John Feinstein has my dream job. In fact, he has the dream job of about half of all Duke students.
How's this for a year's work: You get to go to every Atlantic Coast Conference men's basketball game during the 1996-97 season. Yes, it involves lots of travel and exhausting back to back coverage, but it's the ACC.
Sound good? Added bonus: seven of the nine ACC coaches give you complete access to their teams. This means you're there at practice, in the locker room during games, at team meetings, coaches' meetings, and you get to ask questions. Now would you take the job?
And the clincher: you get to write a book about it afterwards. Hence "A March to Madness," described as "the view from the floor in the Atlantic Coast Conference."
The ACC has a history of being the strongest conference in NCAA basketball. Last year, six of its nine teams were awarded bids to the Big Dance. Compare that with any other conference in the nation. But last year's ACC season was even more exemplary than usual. The highlight in Durham, of course, was that Duke won the regular season championship in a kind of Cinderella scenario.
Who would have thought that Duke, 5-3 in the first half of conference play, could knock superstar Tim Duncan and his first-half 7-1 Demon Deacons from the top notch?
But it happened. And Feinstein has covered every moment in scintillating detail, from the Dean Smith-Rick Barnes conflict in 1995-96 to the bad plays ACC officials made throughout last season.
Feinstein chronicles the games, the players, the trips, and the officials. But his most exemplary work is with the head coaches of the conference. Players come and go, but coaches endure. Feinstein spends about half a chapter on each coach's journey to the ACC, explaining just what makes each man tick.
And Feinstein is mindful of ACC history, too, taking careful note to mention one of the ACC's most colorful and memorable former coaches-North Carolina State University's James Valvano. Best of all, he does it artfully.
Feinstein introduces the ACC tournament's notorious play-in game between the bottom two teams in the conference as the Les Robinson game, indicating the hard times the NCSU program has experienced since the Golden Age of Jimmy V.
Feinstein tells the touching story of Valvano's Cinderella run to the 1983 National Championship, and then segues into a story about Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski and how his friend Valvano's untimely death at age 47 had triggered a confusing time in Krzyzewski's life.
"Krzyzewski was forty-six. He was on top of the basketball world. But for how long? For the first time in his life, he wondered if he was doing the right thing with his life. Maybe he should be using his fame to fight cancer. Maybe he should be working in the inner city. The games that had meant so much didn't seem quite so meaningful anymore."
But we know how the story goes.
And so Feinstein continues, developing each coach into a multifaceted person facing intense pressure to build a successful season. And during the 1996-97 season, each coach led his team with fire in his soul, each experiencing satisfying wins and stunning defeats.
One thing remains certain: the season ended with teams and performances no one ever expected.
Perhaps most fascinating of all are the morsels of inside information that Feinstein shares with the readers including the reason behind Greg Newton's benching and the real reason the Blue Devils stopped recruiting California prep star Baron Davis.
Feinstein is a master at painting the entire picture, and he does it without bias. Unless you read the preface or the book jacket, you wouldn't know that Feinstein is a Duke fan, even serving as the Chronicle's sports editor his senior year at the University.
But he does more than simply describe the season as it was. He explains the coaches' and players' thoughts and strategies to bring the fan to a higher understanding of the game.
I used to think it was in bad form for a coach to get a technical foul. I understood it would get the team fired up, but Feinstein made me understand the complexity that goes into the calculated fouls and the passion for basketball that goes into the unintentional technicals.
I watch every ACC game with a different eye now, trying to figure out what each coach is thinking-what direction he's going to take the team in next. Of course, if I could do that, I'd be the one making the big bucks.
Leslie Deak is a Trinity senior.
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