H. George Frederickson, HOT TICKETS, Crimes, Championships, and Big Time Sports at the University of Kansas (Jefferson, NC: McFarland Books, 2019). 256 pp. $25.00 (soft cover), pISBN: 978‐1‐4766‐7787‐3; eISBN: 978‐1‐4766‐3748‐8

• Published date: 01 November 2020
• Author: Chester A. Newland
• Date: 01 November 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13315

1142 Public Administration Review • No vember | D ecember 2 020

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 80, Iss. 6, pp. 1142–1143. © 2020 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.13315.

H. George Frederickson, HOT TICKETS, Crimes,

Championships, and Big Time Sports at the University of

Kansas (Jefferson, NC: McFarland Books, 2019). 256

pp. $25.00 (soft cover), pISBN: 978-1-4766-7787-3;

eISBN: 978-1-4766-3748-8

True stories, expertly combined and

documented by vast professional research,

make this study an instructive page-turner.

The contents demonstrate that some important

realities remain vastly more intriguing than the

most inventive fiction. The extensive research

is documented in detailed chapter notes and

two appendixes. Along with the knowledgeable

bibliography, these sources constitute comprehensively

informed scholarship. They compellingly support this

masterfully told Story of Stories.

This book is, indeed, a Hot Tickets item. It is a

thriller to read. It is filled with examples to study.

Importantly, it is thoughtfully well grounded in Public

Administration research and practice.

Basketball, university affairs (in every sense of that

term), justice systems, communities and cultures, and

dynamics among those and other aspects of human

society are central research subjects.

Scoundrels and their opposites are studied in detail:

behavioral research into misbehaviors and virtues.

The Kansas Ticket Gang of seven individuals who

each and together became miscreants capture and

hold attention throughout their developing stories.

Together, their behaviors become a story of a few

million dollars lost, along with punctuated lives,

including imprisonments. Concerning these examples,

Frederickson notes that “Usually crime in sports will

be found wherever money is exchanged” and that

“Tickets are fungible, having a wonderful capacity to

be interchangeable, to be substituted in place of one

another” (41).

A related example of money-driven criminal conduct

researched and reported by Frederickson involves

real estate in Lawrence and a development venture

in Junction City (the site of Fort Riley). This is a

story of corruption of a city council member there

and a disaster for a “Who Done It” developer. It

has instructive relevance. As in other stories in this

book, Frederickson cuts to basics. When confronted

by a FBI agent with a subpoena, the developer

wondered “Who ratted me out?”. Pointedly reflecting,

Frederickson cites Shakespeare’s Henry IV: “A plague

upon it when thieves cannot be true one to another”

(130). The Bard’s observation suitably applies

throughout this book.

Respected exemplars of virtue are also researched and

explained. For example, U.S. District Judge Wesley

Brown was widely respected as an epitome of justice

at age 102 when he presided over punishments meted

out to the guilty seven. This study reports in clear

detail how that nationally admired judge performed

with professionally expert objectivity. It also notes

briefly other realties of the justice system, including

U.S. Bureau of Prisons institutions.

Of central importance, Frederickson reports how,

throughout this very messy Hot Tickets Scandal,

the University of Kansas continued to prosper

as a member of the elite American Association

of Universities (AAU) and of how KU Athletics

continued to earn NCAA acclaim. Several separate,

side-by-side, and joined distinctions account for

merits of AAU institutions. Endowments, grants,

earnings, and state funds strongly support KU

faculty and student research and other performance

accomplishments in arts, sciences, and other varied

human endeavors. And at KU, Athletics, basketball

in particular, operates as both a defining sport and a

large financial enterprise.

Basketball came of age early on at KU. Frederickson

recounts the sport’s creation and development. He

traces its sustained Kansas support. Among those

accounts is The Story of KU alumni acquisition of

the two-page statement of James Naismith’s Original

Rules of Basket Ball, at a cost of $4.38 million. That

purchase at Sotheby’s December 2010 auction was

followed by the construction of a new KU building

at a cost of $22 million to house that artifact adjacent

to basketball’s Allen Fieldhouse. Frederickson probes

Reviewed by: Chester A. Newland

Chester A. Newland is a past ASPA,

President & former

PAR

Editor in Chief. He

is Emeritus Distinguished Professor of Public

Administration at the University of Southern

California.

E-mail: newland@usc.edu

Book Reviews

Galia Cohen, Editor University of Southern University