The wife of Notre Dame's head basketball coach, Digger Phelps, describes school President Theodore Hesburgh's insistence that athletes do well in academics and presents a disturbing portrait of Notre Dame athletics following Hesburgh's retirement. For 20 years Digger Phelps was head basketball coach at Notre Dame. His students graduated and played good basketball, but they never won a championship. After Theodore Hesburgh retired as president of Notre Dame, the school's emphasis switched from academics to winning. Phelps's wife uses the struggle between her husband and the new administration as a framework on which to hang her insider's account of big-time college sports and the pressures it can exert on a marriage. Along the way, readers learn how her efforts to be more than a coach's wife led her to become the first female to earn B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees from Notre Dame. This belongs in most college sports and women's studies collections. - Terry Madden, Boise State Univ. Lib., Id. Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. The author is the wife of former Notre Dame basketball coach Richard ("Digger") Phelps. She's also a tenured professor in the Notre Dame law school. Her autobiography offers a unique, very personal glimpse into an often-overlooked corner of big-money college athletics--the lives of the coaches' wives. Twenty-five years ago, when Teresa Godwin married Digger Phelps, he was a junior-high coach in Trenton, New Jersey, and she was a young woman without a solid direction in life, content to be a coach's wife. But as Digger's career progressed and she was often left alone, Teresa became determined to forge her own career. She gave the parties and acted as the hostess for her husband, but she also developed her own status within the university community. Other coaches' wives have told their stories before, and they were usually tinged with bitterness. Not so here. Digger didn't hold Teresa back but, rather, encouraged and supported her as she did him. This book is about many things: college basketball, coaching, university politics, and personal growth, among them. Ultimately, though,what emerges is a love story. The Phelps have a good thing going and are to be envied. Wes Lukowsky Phelps (Law/Notre Dame), wife of ex-Notre Dame basketball coach ``Digger'' Phelps, pulls no punches in this intelligent, skillful account of her family's 20 years in South Bend. When Coach Phelps (whom the author refers to as ``Dick,'' forgoing the nickname her husband acquired as an undertaker's son) was told after the 1990-91 season--his 20th at Notre Dame--to resign or be fired, the news came as no surprise. The Phelpses had heard the boos over the past couple of seasons and were well aware of the ``Dump Digger'' clamor. But according to the author, Phelps's mediocre 1989-90 record of 16-12 was only a part of the problem. The trouble began, she says, when Notre Dame's longtime president, Fr. Theodore Hesburgh, retired and a new administration took over--one that emphasized winning ``at any cost.'' The ``new plutocratic regime'' measured success only by the bottom line, Phelps contends, and ignored her husband's many 20-win seasons; his value as part of the school community; and the fact that 100% of his players went on to graduate, compared to the 33% national rate for varsity basketball players. Phelps quotes the school's new athletic director, Dick Rosenthal, as boasting that he would ``schedule Digger out of a job'' with a grueling 1990-91 slate of games that included only 12 home games--and most of those played just prior to exams. On a more personal note, as the author writes of her marriage and children, she makes clear that she knew early on that she wouldn't be simply a ``lovely wife,'' a media creature who was ``trivial, irrelevant, interchangeable.'' She goes on to proffer some practical advice to the NCAA rules committee regarding eligibility, and remarks that colleges need to create an atmosphere ``in which athletes can exploit their educational opportunities as much as we exploit the athletes.'' A fine memoir-cum-defense, told from a fresh perspective. (Photographs--not seen) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. Teresa Godwin Phelps is professor of law at the University of Notre Dame Law School.