Gotcha Down (2004)

Big-time gambling and Big-Ten football clash on the field and off in a Gotcha Down‘s rousing story of greed and competition during one season in the game.

Clark Cattoor had just landed the ideal job in the ideal city. There may be no better place than Madison, Wisconsin, for a well-paid, suddenly single, television sportscaster. The football season was just weeks away and Clark was in the middle of it.

So was Randy Munson, a long-time assistant football coach at Wisconsin State and an old friend of Clark’s. Wisconsin State had suffered through a second straight losing season.

The vultures were circling overhead. Randy knew a third losing season would send he, his wife and their three kids in search of a new job in a new town.

But Randy Munson had one thing going for him: he called the team’s plays. The temptation was too strong. Just when both men were at the door of the Big Score, a walk-on placekicker named Jake Steffon would unknowingly decide, with his right foot, whether Randy Munson and Clark Cattoor would pull off the most elaborate game-fixing scheme in the history of college football.

Set in one of America’s premiere college sports towns, Chris Earl’s Gotcha Down brings the authenticity of a big-time college football program spinning out of control with the excitement of a lifelong fan. Gotcha Down is a wild ride, through the eyes of three different men, each with a stake in what happens as 63,000 people watch every Saturday.

Gotcha Down was featured, at length, on KMOX-AM 1120 St. Louis (America’s Sports Voice), FOX Sports Radio with J.T. and The Brick, WIBA-AM (Madison), WTDY-AM (Madison), WAUK-AM (Milwaukee), WDSM-AM (Duluth), WCCO-AM (Minneapolis), WIBW-AM (Topeka), along with reviews and articles in the Wisconsin State Journal, Madison Capital Times, Duluth News Tribune, Eau Claire Leader-Telegram, The Onion and the Lakeland (MI) Times.

Gotcha Down is published by Jones Books of Madison.