Throughout the NCAA Tournament’s history, underdogs, Cinderella stories, and upsets have captured the attention and imagination of fans. Making March Madness is the story of this premiere tournament, from its early days in Kansas City, to its move to Madison Square Garden, to its surviving a point-shaving scandal in New York and taking its games to different sites across the country.Chad Carlson’s analysis places college basketball in historical context and connects it to larger issues in sport and American society, providing fresh insights on a host of topics that readers will find interesting, illuminating, and thought provoking.

Two Supreme Court decisions, NCAA v. Board of Regents (1984) and NCAA v. Tarkanian (1988), have shaped college sports by permitting the emergence of a supercharged commercial enterprise with high financial stakes for institutions and individuals, while failing to guarantee adequate procedural protections for persons charged with wrongdoing within that enterprise. Brian L. Porto examines the conditions that led to the cases, the reasoning behind the justices' rulings, and the consequences of those rulings.

Arguing that commercialized college sports should be compatible with the goals of higher education and fair to all participants, Porto suggests that the remedy is a federal statute. His proposed College Sports Legal Reform Act would grant the NCAA a limited "educational exemption" from the antitrust laws, enabling it to enhance academic opportunities for athletes. The Act would also afford greater procedural protections to accused parties in NCAA disciplinary proceedings. Porto's prescription for reform in college sports makes a significant contribution to the debate about how best to address perennial problems in college sports such as cost containment, access to a meaningful education for athletes, and fairness in rule enforcement.