Dent, Jim

PERSONAL:

Education: Southern Methodist University, graduate.

CAREER:

Journalist and broadcaster. Has worked for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

WRITINGS:

King of the Cowboys: The Life and Times of Jerry Jones, Adams (Holbrook, MA), 1995.

(With Durwood Merrill) You're Out and You're Ugly, Too! Confessions of an Umpire with Attitude, foreword by Ken Griffey, Jr., St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1998.

The Junction Boys: How Ten Days in Hell with Bear Bryant Forged a Championship Team, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1999.

The Undefeated: The Oklahoma Sooners and the Greatest Winning Streak in College Football, Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 2001.

Monster of the Midway: Bronko Nagurski, the 1943 Chicago Bears, and the Greatest Comeback Ever, Thomas Dunne Books (New York, NY), 2003.

Twelve Mighty Orphans: The Inspiring True Story of the Mighty Mites Who Ruled Texas Football, Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 2007.

SIDELIGHTS:

Sports journalist Jim Dent has specialized as a football reporter, covering both professional and college teams, especially in Texas. His first book, King of the Cowboys: The Life and Times of Jerry Jones, is a portrait of the controversial Dallas Cowboys owner whose ambition is credited with changing the game in such areas as revenue sharing and ticket policies. Though the Cowboys, led by coach Tom Landry at the time, were highly successful, Jones was not much liked by colleagues, players, and fans. He was also a "boozer and womanizer," according to a Sports Illustrated review by Ron Fimrite. Although Dent acknowledges Jones's shortcomings, he also "gives the devil his due," wrote Fimrite, though sometimes in "overheated prose."

Dent followed his debut with You're Out and You're Ugly, Too! Confessions of an Umpire with Attitude, a collaboration with former umpire Durwood Merrill. Unlike most of Dent's books, this one is about baseball and is "an honest and rather original look at baseball and its players, managers, and umpires," according to Andrew Riccobono in the Library Journal. The intent of the book is to try to change many fans' minds about umpires and give them their due.

Returning to football with The Junction Boys: How Ten Days in Hell with Bear Bryant Forged a Championship Team, Dent chronicles the legendary career of Texas A & M coach Paul "Bear" Bryant, who made a weak college team into a force to be reckoned with. Bryant coached his team from the mid- 1950s through the mid-1980s to become the Division I coach with the strongest win record of his day. Dent, however, focuses not on the seasons so much as on Bryant's harsh coaching methods. He would take his players out to the remote Texas town of Junction and drill them relentlessly in blistering heat, even denying them water to drink. Many of the players quit from exhaustion. This effectively whittled the team down from one hundred potential players to thirty-four. Getting his information from interviews with the people who were there, Dent portrays the coach as he was, a frightening customer who would abuse his players, though the author "excuses Bryant's excesses as part of what it takes to build winning character," reported a Publishers Weekly critic, who praised Dent as "a smooth storyteller." Booklist reviewer Wes Lukowsky similarly declared the book to be a "vividly recounted" tale that "effectively transports readers back to a time when coaches answered to no one."

The college gridiron is again the setting in Dent's The Undefeated: The Oklahoma Sooners and the Greatest Winning Streak in College Football. The focus here is on the 1950s Oklahoma Sooners and their coach, Bud Wilkinson. From 1953 to 1957, Wilkinson set a record forty-seven straight wins. Although he had clear flaws—a Publishers Weekly critic noted the coach's womanizing ways and "blatant recruiting corruption"—he also had admirable qualities and is the clear hero of the book. Along with being a portrait of Wilkinson, the author attempts to capture the excitement of the times, an effort that many critics regarded as successful. Although the author "barely avoids falling into overwrought nostalgia peddling," according to the Publishers Weekly writer, Lukowsky asserted in another Booklist review that he "vividly invokes time, place, and personality" in a "fascinating account." Larry R. Little, writing for Library Journal, stated that Dent "effectively captures the character of Wilkinson."

