Off the Rim: Basketball and Other Religions in a Carolina Childhood
Off the Rim: Basketball and Other Religions in a Carolina Childhood (SPORTS & AMERICAN CULTURE) by Fred Hobson
English | Mar 1, 2006 | ISBN: 0826216439 | 260 Pages | PDF | 1 MB
English | Mar 1, 2006 | ISBN: 0826216439 | 260 Pages | PDF | 1 MB
This is a book about basketball that is more than a book about basketball. It is, in the beginning, a depiction of a part of the South that departs from the usual idea of Dixie, a look into the culture, religion, and politics of the Carolina hills. It is a portrait of the people who made up the South, including the author’s parents, who both were and were not conventional southerners. Finally, in some respects, it is the story of a boyhood that never ends, relived each year during basketball season in the frantic, tortured life of a fan.
Although Hobson’s story is largely about the Tar Heels—and about other things related to growing up in the South of the 1950s—what he says about basketball, childhood, and adulthood also holds true for those who find themselves in emotional bondage to Hoosiers or Bulldogs or Ducks, to Wolverines, Gophers, Badgers, and various other species of Upper Midwestern low-lying ground fauna, to Blue Devils or Blue Demons, to Tigers, Wildcats, Cougars, and all other breeds of cat.