Book Reviews

Burned Orange: Tom Penders and 10 Years at the University of Texas

Addax Publishing Group, 207 pp. $14.95 (paper)

Tom Penders has been gone for two years. And by all appearances, the University of Texas couldn't be happier. Although Penders restored a winning tradition to UT's men's basketball program, his only loyalty was to himself. I wrote a story for the Chronicle in 1998 that implied that UT was wrong to get rid of Penders after a scandal broke out over the release of a player's grades. I was wrong. Penders allegedly authorized the release of former UT player Luke Axtell's grades and then blamed it on others. Instead of taking the fall, he got a $900,000 going-away present and soon got a job at George Washington University. In doing so, he left his longtime assistant, Eddie Oran, who now sells cars in Bastrop, twisting in the wind.

Given that set of circumstances, it's hard not to be a bit disappointed in Kyle Dalton's book on Penders, Burned Orange: Tom Penders and 10 Years at the University of Texas. Although the book is a good, sometimes too thorough, recapitulation of the Penders era, it doesn't go far enough in analyzing what happened and why Penders was forced out. The book is divided into three sections -- early, middle, and final years -- and each contains a tremendous amount of detail about Penders, his players, and the UT basketball program. But the book ends on a flat note, with long transcripts of depositions taken as part of a lawsuit brought by Axtell's family. And while they are interesting, Dalton missed the chance to interpret them for the reader. Dalton forgets that historians must also be critics and therefore have to interpret events. The book also lacks an index, a factor that would make it much more usable. Bottom line: It's a good effort that bounces off the rim.