Games Colleges Play

Scandal and Reform in Intercollegiate Athletics

John R. Thelin

• Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Year: 1996
• eBook ISBN: 9781421403915
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Higher Education

Featuring a new introduction by the author, the paperback edition of Games Colleges Play chronicles the history of intercollegiate athletics from 1910 to 1990.

Featuring a new introduction by the author, the paperback edition of Games Colleges Play chronicles the history of intercollegiate athletics from 1910 to 1990—from the early, glory days of Knute Rockne and the Gipper to the modern era of big budgets, powerful coaches, and pampered players. John Thelin describes how sports programs—although seldom accorded official mention with teaching and research in the university mission statement—have become central to university life. As administrators search for a proper balance between athletics and academics, Thelin observes, this peculiar institution grows increasingly powerful and controversial.

Thelin examines the 1929 Carnegie Foundation Report, the formation of major athletic conferences, the national college basketball scandals after World War II, the dissolution of the Pacific Coast Conference in the 1950s, and the Knight Foundation Report of 1991. He finds disturbing patterns of abuse and limited reform and explores the implications of these patterns for today's college presidents, faculty, and students.

Games Colleges Play provides historical background that will inform current policy discussions about the proper place of intercollegiate athletics within the American university.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface to the 1996 Edition
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction American Higher Education’s “Peculiar Institution”
• Chapter 1 The Reform Canon: The 1929 Carnegie Foundation Report
• Chapter 2 Responses to Reform, 1930 to 1946
• Chapter 3 Regional Pride and Institutional Prestige: College Sports and the “Booster” Campus
• Chapter 4 Schools for Scandal, 1946 to 1960
• Chapter 5 Faculty Control and the Irony of Reform: The Pacific Coast Conference, 1946 to 1959
• Chapter 6 Critics and Controversies, 1960 to 1980
• Chapter 7 From Sports Page to Front Page, 1980 to 1990
• Epilogue An American Dilemma: Balancing Academics and Athletics
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index