By Steve Escajeda
For decades, the argument was made that universities and colleges were profiting from the performances of their student athletes, while at the same time, prohibiting them from any compensation.
Over the last few years, the NCAA and the judicial system have rectified the situation by allowing the athletes to be paid for the use of their name, image and likeness – also known as NIL.
However, the change, which was instituted with no specific boundaries, may be the classic example of an “overcorrection.”
It is this new out-of-control paradigm that Rus Bradburd satirizes in his novel, “Big Time,” published by Etruscan Press and released this month.
This is the fifth book written by the former University of Texas at El Paso and New Mexico State University assistant basketball coach, who retired from coaching in 2000 to pursue his love for the written word.
“Before coming to UTEP in 1983, I worked as a high school security guard and after the first day or two I was bored out of my mind, so I started bringing a book to read,” the 65-year-old Bradburd said. “It got to where I was reading about 50 books during the school year.
“I think most writers are just people who love to read, and it just spills over. Even at my time at UTEP and NMSU, whenever I was on a plane, I would bring a book. It wasn’t like the idea of becoming a writer popped into my head one day. It was a gradual move toward something I’ve always loved to do.”
Bradburd, who lives in Las Cruces with his wife, Connie Voisine (a poet and English professor), and their 18-year-old daughter Alma, is also the founder and director of Basketball in the Barrio, a free summer program in El Paso’s poorest neighborhood.
Though “Big Time” is Bradburd’s first novel, he’s also published “All the Dreams We’ve Dreamed: A Story of Hoops and Handguns on Chicago’s West Side.” a collection of short stories titled “Make It, Take It,” “Forty Minutes of Hell: The Extraordinary Life of Nolan Richardson,” and the memoir, “Paddy on the Hardwood: A Journey in Irish Hoops.”
His short stories have appeared in Southern Review, Colorado Review, Puerto del Sol, and Aethlon. His essays have appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicago’s Daily Southtown, El Paso Times, Las Cruces Sun-News, and Houston Chronicle. He is also a regular contributor to SLAM Magazine and New Mexico Magazine.
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Bradburd’s “Big Time” welcomes readers to Coors State University, a cash-strapped college that sold naming rights, academic programs and ultimately, its soul, to a beer company just to keep the lights on.
“The book pokes fun at how big football and basketball has become at American universities and how the faculty and administration just kind of accepted that fact,” Bradburd said.
“I spent 14 seasons in college basketball, and I quickly learned about the shocking differences between the athletic and academic side of things. One example is that if a college lost its assistant volleyball coach, there would be a new one in about a month. If a professor leaves any department of academia, because of the bureaucracy, it could take years to replace that position.”
The writing was on the wall as far back as 1986 when El Paso’s Sun Bowl became the first postseason football game to have a corporate sponsor, becoming the John Hancock Sun Bowl.
For decades, the NCAA prohibited athletes from earning a penny while participating in their respective sport. After years of litigation, athletes were finally allowed to receive compensation in 2021. But, as many feared, that decision opened the floodgates.
“I think the original intent was to pay the athletes something so they’d be a little more comfortable and maybe their parents could come to a couple games, but I think by waiting so long, that there’s been an overcorrection,” Bradburd said. “While I’m totally in favor of athletes getting compensated, the rollout has been poorly thought out. It wasn’t well considered.”
Bradburd added that loyalty goes both ways.
“A lot of people complain about the lack of loyalty and how athletes change schools depending on the money,” he said. “Well, let me remind everybody that the kids didn’t make the rules. This is the world that we’ve handed young athletes. Let’s be honest, coaches and administrators have not been honoring their contracts for years.”
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Bradburd coached under legendary NCAA coaches like Don Haskins at UTEP (1983-1991) and with Neil McCarthy and Lou Henson at NMSU (1994-2000). His time at UTEP helped the team earn seven NCAA tournament bids.
“Coach Haskins gave me a lot of freedom as far as scouting, recruiting, academics, scheduling, summer camps and all the other little things an assistant coach does, which was a great education for me and made me a more well-rounded coach,” Bradburd said. “My first three years at NMSU were under Neil McCarthy. I was on my way to leaving coaching and becoming a writer when Lou Henson came back to coach the Aggies and I decided to stay on for three more years.
His stint with the Aggies may have eventually done more for his writing skills than his basketball acumen.
“My first week at NMSU I met the writer/professor Robert Boswell, who was a big basketball fan,” Bradburd explained. “We became friends and after games we’d get together, on occasion, and while he’d want to talk about the game, I was more interested in asking him what book I should be reading.
“I eventually started taking classes with Robert (Boswell), who helped me so much with my writing and in the art of storytelling.”
With former high-profile coaches like Nick Saban (Alabama football), Jim Boeheim (Syracuse basketball), Urban Meyer (Florida, Ohio State football) and Tony Bennett (Virginia basketball) voicing their concerns and contempt for the NCAA and NIL, Bradburd handled the touchy subject with tongue firmly tucked in cheek.
“One of the goals of the book is to use humor as a method of delivering a harsh message, making it a little easier to digest,” he said. “My intent was to comically expose a part of American universities that is problematic, and against what education should be in the first place.”
Bradburd said there’s a little bit of himself in the main characters in the book – almost too much.
“At the end of the day, I think the book is about Peter Braverman and Eugene Mooney and the other characters trying to navigate their way through this overemphasis on collegiate athletics and sports branding, and the faculty’s acquiescence of it all,” he said.
“And while this book focuses on the ‘selling out’ of universities to corporate sponsorship, I have to admit that I’m probably selling out a bit as well, being an NMSU basketball announcer and doing all the home games on Aggie Vision. I’m a part of this college sports world the book satirizes, and I have to look in the mirror, but I just wanted to tell the story of what’s going on today.”
“Big Time” may be a work of fiction, but it is an accurate reflection of the growing self-indulgent environment the former world of amateur sports finds itself in.
Though not wanting to sound like one of those get-off-my-lawn guys, Bradburd does miss the days of not-so-instant-gratification, and loyalty.
“When I was at UTEP we had a player named Ralph Davis, who passed away a year ago, who was a complete gentleman and the kind of guy you’d want your daughter to marry,” Bradburd said. “With NIL the way it is today, long gone are the days of a Ralph Davis, who stayed with a program for five years and developed his game slowly. Thanks to the new NIL rules, the kids change schools today as often as we change socks.”
As far as his next project, Bradburd is taking a look at the kind of role sports can play in uniting cultural differences. A few years ago, he won a Fulbright Scholarship to go to Ireland for his next book about refugees in Belfast, a nonfiction read about how sports in that region of the world are bringing people together.
“I’m working on a new project about a phenomenon in Belfast, which is getting a large influx of Syrian and Ukrainian immigrants, and the parents are putting these refugee children into Irish sports. There’s a game called Gaelic football, which is a cross between rugby and soccer,” he said.
“I’ve always considered sports to be at the forefront of social change,” he added. “It’s always been a bridge between cultures and races, and that is what is happening in Ireland.”
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