CO356 - Sport Media - Meister: College Sports

In an era when college football coaches frequently command higher salaries than university presidents, many call for reform to restore the balance between amateur athletics And The educational mission of schools. This book traces attempts at college athletics reform from 1855 through the early twenty-first century while analyzing the different roles played by students, faculty, conferences, university presidents, The NCAA, legislatures, And The Supreme Court.Pay for Play: A History of Big-Time College Athletic Reformalso tackles critically important questions about eligibility, compensation, recruiting, sponsorship, and rules enforcement. Discussing reasons for reform-to combat corruption, To level the playing field, and to make sports more accessible to minorities and women-Ronald A. Smith candidly explains why attempts at change have often failed. Of interest to historians, athletic reformers, college administrators, NCAA officials, and sports journalists, this thoughtful book considers the difficulty in balancing the principles of amateurism with the need to draw income from sporting events.

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.

Chronicling the uneven rise and slow decline of segregation in American college athletics, Charles H. Martin shows how southern colleges imposed their policies of racial exclusion on surprisingly compliant northern teams and explains the social forces that eventually forced these southern schools to accept integrated competition. Martin emphasizes not just the racism prevalent in football and basketball in the South, but the effects of this discrimination for colleges and universities all over the country. Southern teams such as the University of Alabama, University of Mississippi, and the University of North Carolina were obsessed with national recognition, but their Jim Crow policies prevented them for many years from playing against racially mixed teams from other parts of the country. Devoting special attention to the Southeastern Conference, the Atlantic Coast Conference, and teams in Texas, Martin explores the changing social attitudes and culture of competition that turned the tide and allowed for the recruitment of black players and hiring of black coaches. He takes a close look at the case of Texas Western College (now the University of Texas at El Paso), the first major white university in an ex-Confederate state to recruit African American athletes extensively. Martin skillfully weaves existing arguments and documentation on the integration of college sports with wide-ranging, original research, including previously unpublished papers and correspondence of college administrators and athletic directors uncovered in university archives.

In September 1967, after three years of landmark civil rights laws and three months of devastating urban riots, the football season began at Louisiana’s Grambling College and Florida A&M. The teams were led by two extraordinary coaches, Eddie Robinson and Jake Gaither, and they featured the best quarterbacks ever at each school, James Harris and Ken Riley. Breaking the Line brings to life the historic saga of the battle for the 1967 black college championship, culminating in a riveting, excruciatingly close contest. Samuel G. Freedman traces the rise of these four leaders and their teammates as they storm through the season. Together they helped compel the segre­gated colleges of the South to integrate their teams and redefined who could play quarterback in the NFL, who could be a head coach, and who could run a franchise as general manager. In Breaking the Line, Freedman brilliantly tells this suspenseful story of character and talent as he takes us from locker room to state capitol, from embattled campus to packed stadium. He captures a pivotal time in American sport and society, filling a missing and crucial chapter in the movement for civil rights.

There is no event in sports quite like the Final Four. John Feinstein explores what it means to a school, a coach, and a player to be in the Final Four or even at The Final. There are the moving stories of players and coaches who thought theyd never make it to college basketballs final weekend, the spectacular triumphs of the winning teams, and the heartbreaking defeats for those who missed the cut. Feinstein also brings us inspiring and dramatic stories from the people behind the scenes: from the officials and referees to the scouts and ticket-scalpers. With the unflinching eye of a seasoned reporter and the remarkable skill of a true storyteller, Feinstein exposes the driving forces behind one of the most revered events in American sports.

In When March Went Mad, Seth Davis recounts the dramatic story of the season leading up to that game, as Magic Johnson’s Michigan State Spartans and Larry Bird’s Indiana State Sycamores overcame long odds and great doubts that their unheralded teams could compete at the highest level. Davis also tells the stories of their remarkable coaches, Jud Heathcote and Bill Hodges—who were new to their schools but who set their own paths to build great teams—and he shows how tensions over race and class heightened the drama of the competition. When Magic and Bird squared off in Salt Lake City on March 26, 1979, the world took notice—to this day it remains the most watched basketball game in the history of television—and the sport we now know was born.

Story of a 1944 illegal basketball game between the North Carolina College for Negroes in Durham and the Duke University medical school team.

