Armen Keteyian spent seven years as the chief investigative correspondent for "CBS News." For years, he's been a contributing correspondent for "60 Minutes" and is currently the lead reporter for "60 Minutes Sports." He previously worked for Sports Illustrated and "HBO Real Sports." He's won 11 Emmys and has reported around the globe, written bestselling books and uncovered corruption in nearly every walk of life.

And nothing was quite the challenge of tackling college football.

"This was the most ambitious project I've ever taken on," Keteyian told Yahoo! Sports, discussing his new book, "The System: The Glory and Scandal of Big-Time College Football," co-written by Jeff Benedict of Sports Illustrated.

" 'The System' is what runs college football and it both entertains and builds people and institutions up and it tears them down," Keteyian said. "You can be used by it, abused by it, churned up by it. So many people have had their life changed by getting in the middle of it, for better and worse."

Here's the brief recommendation: It's the best book on the sport written in years (and that's coming from someone who has written a couple). "The System" will shock casual fans as the saturation reporting peels back the veneer on everything from coaching politics, to sexual tension in tutoring labs, to the role of recruiting hostesses, to back-stabbing conference realignment, to super boosters, and so on.

Even the hardcore fans, though, will be surprised – everyone knows this is a wild business, just not in such detail. It also serves as a mini-recap of recent college football history, tying together the hot stories from the past five years, ranging from Ohio State to Tennessee to Texas Tech to BYU and so on and so on.

It's a heck of a book. I'm not sure what else I can say to encourage you to read it.





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And it is sure to make plenty of waves as the original reporting by Keteyian and Benedict inspires reactions. Here are some of the highlights from an advance copy provided to Yahoo! Sports:

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• A thorough retelling of the Ohio State "tattoogate" scandal including the previously unreported transcripts of NCAA interviews by Jim Tressel and athletic director Gene Smith.

You can see Tressel hanging himself with his own words as he tries to explain his cover-up of the scandal that doomed his career and led to major sanctions against the program. Meanwhile, on a separate issue, Smith is vague on some details but claims he was forceful in multiple conversations with booster Bobby DiGeronimo, who was cited for overpaying players for work at his companies and later banned from associating with the Buckeyes for the next 10 years.

That leads to DiGeronimo, who speaks publicly for the first time, to slam Smith, claiming the two never had the conversations Smith claims they did.

"Never," DiGeronimo said. "Never called me. Never called me one time. Never. We never had a conversation about that. There was nothing. He's lying. He's outright lying. Never any meeting. Never any voicemail. Everything he says is a lie. Everything."

Smith declined to comment on the book.

"The System" also presents the case that NCAA investigators were overzealous in parts of their investigation against Ohio State, most notably in ignoring some pretty compelling evidence that DiGeronimo overpaid player DeVier Posey by a mere $3.07 and should never have received a five-game suspension for that. It also shows the seemingly differing and troubling standards for players and coaches/administrators, where the former must recall every detail precisely or risk eligibility, while the latter is allowed to struggle with specifics.

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