For well over a century, big-time college sports has functioned as a business enterprise, one that serves to undermine the mission of institutions of higher education.This book chronicles the long and tortured history of the NCAA’s attempt to maintain the myth of amateurism and the student-athlete, along with the attendant fiction that the players’ academic achievement is the top priority of Division-I athletic programs. It is an indictment of the current system, making the case that big-time college sports cannot continue its connection to universities without undermining the mission of higher education. It concludes with bold proposals to separate big-time college sports from the university, transforming them into on-campus business operations.

 

Sheldon Anderson is professor emeritus of history from Miami University (of Ohio), where he taught international studies, world history, European diplomatic history, and sports history.He has written six books and co-authored another, including Jump Shooting to a Higher Degree: My Basketball Odyssey, The Forgotten Legacy of Stella Walsh: The Greatest Female Athlete of Her Time, The Politics and Culture of Modern Sports, and A Cold War in the Soviet Bloc: Polish-East German Relations, 1945-62. He also edited Twin Cities Sports: Games for All Seasons.