Millions of teenagers accept scholarships to chase their dreams of fame and fortune--at the price of absolute submission to the whims of an organization that puts their interests dead last. For about 5 percent of top-division players, college ends with a golden ticket to the NFL or the NBA. But what about the overwhelming majority who never turn pro? They don't earn a dime from the estimated $13 billion generated annually by college sports--an ocean of cash that enriches schools, conferences, coaches, TV networks, and apparel companies . . . everyone except those who give their blood and sweat to entertain the fans. Indentured tells the dramatic story of a loose-knit group of rebels who decided to fight the hypocrisy of the NCAA, which blathers endlessly about the purity of its 'student-athletes' while exploiting many of them: The ones who get injured and drop out because their scholarships have been revoked. The ones who will neither graduate nor go pro. The ones who live in terror of accidentally violating some obscure rule in the four-hundred-page NCAA rulebook. Joe Nocera and Ben Strauss take us into the inner circle of the NCAA's fiercest enemies.

Written by a respected sportswriter and boasting more than 200 photos, this is a glorious portrait of the great teams, players, plays and coaches in college football.

Oriard considers such issues as the politicization of football in the 1960s and the implications of the integration of college football. The heart of the book examines a handful of decisions by the NCAA in the early seventies--to make freshmen eligible to play, to lower admission standards, and, most critically, to replace four-year athletic scholarships with one-year renewable scholarships--that helped transform student-athletes into athlete-students and turned the college game into a virtual farm league for professional football. Oriard then traces the subsequent history of the sport as it has tried to grapple with the fundamental contradiction of college football as both extracurricular activity and multi-billion-dollar mass entertainment. The relentless necessity to pursue revenue, Oriard argues, undermines attempts to maintain academic standards, and it fosters a football culture in which athletes are both excessively entitled and exploited. As a former college football player, Oriard brings a unique perspective to his topic, and his sympathies are always with the players and for the game. This original and compelling study will interest everyone concerned about the future of college football.

The quarterback sends his wide receiver deep. The crowd gasps as he launches the ball. And when he hits his man, the teams fans roar with approval-especially those with the deep pockets. Make no mistake; college football is big business, played with one eye on the score, the other on the bottom line. But was this always the case? Brian M. Ingrassia here offers the most incisive account to date of the origins of college football, tracing the sports evolution from a gentlemens pastime to a multi-million dollar enterprise that made athletics a permanent fixture on our nations campuses and cemented college footballs place in American culture. He takes readers back to the late 1800s to tell how schools embraced the sport as a way to get the public interested in higher learning-and then how footballs immediate popularity overwhelmed campuses and helped create the beast we know today. Contrary to conventional wisdom, Ingrassia proves that the academy did not initially resist the inclusion of athletics; rather, progressive reformers and professors embraced football as a way to make the ivory tower less elitist. With its emphasis on disciplined teamwork and spectatorship, football was seen as a "middlebrow" way to make the university more accessible to the general public. What it really did was make athletics a permanent fixture on campus with its own set of professional experts, bureaucracies, and ostentatious cathedrals. Ingrassia examines the early football programs at universities like Michigan, Stanford, Ohio State, and others, then puts those histories in the context of Progressive Era culture, including insights from coaches like Georgia Techs John Heisman and Notre Dames Knute Rockne. He describes how reforms emerged out of incidents such as Teddy Roosevelts son being injured on the field and a section of grandstands collapsing at the University of Chicago. He also touches on some of the problems facing current day college football and shows us that we havent come far from those initial arguments more than a century ago. The Rise of Gridiron University shows us where and how it all began, highlighting college footballs essential role in shaping the modern university-and by extension American intellectual culture.

The lead college football writer for Sports Illustrated examines the myths that surround college football and obscure the reality of the game. This edition, first published in 1989, includes a new afterword in which the author reviews some of the major gridiron scandals of the 1990s and new forewords by a university president and a leading scholar in the history of college sports.

A meticulously researched and powerful expose on the epidemic of cover-up that surrounds sexual assault and college football players.

The President of Williams College faces a firestorm for not allowing the women's lacrosse team to postpone exams to attend the playoffs. The University of Michigan loses $2.8 million on athletics despite averaging 110,000 fans at each home football game. Schools across the country struggle with the tradeoffs involved with recruiting athletes and updating facilities for dozens of varsity sports. Does increasing intensification of college sports support or detract from higher education's core mission? Shulman and Bowen celebrate the benefits of collegiate sports, while identifying the subtle ways in which athletic intensification can pull even prestigious institutions from their missions. By examining how athletes and other graduates view The Game of Life--and how colleges shape society's view of what its rules should be--Bowen and Shulman go far beyond sports. They tell us about higher education today: the ways in which colleges set policies, reinforce or neglect their core mission, and send signals about what matters.

