Unsportsmanlike Conduct: College Football and the Politics of Rape

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Over the last three years, sexual assault on college campuses has been a hot topic as people are wondering aloud and often about it, especially when it involves star football players. Unsportsmanlike Conduct explores that playbook: the one coaches, teams, universities, police, communities, the media, and fans seem to follow whenever a college football player is accused of sexual assault. It's a deep dive into how different institutions run the same plays over and over again when these stories break.

Reviews

Highly relevant, hard-hitting, much-needed information that reveals the widespread existence of rape by sports players on college campuses.
--Kirkus Reviews

A culmination of [Luther's] dedication to finding truth in often murky waters.
--ESPNw

As Luther makes abundantly clear in this impeccably researched volume, the number of rape cases, reported and unreported, involving college athletes, especially football players, has reached epic proportions. A vitally important look at an appalling problem.
--Booklist, included in Top 10 Sports Nonfiction titles for 2017

[Luther] knows too much--about how teams, like her own, fail to adequately handle allegations of rape and sexual assault. It's hard for her to reconcile that with blindly supporting a team as a fan. So she literally wrote the book on the topic. Her book is one of two playbooks--the first describes how college football programs and the sports media currently respond to allegations like this, and the second gives suggestions of how teams, schools, media and the NCAA could respond to them better, with genuine compassion for survivors and an actual understanding of the life-changing effects of such violence.
--USA Today Sports/Football Four Podcast

College football has always sold itself as being about the high ideals of higher education, but sexual violence has become a mirror in which the sport, fueled by lucrative television contracts, insanely passionate fans and wealthy donors, puts itself before everything else: education, the well-being of women and, often, its own student-athletes.
--Street Roots News

We as a society owe a great debt to Jessica Luther. She has spent the last several years of her professional life dedicated primarily to reporting on the epidemic of sexual assault in college sports--football in particular. Her debut book Unsportsmanlike Conduct: College Football and the Politics of Rape, published on Dave Zirin's 'Edge of Sports' imprint at Akashic Books, isn't simply a tell-all; she has rewritten the playbook for collegiate sports culture, giving survivors and supporters a reason to be hopeful about rooting for our teams without further sacrificing who we are.
--The Establishment

A freelance journalist who helped break the story of Baylor University's mishandling of rape cases, Luther examines how coaches, administrators, and athletes at universities across the country cover up and minimize these crimes. In the second half of the book, Luther presents a new playbook for how we could do better--such as by teaching consent, firing responsible parties, and changing how the media responds.
-- The Alcalde

This sharp book is a must-read for anyone interested in either college sports or sexual assault politics.
-- Rebellious Magazine

I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It imbues the conversation of what's happening on our college campuses with deep research and examples. And it's really must reading for all of us who claim to want to be a part of the solution.
--Dallas Morning News

In her first book, Jessica Luther challenges the college sports establishment to hold athletes accountable when they commit rape, sexual assault and domestic violence.
--Texas Observer

The book delves into instances of sexual violence perpetrated by football players and the response to their crimes by their athletic departments, universities, the NCAA and the media, to show there is a playbook for dealing with violence in football that is common to football institutions nationwide.
--Dallas Observer

While it's often easier for journalists and fans alike to ignore the issue completely, Luther addresses this topic head on, laying out one playbook for better understanding the problems at hand, and a separate playbook for fixing them. The result is a harrowing, detailed account of the ways our national pastime is intertwined with violence against women, and a somewhat hopeful look at how that connection might be disrupted.
--Think Progress

Luther makes a convincing argument that sexual violence is not solely a team-level or institution-level issue...The material in the book is presented clearly and thoughtfully in a way that is easy to understand--even if not easy to reckon with. Luther's recommendations are solid starting points for changing the culture of college football to root our some of the elements that do harm and support the elements that make it great.
--Resources for Gender and Women's Studies

Luther's book is an investigation into of the most major intersections of rape culture and sports culture in the States: college football. With so many high-profile cases of late piling up and attracting sensationalist coverage of late, it's crucial to have a sober-minded, feminist narrative that ties it all together.
--Flavorwire

