Simulating Success: From Worst to First - The Story of Ricky Charisma and the Western Illinois Leathernecks

Simulating Success: From Worst to First, The Story of Ricky Charisma and the Western Illinois Leathernecks is about sports, esports, community, university, family, unity, and most importantly, adversity.

Nothing in America says tradition like College Sports. There is nothing more unifying than following your team, rooting for them to make it to March Madness, and cheering them on once they get there. So what if there is no March Madness?

So was there another, safer way to give sports fans everywhere what they wanted? Sportswriter Rick O’Donnell came up with the idea to simulate one on a 12 year-old XBOX 360 CollegeHoops 2K8 game. He created a character by the name of Coach Rick Charisma, and chose to coach The Western Illinois Leathernecks. WIU is a D-1 team with only one winning season in the last 22 years. Could it be possible to try to lead them to victory in this game? Thousands of readers wanted to find out.

This novel by Thanh Thai Nguyen takes Rick O’Donnell’s newsletter into deeper dimensions, unifying the real world with the simulated world, and offers a glimpse into the minds of those who play sports, those who play video games, and the worlds that they are a part of. The novel is a transcendental experience, a genre-bending fiction about the world we live in inside of our minds, as well as the reality that confronts it once we step out of that world.

Get on the bus, join us for the ride. It will be an experience that will change the way you look at college sports forever.