Paul Finebaum, Mobile Press-Register sports columnist and host of a daily syndicated talk-radio show from Birmingham:

“When the galley to All Guts and No Glory arrived in the mail in early spring, I shook my head, saying, ‘I know it sounds interesting, but I’ve been there and done that.’ How many more books can I handle set with the civil rights movement as the backdrop? A month later, with the tome gathering dust, I had inched no closer to cracking it open. Finally, knowing the deadline was knocking on the door, I took a shot and honestly couldn’t put the book down. From the first page until the last, I was rivited by the words, dancing off the page, singing and humming and resonationg in a way I could not have imagined.

“The book by Bill Elder, who has spent more than a quarter of a century as an athletic director and coach, has an eagle-eye approach to the early days of desegregation in Alabama. Brilliantly reported and exquisitely written, All Guts and No Glory should be a must reading for those interested in politics and religion as well as the sports audience.

“Unlike many historical accounts of this dark era in American history, to say nothing of Alabama, Elder takes you there on the front line, or in his case the front row, as he painstakingly details his own experiences as the basketball coach at Northeast Alabama Junior College. He recruited the first black player to the school, and he talks about the cause and effect of his gut-wrenching and decisive decision.

“Interestingly, it wasn’t easy at first, not only because of the ground-breaking move but because black players didn’t want to play there. Much of this had to do with the setting on Sand Mountain, just a stone’s throw from Scottsboro, where one of the seminal moments in modern American history occurred-the famous case of the Scottsboro Boys.

“Elder does a skillful job of weaving his profound faith into the ideas and ideals written in the book without being preachy. And in the end, the reader is treated to a wonderful personal journey through one of Alabama’s darkest times.

“It’s also significant that Bill Elder’s journey was not at a major school like Alabama or Auburn where the eyes of the nation were focused. His odyssey took place in the backwoods, which makes this book that much more enjoyable and heartfelt.

“Finally, after reading the book, I had only one minor regret. I wish I had read it sooner.”

Wayne Flynt, Distinguished University Professor, Auburn University:

“Bill Elder's memoir combines the three most powerful and sacred elements of Alabama folk culture: sports, religion, and race. Based on his experiences as basketball coach of Northeast State Junior College when he recrutied the school's first black student-athletes during the racially charged 1970s, Elder reminds us how harrowing those years were for racial iconoclasts in places such as Scottsboro and on Sand Mountain. His strength is recognizing paradox when he sees it: the evangelical religious values that provoked him to challenge segregation while different religious values caused his Southern Baptist brethren to ostracize him; college faculty and administrators who encouraged his martyrdom while running for cover themselves; sports offering opportunities for blacks that churches rejected. Memoirs like Elder's ... open entirely new vistas into the civil rights struggles after laws were changed but hearts stayed pretty much the same.”

Clifton L. Taulbert, author of Once upon a Time When We Were Colored:

“Through the lens of basketball, Bill Elder provides an honest look at the complicated and deep-seated issues of race while he was growing up and becoming a man (player and basketball coach) in pre-integrated Alabama.”

Nancy Grisham Anderson, Distinguished Teaching Associate Professor of English and Philosophy/Director, Actions Build Communities, Auburn University Montgomery:

“All Guts and No Glory is a painful story told with poignancy and candor. Such a narrative reminds us once again that we must remember our history so that we are not cursed to repeat it.”

John Ed. Mathison, Senior Pastor, Frazer United Methodist Church:

“Bill Elder coached during a time of high racial tensions, but knew what was right and proceeded to do what was right. He faced many adversities, but always sensed that God was with him.”

Chris Doss, Attorney at Law, Birmingham, Alabama:

“Bill Elder is representative of many individual leaders in sensitive positions of surpervision who because of personal belief, were able to facilitate change that reflected and acknowledged genuine value and human worth regardless of skin color. All Guts and No Glory is a profound story of an era when our nation made significant strides at the grassroots, far beyond the court of sports.”

Kristi Oberholzer, Copy Editor, The Plainsman:

“Elder writes about the team’s struggle for acceptance, and its eventual success on the court and off, by proving a strong sense of unity to the entire sports community throughout the state.”

Auburn University Montgomery Professor of English Dr. Alan Gribben, special to the Montgomery Advertiser:

“Surely most college coaches contemplate the idea of writing a book about their sports world experiences after they retire, but Bill Elder, who spent forty years as a coach and athletic director on various Alabama campuses, managed to accomplish this feat.

“Elder confines his first memoir to his days as a student-athlete in the 1950s and 1960s and his first job at the age of twenty-three as basketball coach and athletic director at the fledgling Northeast State Junior College. The school was located close to Sand Mountain, an Appalachian ridge of insular communities known nowadays for its tasty tomatoes but in 1965 deserving its reputation as a Klan-dominated hotbed of resistance to the Civil Rights movement. In the nearby town of Scottsboro, to Elder’s disgust, the movie theater still enforced a ‘Colored Only’ balcony.

