As someone who writes about college sports on a regular basis, I wish so badly that I could stop writing about the topics the college sports industry compels me to cover.
Don't get me wrong, I truly love what I do. As a former DI athlete, freelance sportswriter, and doctoral candidate who studies college sports, there are few things I love more than writing about sports. But the type of sportswriting I do extends far past game-day coverage and feel-good underdog stories. Instead, I cover the policy failures, abuses, injuries, seedy politics, exploitation, and inequities that permeate the college sports industry. More importantly, these things negatively affect college athletes and so, to me, writing about these topics isn't an option, it's a necessity. So much so that I wrote a book about it.
I never intended to publish my debut novel, Surviving the Second Tier, but I was compelled to. In short, it's a fictional dystopia that covers the real-world issues within college sports, and it began as a metaphor. As someone who studies sports policy (and loves to talk about it), I needed a more interesting way to package my research—it turns out that when you tell people you study college sports, they expect a more exciting description than diving headlong into a policy book. After a few too many times of peoples' eyes glazing over once I began reciting policy to them, I began pitching my research by saying “the NCAA is a dystopia.” This piqued enough interest for me to then delve into the policy initiatives I'm passionate about: better healthcare for college athletes, protection against coach abuse, workplace protections, employment status, and gender equity, to name a few. Those conversations stuck, and the plot of my novel was born.
Surviving the Second Tier tells the story of college athletes and the struggles they face in the first-person, allowing the reader to live in their shoes and experience the problems and tensions that college athletes face today. But unlike the modern-day NCAA, my story takes place in the near future under a different collegiate model where, after decades of overspending on fancy facilities, designer gear for athletes, and expensive, high-tech equipment in order to lure recruits, athletic departments found themselves financially depleted.
That's when the governing body of collegiate athletics stepped in with the idea to cut spending by downsizing to a single college sport: fighting. It's a cheap sport, requiring few officials and minimal equipment, and, as a bonus, the flash and violence of televised brawls draws hoards of viewers (and more revenue, of course). My story follows a team of athletes through their postseason as they compete through injuries and high stakes, relational tensions, and the general pressure and stress associated with the lifestyle of a college athlete that current athletes will relate to. Not to mention, the struggles and stigmas of being a Second Tier vs First Tier athlete (similar to how DII athletes are viewed compared to DI or how mid major athletes are viewed compared to Power Five athletes).
I wrote Surviving the Second Tier first and foremost to teach readers, so it's designed for athletes and parents who want to learn more about college sports, and covers topics like recruiting, academics, abuses of power, performance anxiety, work/life balance, and more. It's also a deeply human story about resilience, resistance, fear, grief, dreams, solidarity, and friendship. College and professional athletes are so frequently dehumanized and reduced to statistics and salary totals, so the humanity of my book was a top priority. I hope it changes the way people watch sports and view athletes as we push for change in the deeply flawed, but equally promising, college sports industry. If that sounds like something you're interested in, you can buy Surviving the Second Tier on Amazon here.
Katie (M.K.) Lever is a former Division 1 athlete and current doctoral candidate at the University of Texas at Austin, where she studies NCAA discourse and policy. She is also a freelance sportswriter and creative writer on the side. She is the author of a new book Surviving the Second Tier available on Amazon. Follow Katie on Twitter and Instagram: @leverfever.
* Originally published on February 22, 2022, by Katie Lever, Ph. D
