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The Capital Times When Chris Earl decided to attend the University of Wisconsin, he had this dream of playing for Steve Yoder's basketball team. Alas, Yoder was fired before Earl arrived in Madison in August of 1992.
But Earl's hoops dream died hard, as Stu Jackson, Stan Van Gundy and Dick
Bennett summarily cut him after walk-on tryouts. So Earl gravitated toward sports journalism when he wasn't delivering pizzas or working as a blackjack dealer at Ho-Chunk Casino. He worked as a sports correspondent for The Capital Times in 1996-97, covering the defunct Madison Monsters hockey team during, as Earl puts it, "the unforgettable Dave Schultz days." Earl, now sports director at the CBS affiliate in Duluth, is still writing and still dreaming big dreams with his very fertile imagination. His first novel, "Gotcha Down," has just been released, and it's sure to be noticed, if not totally appreciated, in these parts. "Gotcha Down" spins a tale about a desperate, down-on-his-luck offensive coordinator, Randy Munson, who crafts a sinister game fixing scheme at get this, Wisconsin State. His friend, smart aleck sportscaster Clark Cattoor, is along for the ride. Wisconsin State becomes Madison's second Big Ten school when Penn State suddenly backs out in 1991. The Boars play in 63,000-seat Mendota Stadium on the shores of Lake Monona. The school, a land-grant university, has high-rise dorms on the southeast edge of campus and holds preseason camp at Meadow Hill Seminary. The Boars won three Rose Bowl games in the 1990s. Sound familiar? Earl, who was born in New Jersey, grew up in Kansas City and went to high school in St. Louis. He also has worked at TV stations in Eau Claire and Topeka, Kan., but his days in Madison had a lasting impact, as "Gotcha Down" reveals. "I thought, 'If I can't be in Madison, I can bring it to me,' " he said of the novel's setting. "It was kind of therapeutic." "I wanted to pick a college setting where the campus pretty much shuts down so they can watch football in the fall," Earl added. "It certainly was like that when I went to school at the UW in the 1990s. The mood of the campus was pretty much set by what happened on those Saturdays. It was a magical time, especially when they went to the Rose Bowl in 1993. I wanted to capture some of that." The NCAA and big-time college sports programs live in fear of gambling, and the Northwestern men's basketball point-shaving scandal in 1995 remains a vivid memory in the Big Ten. A 2003 study commissioned by the NCAA surveyed more than 20,700 athletes in all three divisions. Among male athletes in Division I, 17 percent said they had wagered on collegiate sports. And 1.1 percent of Division I football players in the sample said they accepted money for playing poorly in a game, and 2.3 percent said they had been approached to fix games. There are more than 10,000 Division I football players. Do the math. So is "Gotcha Down" a cautionary story? "It might be," Earl said. "I go back to my own experience on campus. I didn't know any athletes involved in it, but gambling on sporting events was so prevalent, especially my first year in the dorm. We had people that were on the hook every week." And campus gambling has grown exponentially since then. "Internet gambling is so unregulated," Earl said. "I think that is the next great scandal that will come out of college sports. The why, the where and the who are all to be determined. That's where 'Gotcha Down' comes in, because the coach and sportscaster both use Internet gambling to rack up six figures, sometimes for the team they are covering and coaching, and sometimes against." Earl is hard at work on his second novel, one with a pro football slant that also will hit close to home. "It's Minnesota-Green Bay," he said. "It's got some politics, some dirty dealings. It's about sabotage between organizations." It should be a hit in two states. Book Signing |
 
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