Yesterday Gilbert Gaul, the author of Billion Dollar Ball visited our school and talked about his book and other college sports topics. Mr. Gaul put countless hours of time and dedication to write this book, by visiting division one schools from across the nation and setting up interviews with the schools. It took him many weeks to try and get an interview with Nick Saban, the head football coach of Alabama. Mr. Gaul sent countless emails and letters to the Alabama headquarters, and one day he got a call back that he can not talk with Saban but he could get an interview with some of the athletes and the athletic director. He could only do this all under some circumstances from the athletic director, he could not ask any athletes about anything related to tax. He used this interview as a huge start up for his book and helped him get to where he is today.
Mr. Gaul also talks about how college head coaches are making a substantial amount of money compared to the school's chancellor or professors. When he set up interviews with all of these world renown schools he found out some very intriguing information about the student athletes. The athletes are all taking very similar courses, and when Mr. Gaul looked into these classes he realized that they were the easiest courses offered on campus. He also noted that the big time athletes being recruited to Princeton, Harvard, etc. for sports, they do not have the required GPA and SAT scores needed to apply at that school. But because they are athletes, the school does not worry about that aspect. Overall, I think Mr. Gaul was very influential to our class and I learned many new things I never knew before about his book and Gilbert Gaul himself.
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