshman because he disapproves of that freshman's anti-racist activism; and an Athletic Department P.R. Director who mocks him at a â€œboosterâ€ breakfast supposedly held in his honor. But the runner perseveres because of his passionate commitment to his sport, his school, some great teammates (including two future Olympians), an unassuming Assistant Coach, and a wild & crazy fraternity house full of recreational drug-using countercultural football heroes and Olympic swim stars. (The book names names and takes no prisoners.) He competes in cross-country and track against some of the greatest runners of the age, including the legendary Steve Prefontaine (the subject of two feature films in 1997 and 1998.) His Zelig-like encounters eventually take him overseas to one of Stanfordâ€™s European campuses, where he evolves into a full-blown hippie, hitch-hiking (and training) across England, France, Spain, Holland, Germany and over the Swiss Alps in February, sleeping in fields (and smoking hash) until the lure of competition draws him back to Palo Alto for more triumphs and soul-testing adversity. The two years that follow are interspersed with up-close tales about two extraordinary Rose Bowl victories by Stanfordâ€™s countercultural â€œIndians,â€ who upset heavily-favored, conservative Midwestern powerhouses: Woody Hayesâ€™ â€œTeam of the Decade,â€ the â€œfour-yards-and-a-cloud of dustâ€ Ohio State Buckeyes, and the best football team in the history of the University of Michigan, Bo Schembechlerâ€™s 1971 Wolverines. The story ends shortly after the authorâ€™s graduation, when he begins to explore the wisdom acquired from his journey into the heart of athletic achievement.

At 145,000 words, JOCK offers readers a deep dive into the largest participatory sport in the United States: running today has forty million participants and a financial demographic comparable to golf. There has never been memoir of Stanford University from this period, and never a sports memoir quite like this one, mostly because itâ€™s as much cultural history as it is a description of one manâ€™s trippy adventures through one of the most vivid periods in Americaâ€™s recent past to have been alive and young and reaching for the stars.

Robert Coeâ€™s journalism has appeared in the New York Times Sunday Magazine, Vanity Fair, Esquire, Rolling Stone, New York magazine and a host of other publications. His plays have been produced across the country, and his book â€œDance in America,â€ published by E.P. Dutton, was the official book of the PBS â€œDance in Americaâ€ television series.
Country USA
Binding Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate 2015-06-13
Format Kindle eBook

Country	USA
Binding	Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate	2015-06-13
Format	Kindle eBook

JOCK: a memoir of the counterculture

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