In Unsportsmanlike Conduct, Luther isn't solely telling sports fans how bad things are. She's also done the incredible emotional labor of building solutions that might give us back some of the joy we once had on game days...We can no longer say the problem is too big to solve.
--Rewire

Parents would be well-advised to pick up a copy of a new book by Jessica Luther: Unsportsmanlike Conduct. Luther, an investigative reporter who was born pumping the garnet and gold blood that comes with being the progeny of two Florida State Seminoles parents, finds a lot of commonality in the unwritten mission statements shared by Florida State, Notre Dame, Vanderbilt, and Tennessee. The schools' unwritten shared mission appears to be to use all of the resources under the schools' influence to silence young women who accuse their Division-1 (D-1) football players of sexual assault and to create rape culture where women's bodies become the commodities for which young men's athletic skills are the rewards.
--RawStory

From Steubenville to Vanderbilt, stories of rape culture and football repeatedly made local and national headlines in the last couple of years. Though problems with sexual violence have coincided with football since the sport's inception, today a handful of survivors and journalists are bringing the issue to a national spotlight. Jessica Luther, an investigative journalist, is one of them. For the past three years, Luther has added to the dialogue surrounding rape in football. Since 2013, she has kept track of over 110 cases of sexual assault in college football.
--Broadly (VICE)

Jessica Luther's take on the landscape of major college sports is clear and convincing...What distinguishes Unsportsmanlike Conduct from any number of books...is Luther's emphasis on what could be done to promote change.
--Cognoscenti

Jessica Luther's reporting on scandals at Baylor, Vanderbilt, and Tennessee is indispensable to understanding the most explosive, damning story in sports today: the propagation of rape culture in college football. The institutions have failed us all. Rather than teaching young men something about morals, decency and lawfulness, universities have circled the wagons to protect the assailants. Luther's new book, Unsportsmanlike Conduct, addresses the problem head on. It's the latest release from Dave Zirin's Edge of Sports imprint at Akashic, so you can rest assured no punches are pulled. With any luck we may even start to see substantive reform.
--LitHub

Luther explores the playbook that different institutions--universities, the media, the NCAA--seem to follow when it comes to handling sexual assault among student athletes. If everyone runs their plays well, scrutiny dies down quickly, no institution ever has to change how it operates, and the evaporation of these cases into nothingness looks natural. In short, this playbook is why nothing ever changes. Unsportsmanlike Conduct unpacks this societal playbook piece by piece, and not only advocates that we destroy the old plays, but also suggests we replace them with ones that will force us to finally do something about this issue.
--BookPeople Blog

Jessica Luther is an Austin-based journalist doing powerful, important work. Luther...delves into the grim complexities of sexual assault involving football programs on college campuses, exploring the nexus of toxic masculinity, sports-as-big-business and privilege that permits (or often encourages or forces) the victim to become invisible while keeping the focus on the players and how such an event will impact their lives, often with the complicity (tacit or explicit) of coaches, police and the university itself. A crucial read.
--Austin American-Statesman

Luther does a tremendous job...Unsportsmanlike Conduct is a must read for any fan who is no longer satisfied with turning a blind eye toward one of the biggest issues facing not only sports but college campuses. Luther brilliantly analyzes how rape and assault cases have been handled, identifying troubling patterns that continue to persist. Her practical and well thought out proposals for change make too much sense and make you wonder: Why aren't these solutions implemented already
--The White Bronco

Luther's debut book, Unsportsmanlike Conduct, explores the 'playbook' that universities, the NCAA and the media follow when college football players are accused of rape.
--Austin Monthly

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Author Bio

Jessica Luther is an independent writer and investigative journalist living in Austin, Texas. Her work on sports and culture has appeared in the Texas Observer and the Austin Chronicle, and at Sports Illustrated, Texas Monthly, Vice Sports, Guardian Sport, and Bleacher Report. Luther's work gained national attention in August 2015 when writing for Texas Monthly; she and Dan Solomon broke open the story about a Baylor football player on trial for sexual assault, a case known by only a few in the community and not reported in the media for nearly two years.