The most critical issues in intercollegiate sport are examined here from a variety of perspectives. The same general challenges, in varying forms, have confronted those responsible for intercollegiate sport from 19890 to the present day. The time has come to reexamine thee problems in the light of new research (such as the Knight Foundation Commission on Intercollegiate Athletes) and new analyses; and to review our old solutions to see where they should be adapted, where maintained, and where abandoned. Part of the mission of New Game Plan for College Sport is to act as a forum for conflicting opinions on how to improve our college sports enterprise. It is not a theoretical piece, but instead relies on the wisdom and experience of those who have had significant roles in sport to discuss how far we may have come from the ideals of sport and what we still can do to correct our course. The analyses presented here, prepared by experts on the issues, explore such essential topics as the commercialization of sport; race and gender; legal issues; gambling; performance enhancing drugs; and the academic peril faced by too many student athletes.

The quarterback sends his wide receiver deep. The crowd gasps as he launches the ball. And when he hits his man, the teams fans roar with approval-especially those with the deep pockets. Make no mistake; college football is big business, played with one eye on the score, the other on the bottom line. But was this always the case? Brian M. Ingrassia here offers the most incisive account to date of the origins of college football, tracing the sports evolution from a gentlemens pastime to a multi-million dollar enterprise that made athletics a permanent fixture on our nations campuses and cemented college footballs place in American culture. He takes readers back to the late 1800s to tell how schools embraced the sport as a way to get the public interested in higher learning-and then how footballs immediate popularity overwhelmed campuses and helped create the beast we know today. Contrary to conventional wisdom, Ingrassia proves that the academy did not initially resist the inclusion of athletics; rather, progressive reformers and professors embraced football as a way to make the ivory tower less elitist. With its emphasis on disciplined teamwork and spectatorship, football was seen as a "middlebrow" way to make the university more accessible to the general public. What it really did was make athletics a permanent fixture on campus with its own set of professional experts, bureaucracies, and ostentatious cathedrals. Ingrassia examines the early football programs at universities like Michigan, Stanford, Ohio State, and others, then puts those histories in the context of Progressive Era culture, including insights from coaches like Georgia Techs John Heisman and Notre Dames Knute Rockne. He describes how reforms emerged out of incidents such as Teddy Roosevelts son being injured on the field and a section of grandstands collapsing at the University of Chicago. He also touches on some of the problems facing current day college football and shows us that we havent come far from those initial arguments more than a century ago. The Rise of Gridiron University shows us where and how it all began, highlighting college footballs essential role in shaping the modern university-and by extension American intellectual culture.

Ethics and College Sports is a careful analysis of the root problems in intercollegiate athletics in American universities. It examines the prevalent myths that are regularly used to justify the inclusion of intercollegiate athletics, and all of the abuses and scandals it has brought to university campuses, from a moral perspective.

The most critical issues in intercollegiate sport are examined here from a variety of perspectives. The same general challenges, in varying forms, have confronted those responsible for intercollegiate sport from 19890 to the present day. The time has come to reexamine thee problems in the light of new research (such as the Knight Foundation Commission on Intercollegiate Athletes) and new analyses; and to review our old solutions to see where they should be adapted, where maintained, and where abandoned. Part of the mission of New Game Plan for College Sport is to act as a forum for conflicting opinions on how to improve our college sports enterprise. It is not a theoretical piece, but instead relies on the wisdom and experience of those who have had significant roles in sport to discuss how far we may have come from the ideals of sport and what we still can do to correct our course. The analyses presented here, prepared by experts on the issues, explore such essential topics as the commercialization of sport; race and gender; legal issues; gambling; performance enhancing drugs; and the academic peril faced by too many student athletes.

In 2010 allegations of an utterly corrupt academic system for student-athletes emerged from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill campus, home of the legendary Tar Heels. As the alma mater of Michael Jordan, Larry Brown, Marion Jones, Lawrence Taylor, Rashad McCants, and many others; winner of forty national championships in six different sports; and a partner in one of the best rivalries in sports, UNC–Chapel Hill is a world-famous colossus of college athletics. In the wake of the Wainstein report, however, the fallout from this scandal—and the continuing spotlight on the failings of college athletics—has made the school ground zero in the debate about how the $16 billion college sports industry operates.

Deep-seated problems plague college sports. Title IX can be the catalyst for dramatic reforms that remedy these problems.

A Place on the Teamis the inside story of how Title IX revolutionized American sports. The federal law guaranteeing women's rights in education, Title IX opened gymnasiums and playing fields to millions of young women previously locked out. Journalist Welch Suggs chronicles both the law's successes and failures-the exciting opportunities for women as well as the commercial and recruiting pressures of modern-day athletics.