Intercollegiate athletics continue to bedevil American higher education. This book explores the complexities of intercollegiate athletics while explaining the organizational structures, key players, terms, and important issues relevant to the growing fields of recreational studies, sports management, and athletic administration.

This practical, comprehensive book combines solid theoretical concepts with relevant examples, extensive factual information, and important insider perspectives to help prepare students who are interested in pursuing a career in collegiate athletics management. The authors' in-depth discussions reveal the inner workings of athletic departments and the conferences and governing organizations that impact them. Using examples from institutions of varying sizes and representing numerous conferences, associations, and divisions, Managing Intercollegiate Athletics, second edition, provides an extensive view of management processes such as generating revenue to cover expenses; recruiting and its mechanics and regulations; the role of the conferences and national governing bodies; and academic standards, reform, and fraud. New to the second edition is an increased emphasis on the impact of division, institution, and department missions and goals on decision making. The book also includes new discussions of the application of management functions--including goal setting, decision making, and strategic management--on intercollegiate athletics at various levels. Adding to the practical nature of the book, and providing an important critical-thinking component to each chapter, are "Practitioner Perspectives." These contributions demonstrate how and why administrators make and implement their decisions, and they present creative problem-solving ideas for readers that they can use in their own careers. New Practitioner Perspectives in this edition provide, for example, an insider's view from an NCAA vice president, a conference commissioner, and a Division I athletic director. Chapters also feature one or more Case Studies offering an in-depth look at how institutions grapple with management challenges. In the second edition, new case studies look at the NCAA's leadership role in the Penn State University abuse case, the role of the TRAC model to ensure data-based decision making in terminating the University of Alabama at Birmingham football program, and others. These case studies and accompanying questions can serve as starting points for class discussion.

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 Reform also 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.

"College Athletes' Rights and Well-Being covers major policy issues in collegiate sports and seeks to address the issue of college athletics from the perspective of the athlete's well-being. It is written for those who seek to enhance their understanding of the intercollegiate athletics landscape. This textbook is intended for upper-level undergraduate and graduate students, though scholars, teachers, practitioners, athletic administrators, and advocates of intercollegiate athletics will also find it essential. The book is arranged into 16 individual chapters that cover a range of topics on college athletes' rights and well-being. It is not exhaustive, but the editor believes that current concerns, challenges, and themes of relevance to higher education researchers and practitioners will certainly be well addressed" -- Provided by publisher.

Explores the history of college athletics and examines the position of sports relative to academics within the university.

Many books have been written on the evils of commercialism in college sport, and the hypocrisy of payments to athletes from alumni and other sources outside the university. Almost no attention, however, has been given to the way that the National Collegiate Athletic Association has embraced professionalism through its athletic scholarship policy. Because of this gap in the historical record, the NCAA is often cast as an embattled defender of amateurism, rather than as the architect of a nationwide money-laundering scheme. Sack and Staurowsky show that the NCAA formally abandoned amateurism in the 1950s and passed rules in subsequent years that literally transformed scholarship athletes into university employees. In addition, by purposefully fashioning an amateur mythology to mask the reality of this employer-employee relationship, the NCAA has done a disservice to student-athletes and to higher education. A major subtheme is that women, such as those who created the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW), opposed this hypocrisy, but lacked the power to sustain an alternative model. After tracing the evolution of college athletes into professional entertainers, and the harmful effects it has caused, the authors propose an alternative approach that places college sport on a firm educational foundation and defend the rights of both male and female college athletes. This is a provocative analysis for anyone interested in college sports in America and its subversion of traditional educational and amateur principles.

​For several decades in America, athletic programs in colleges and universities received financial support and resources primarily from their respective schools and such sources as alumni and the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). More recently, however, college coaches assigned to athletic departments and the presidents and marketing or public relations officials of schools organize, initiate, and participate in fund-raising campaigns and thus obtain a portion of revenue for their sports programs from local, regional and national businesses, and from other private donors, groups, and organizations. Because of this inflow of assets and financial capital, intercollegiate athletic budgets and types of sports expanded and in turn, these programs became increasingly important, popular, and reputable as revenue and cost centers within American schools of higher education.​​