“Initially Elder abided by stipulated racial restrictions in recruiting his players, but in his fourth season the college president gave Elder the green light to racially integrate his basketball team. Elder began rounding up prospective African American players, hoping to emulate Vanderbilt’s decision three years earlier to abandon athletic segregation. However, he soon found that while ‘Scottsboro was only about a hundred and fifty miles from Nashville,’ in terms of the citizens’ willingness to accept change ‘it might as well have been in another country.’

“Two of Elder’s black signees and their white teammates were immediately taunted and assaulted with fists outside a campus-area restaurant, and a mob stormed the school looking for black basketball players. Intruders broke into the black players’ house and turned on the gas stove. Members of the Klan became so increasingly bold in their attacks that the school’s registrar suggested, ‘as a friend,’ that Elder tell the black athletes ‘it would better for them to go home before someone gets seriously hurt.’

“Elder’s prose style is succinct and unequivocal. ‘The first thing that I did after basketball practice that day was to go into Scottsboro and apply for a permit to carry a pistol. Since the . . . local thugs were all armed, I might as well be, too.’ When the team played Brewer State Junior College in Fayette, Elder had his team picked up at another location, which proved to be a prudent decision, since the empty bus was blocked on Highway 35 by cars carrying a group of men with guns looking for the black players. After a local attorney named Loy Campbell was critically injured by a car bomb in 1972 for defending black clients, Elder was warned in a telephone call that ‘you might be next.’ Shunned at the faculty table in the school cafeteria, Elder found that his applications for other coaching jobs brought no responses. Reluctantly he gave up his coaching job and left for Tuscaloosa to study for a doctorate degree to qualify himself for athletic administration. Nevertheless, ‘I am convinced now,’ writes Elder, ‘that one reason God placed me on earth was to coach at Northeast State Junior College and provide an opportunity for black athletes to get a college education.’

“Elder’s All Guts and No Glory deserves a place on the short shelf of highly readable coaches’ memoirs as well as (on a higher shelf) inclusion in the stack of titles recording the toll of breaking down color barriers to create the New South.”

Angela Reinhardt, Frazer Family News:

“I was excited when I learned that Frazer Memorial United Methodist Church member Bill Elder had written his first book and was open to having it reviewed for the Frazer Family News. I agreed immediately, without knowing so much as the title, nor what the book was about.

“I was suprised when I found out the book was an autobiography of Bill’s life as a college basketball coach in segregated Alabama.

“Admittedly, I am not a big sports fan, but I decided not to let that deter me from giving the book and honest chance and seeing how God would speak to me through it.

“With that said, I can say that Bill’s book, All Guts and No Glory, is more that a coach’s story about how he lead his team to victory, or how he got to be a coach in the first place. In fact, the book has something most don’t; an underlying foundation of historical facts interwoven with a gentle mention of Christ.

“In 1970, Bill met much opposition and prejudice when he recuited the first black basketball player for a small community college in Sand Mountain, Alabama. From that point, both Bill and the players he was coaching became the target for many racial attacks including attempts on his and his players’ lives on more that one occassion.

“Elder tells his story with great passion and proves readily that God truly does endow His chosen with great courage and wisdom.

“I am not from Alabama, in fact I grew up in California, and can honestly say that I was taught nothing about the struggles and hardships that occurred in the South during the 1960s and ’70s. This book not only taught me what a battle it was fighting for desegregation, but how important such an act was for the country as a whole.

“Bill’s story is an empowering one. He not only writes with honesty and recounts the various trials he faced, but he presents it with an non-threatening tone and quietly speaks of his love for Christ and the way it influenced him. In fact, Bill avoids saturating his story with sermons and teachings, and instead focuses on letting his experience as a whole speak for itself. Truly, it does.

“As I read the autobiography, I felt a bit convicted. In his early twenties, Bill had the courage and wisdom to stand up for what was right, and aid in the change for freedom and viewing everyone as equal. To tackle such a feat proves the strength of our God has and reflects His will to truly use His people to make a difference and stand up for what is right.

“I met Bill briefly just before I started reading his story. During our discussion he said something that has stuck with me during my time of reading the book. ‘As a child I can remember observing the ways of racial prejudice and never having it sit well with me. I guess God was always preparing me for my first job.’

“What a great God we have! A God that works and develops his children early on, and is always preparing us for something much bigger than we could ever imagine. I truly believe this story will inspire everyone who reads it to seek the Lord’s own will for their lives, and to make a change somewhere, somehow, for His Kingdom.”