Unlike the unpleasant coaches of Dent's previous books, in Monster of the Midway: Bronko Nagurski, the 1943 Chicago Bears, and the Greatest Comeback Ever, the monster earns his name for size, not surliness. Bronko's size was such that he was compared to the mythical Paul Bunyan, though his 225-pound frame would not be considered extraordinary today. Playing at a time before players received huge contracts and merchandise endorsements, Bronko represented the spirit of the early game that Dent clearly admires. Some reviewers noted that the author gets carried away, consequently bogging down the tale with "clichés, non sequiturs, weird metaphors and jumbled narration," according to Stu Hackel, writing in Sports Illustrated. Booklist critic Lukowsky merely called Monster of the Midway a "serviceable biography," but a Bookreporter.com contributor insisted that "Dent has portrayed the essence and spirit of professional football in its early days," adding that the book "may very well be the best sports book of 2003."

Twelve Mighty Orphans: The Inspiring True Story of the Mighty Mites Who Ruled Texas Football is about how coach Rusty Russell took a group of undersized boys from the Masonic Home in Forth Worth, Texas, and turned their Class B high school team into a dominating Class A threat. Called the Mighty Mites because they averaged only about one hundred pounds each, Russell's team made up with speed and cool plays from a seven-hundred-page playbook what they lacked in size. They dominated Texas high school football from the late 1920s through the 1930s. Because the team never won a championship, however, there is no "ready-made climax," according to a Kirkus Reviews writer, who felt that Dent's book consequently "meanders." Writing in Booklist, Lukowsky, however, assured readers that the author manages to build a "sense of drama and immediacy." A Publishers Weekly contributor believed that Dent tends to "mythologize the team" so the players do not come across as "flesh and blood" people. The reviewer attested, though, that Dent's "strength is his play-by-play accounts of key games."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, July, 1999, Wes Lukowsky, review of The Junction Boys: How Ten Days in Hell with Bear Bryant Forged a Championship Team, p. 1916; September 1, 2001, Wes Lukowsky, review of The Undefeated: The Oklahoma Sooners and the Greatest Winning Streak in College Football, p. 33; October 1, 2003, Wes Lukowsky, review of Monster of the Midway: Bronko Nagurski, the 1943 Chicago Bears, and the Greatest Comeback Ever, p. 293; July 1, 2007, Wes Lukowsky, review of Twelve Mighty Orphans: The Inspiring True Story of the Mighty Mites Who Ruled Texas Football, p. 20.

Kirkus Reviews, July 1, 2001, review of The Undefeated, p. 913; June 15, 2007, review of Twelve Mighty Orphans.

Library Journal, March 15, 1998, Andrew Riccobono, review of You're Out and You're Ugly, Too! Confessions of an Umpire with Attitude, p. 72; July, 1999, Larry R. Little, review of The Junction Boys, p. 100; July, 2001, Larry R. Little, review of The Undefeated, p. 99; October 1, 2003, John M. Maxymuk, review of Monster of the Midway, p. 86.

Publishers Weekly, August 16, 1999, review of The Junction Boys, p. 73; July 9, 2001, review of The Undefeated, p. 57; May 28, 2007, review of Twelve Mighty Orphans, p. 46.

Sports Illustrated, December 11, 1995, Ron Fimrite, review of King of the Cowboys: The Life and Times of Jerry Jones, p. 87; September 17, 2001, Ron Fimrite, "Books: Exposing the Seamy Side of the Great Oklahoma Teams and Women's Tennis," review of The Undefeated, p. 4; October 27, 2003, Stu Hackel, review of Monster of the Midway, p. 8.

Tribune Books (Chicago, IL), September 8, 2002, review of The Undefeated, p. 6.

Wall Street Journal, November 22, 1995, Stanley W. Angrist, review of King of the Cowboys, p. 8; September 14, 2001, Roger Lowenstein, "The Sooners and Their Streaks," review of The Undefeated, p. 6.

ONLINE

Bookreporter.com,http://www.bookreporter.com/ (March 1, 2008), Stuart Shiffman, review of Monster of the Midway; Troy Froebe, review of The Undefeated.