Sports Writer Jessica Luther is Taking on the Big-Time Institutions Perpetuating Campus Rape

Akashic Books

“I didn’t mean to end up on the college football/sexual assault beat; it’s not a fun place to
hang out,” sports journalist Jessica Luther says. “But once you’re there, it’d hard to look
away, to stop caring about its existence.” Luther’s refusal to look away has inspired much
of her reporting as well as her new book, Unsportsmanlike Conduct, a painful account of
how colleges and sports institutions systematically handle—and mishandle—rape accusations.

Luther grew up watching Florida State University football—“born with garnet and gold blood,”
she says—and was devoted to the sport. "I went to every home game, sweating in the blistering
heat of an early-season 11 a.m. start or freezing cold during mid-November rivalry games against
Florida,” she writes. Bad weather and losses never made her doubt her fandom, but the 2013
season did. That’s when news broke that FSU’s number one quarterback recruit, Jameis Winston,
had been accused of rape.

Unsportsmanlike Conduct, out this week, is an intensely detailed look into what happens (and
what doesn’t) when college athletes face charges of sexual violence and how administrators,
schools, coaches and fans are reluctant to hold them accountable as long as they win games and
make their colleges money. Praised by Garbage Time’s Katie Nolan and ESPN’s Jemele Hill, Unsportsmanlike Conduct is a significant and riveting look at how one of the greatest cultural
 tragedies of the millennial generation—the silencing of sexual violence against women on campus
—is nurtured by a system of cover-ups and corporatized crises management. Playboy talked to
Luther about how the institutionalized world of college football specifically can be an incubator
of sexual violence, often from the first day of player recruitment.

 Unsportsmanlike Conduct: College Football and the Politics of Rape Paperback by Jessica Luther