North Carolina's Wizard Of Id

THE MAN WATCHING
by Tim Crothers
Sports Media Group, $26.95

This week the North Carolina women's soccer team will try to win its 19th national title in 26 years. Yet while the physical hallmarks of coach Anson Dorrance's program will be apparent at the tournament, it takes Tim Crothers's fascinating new biography, The Man Watching, to understand the coach who created a new kind of women's sports culture.

Crothers, a former SI senior writer, spent four years interviewing more than 120 sources, including Dorrance, who granted Crothers complete access. The result is an unvarnished portrait of a women's team that revels in its liberated sports id. Dorrance is a mesmerizing orator, and Crothers reveals the stark emotional power that Dorrance wields over his teams. That intimacy is both a key to Dorrance's success and the source of his darkest hour. He talks in detail for the first time of the sexual harassment lawsuit brought against him in 1998 by former player Debbie Keller. (The case was settled in 2004, with UNC paying Keller $70,000. Dorrance apologized for jesting about players' sexual activities, while Keller admitted that Dorrance had never made a pass at her.) Still, the most powerful words in The Man Watching may come from Dorrance's players, whose e-mails and letters to the coach reveal a fiercely loyal bond. They helped me with a decades-old question: If I had a daughter, would I want her to play for Dorrance? After reading The Man Watching, the answer is yes.