College Sports

Perhaps more than any other two colleges, Harvard and Yale gave form to American intercollegiate athletics -- a form that was inspired by the Oxford-Cambridge rivalry overseas, and that was imitated by colleges and universities throughout the United States. Focusing on the influence of these prestigious eastern institutions, this fascinating study traces the origins and development of intercollegiate athletics in America from the mid-19th century to the early 20th century. Smith begins with an historical overview of intercollegiate athletics and details the evolution of individual sports -- crew, baseball, track and field, and especially football. Then, skillfully setting various sports events in their broader social and cultural contexts, Smith goes on to discuss many important issues that are still relevant today: student-faculty competition for institutional athletic control; the impact of the professional coach on big-time athletics; the false concept of amateurism in college athletics; and controversies over eligibility rules. He also reveals how the debates over brutality and ethics created the need for a central organizing body, the National Collegiate Athletic Association, which still runs college sports today. Sprinkled throughout with spicy sports anecdotes, from the Thanksgiving Day Princeton-Yale football game that drew record crowds in the 1890s to a meeting with President Theodore Roosevelt on football violence, this lively, in-depth investigation will appeal to serious sports buffs as well as to anyone interested in American social and cultural history.

Big-time college sports embodies the ideals of amateurism and provides an important complement to university education. Or so its apologists would have us believe. As Andrew Zimbalist shows in this unprecedented analysis, college sports is really a massively commercialized industry based on activities that are often irrelevant and even harmful to education. Zimbalist combines groundbreaking empirical research and a talent for storytelling to provide a firm, factual basis for the many arguments that currently rage about the goals, history, structure, incentive system, and legal architecture of college sports. He paints a picture of a system in desperate need of reform and presents bold recommendations to chart a more sensible future.

Zimbalist begins by showing that today's problems are nothing new--that schools have been consumed for more than a century by debates about cheating, commercialism, and the erosion of academic standards. He then takes us into the world of the modern student athlete, explaining the incentives that, for example, encourage star athletes to abandon college for the pros, that create such useless courses as "T

Tracing the evolution of college athletes into university employees, this book describes how the NCAA fashioned an amateur myth to obscure this de facto employer-employee relationship. Sack and Staurowsky show how the amateur myth exploits athletes, undermines education, and confuses the issue of gender equity. They also propose practical reforms.

Contemporary life in the United States would be difficult to understand without examining the pivotal role sports have played in it. Controversies of the Sports World is designed to take readers of all ages into the heart of the tensions and conflicts that arise from the wide-ranging enterprise that now dominates the lives of millions of people. The controversies explored include such issues in sports as recruitment procedures, steroid and other drug use, discrimination against women, discrimination against African Americans, and violence. "References and Resources" sections at the end of each chapter provide readers with annotated cites that will lead them to the sources they need to further explore particular aspects of each topic. The detailed index includes names, places, teams, and concepts which students, teachers, and interested readers can use to explore the controversies that have arisen in this wide-ranging enterprise.

This book demonstrates how colleges might retain threatened varsity programs and expand sports opportunities for women students if they replaced the current commercial model with one that emphasizes student participation. This would benefit the college students who play varsity sports, instead of benefiting the coaches, athletic directors, or over-generous boosters who dominate many programs.

The sports industry presents many unusual and interesting opportunities for the application of economic theory and econometrics. In 15 professional papers, this book addresses current economic issues in the industry, including the problem of competitive balance, the location of professional sports teams and their impact on local communities, managerial decision making, and issues related to labor markets. Extending the previous research in sports economics, the papers reflect the most recent applications of economic theory in this area. The book will be a valuable resource for professional economists working on sports economics topics.