Don Maker

The Jersey Jupiters Don Maker

Rufus Ruggio, sports editor of The New York Chronicle, can't stand the way Georg Rockburner, millionaire owner of the local professional football team, runs his operation. In the mid-1950s, during the days before the NFL became a mega-corporation, franchise fees and player salaries were very low. Rufus and the other members of the Poker Pack, his regular Saturday night buddies who drink, swap sports stories and play poker badly, decide to start their own team. After twenty-four years in the sports news business, Rufus knows that professional sports is all about entertainment, and embraces all shady deals, crazy promotions and low-budget tactics to field a franchise. Can the motley group of former players and future wannabes overcome their own ineptitude, not to mention the playing conditions, racial discrimination and lack of public interest during that era to survive, let alone win a few games? THE JERSEY JUPITERS give it their best shot.