Players the story of sports and money and the visionaries who fought to create a revolution by matthew futterman simon schuster 2016 336 pages 1763 1299 tells the story of how the business interests of both athletes their agents and sponsors worked to wrest control of sports and athletics from the hands of team owners and rich socially prominent guardians of the pure amateurism of more gentlemanly sports thus changing both the emphasis and the economics of sports forever. Players the story of sports and money and the visionaries who fought to create a revolution. In his first of two books players the story of sports and money and the visionaries who fought to create a revolution futterman tracks some of those changes through the eyes of those . Players is the first book to tell the astonishing narrative behind the creation of the modern sports business a true revolution that moved athletes from the bottom of the financial pyramid to the top it started in 1960 when a young cleveland lawyer named mark mccormack convinced a young golfer named arnold palmer to sign with him mccormack simply believed that the best athletes had more commercial value than they realized and he was right before long he raised palmers annual off