The Last Amateurs is a book by John Feinstein

John Feinstein

John Feinstein is an American sportswriter, author and sports commentator who wrote the top two best-selling non-fiction sports books in history, A Good Walk Spoiled and A Season on the Brink.-Early life:...

. First published in 2000, the book chronicles the 1999–2000 Patriot League

Patriot League

The Patriot League is a college athletic conference which operates in the northeastern United States. It participates in the NCAA's Division I) for a number of sports; in football, it participates in the Football Championship Subdivision...

 basketball

Basketball

Basketball is a team sport in which two teams of five players try to score points by throwing or "shooting" a ball through the top of a basketball hoop while following a set of rules...

 season.

It emphasizes the efforts of the true scholar-athletes at the highly respected institutions that make up the league, where academics come first, and athletes play for love of the game rather than as a farm team

Farm team

In sports, a farm team, farm system, feeder team or nursery club, is generally a team or club whose role is to provide experience and training for young players, with an agreement that any successful players can move on to a higher level at a given point...

 for the NBA.

The 7 teams in the Patriot League at the time the book was written were Bucknell, Army, Navy, Lehigh, Lafayette, Holy Cross, and Colgate. American University has subsequently joined the league.