College Sports: A History

Summary

In College Sports, historians Eric A. Moyen and John R. Thelin tell the story of the success—and excess—of American college sports from their inception to today. Arguing that the modern American university's structure spurred the growth of big-time sports, they also highlight the treatment of marginalized groups in athletics and the role that commercialization and the media have played.

They offer a chronological account of the popularity, success, and continued challenges of college sports. Most scholarship has portrayed athletics as an anomaly within higher education, but history reveals that college sports enjoy a symbiotic relationship with universities. Despite their progressive posturing, colleges have been slow to fully adopt civil rights and social justice issues. When full participation was finally extended to women and minorities, it generally meant a move away from the amateur model into a commercial enterprise.

Moyen and Thelin trace how the media and sports marketing have created an incredibly successful financial model for schools in big-time conferences. Yet this model has also created a precarious fiscal situation for other institutions. This provocative and refreshing take on sports in American universities provides the context in which to understand—and improve upon—the landscape of intercollegiate athletics.