On city playgrounds and in high-school gymnasiums, the search goes on for the next Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant - potential superstars who can bring millions in sales to the athletic shoe companies they endorse. Now an explosive and controversial expose at last reveals the ongoing exploitation of college, high-school, and even junior-high-school players by profit-minded sneaker companies...Sole Influence.
Thirty years ago pro basketball players wore modest-looking canvas high-tops. Today, sneakers are a billion-dollar worldwide business, with companies constantly developing flashy new designs, new looks, and new multimillion-dollar ad campaigns. Why? Because one hot shoe - worn by a popular pro basketball player - can become a license to print money. And because the potential payoff is so big, these companies scour the country for the basketball stars of tomorrow, handing out free footwear, free sports gear, and the lure of six-figure contracts - just to wear a certain brand of shoe.
Some young players choose brand loyalty by the time they are fourteen, as sneaker companies not only try to buy the allegiance of players, but also attempt to control coaches, teams, even whole universities.
Written by two of the most knowledgeable journalists in sports, Sole Influence takes you into this battle for the hearts, minds, and feet of young athletes - at any price. Along the way, it shows how criminals, including drug dealers and have ended up on a shoe company's payroll. More frightening, this book reveals how corporate money funneled into amateur sports has created black-market professionalism among college and high-school athletes, with promises of fame and fortune that for most players will simply never come true.
Hard-hitting, thoroughly researched, and deeply troubling, Sole Influence sounds an important alarm to a society that for too long has ignored the dark business behind amateur sports - and what it does to the young people who play them.
