The Athletic Trap : How College Sports Corrupted the Academy by The unrivaled amount of cash poured into the college athletic system has made sports programs breeding grounds for corruption while diverting crucial resources from the academic mission of universities. Like money in Washington politics, the influence bought by a complex set of self-interested actors seriously undermines movement toward reform while trapping universities in a cycle of escalating competition. Longtime sport sociologist Howard L. Nixon II approaches the issue from the perspective of college presidents--how they are seduced by prestige or pressured by economics into building programs that move schools toward a commercial model of athletics. Nixon situates his analysis in the context of what he calls "the intercollegiate golden triangle," a powerful social network of athletic, media, and private corporate commercial interests. This network lures presidents and other university leaders into an athletic arms race with promises of institutional enhancements, increased enrollments, better student morale, improved alumni loyalty, more financial contributions, and higher prestige. These promises can cloud the judgment of college presidents and governing boards, entangling them in an athletic trap that restricts their influence. Unable to control spending, inequalities, and deviance within commercialized athletic programs, universities are ensnared in financial, political, and social obligations that are difficult to sustain--or escape. Nixon clarifies the structure of this trap, describes how higher education institutions fall into it, and explores what it means for institutions and presidents caught in it. This timely analysis also has relevance to the debates about the role of the NCAA and ongoing reform efforts in college sports. The Athletic Trap will be of interest to university presidents, board members, and administrators, sport sociologists concerned with the balance of power between academics and athletics, and anyone else with a serious interest in college sports and its future.
Changing the Playbook : How Power, Profit, and Politics Transformed College Sports by In Changing the Playbook , Howard P. Chudacoff delves into the background and what-ifs surrounding seven defining moments that transformed college sports. These changes involved fundamental issues--race and gender, profit and power--that reflected societal tensions and, in many cases, remain pertinent today: the failed 1950 effort to pass a Sanity Code regulating payments to football players; the thorny racial integration of university sports programs; the boom in television money; the 1984 Supreme Court decision that settled who could control skyrocketing media revenues; Title IX's transformation of women's athletics; the cheating, eligibility, and recruitment scandals that tarnished college sports in the 1980s and 1990s; the ongoing controversy over paying student athletes a share of the enormous moneys harvested by schools and athletic departments. A thought-provoking journey into the whos and whys of college sports history, Changing the Playbook reveals how the turning points of yesterday and today will impact tomorrow.
Cheated: The UNC Scandal, the Education of Athletes, and the Future of Big-time College Sports by Examines athletic-academic corruption at UNC-Chapel Hill and in NCAA athletics"--
Cheating the Spread: gamblers, point shavers, and game fixers in college football and basketball by 
The "Front Porch" : Examining the Increasing Interconnection of University and Athletic Department Funding by Higher education and intercollegiate athletics have long had a complicated relationship. Examining the interconnection between the two and from a variety of theoretical and practical angles, this volume highlights many of the debates surrounding higher education and intercollegiate athletics and the financial dependency between these two long-standing entities. Topics include: a comprehensive history of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, an examination of the funding mechanisms utilized by intercollegiate athletic departments, an in-depth magnification of the increasing corporatization of higher education and athletics, and a look into potential future debates and lines of inquiry surrounding this topic. This is the 5th issue of the 41st volume of the Jossey-Bass series ASHE Higher Education Report. Each monograph is the definitive analysis of a tough higher education issue, based on thorough research of pertinent literature and institutional experiences. Topics are identified by a national survey. Noted practitioners and scholars are then commissioned to write the reports, with experts providing critical reviews of each manuscript before publication.
Who Calls the Shots: Sports and University Leadership, Culture, and Decision Making by 
Cheating in College: why students do it and what educators can do about it by Today’s students are tomorrow’s leaders, and the college years are a critical period for their development of ethical standards. Cheating in College explores how and why students cheat and what policies, practices, and participation may be useful in promoting academic integrity and reducing cheating. The authors investigate trends over time, including internet-based cheating. They consider personal and situational explanations, such as the culture of groups in which dishonesty is more common (such as business majors) and social settings that support cheating (such as fraternities and sororities). They also focus on how faculty and administrators are increasing their efforts to promote academic honesty among students. Orientation and training sessions, information on college and university websites, student handbooks that describe codes of conduct, honor codes, and course syllabi all define cheating and establish the consequences. Based on the authors’ multiyear, multisite surveys, Cheating in College quantifies and analyzes student cheating to demonstrate why academic integrity is important and to describe the cultural efforts that are effective in restoring it.
Generation on a Tightrope: a portrait of today's college student by An understanding of today's college students is vital to the effectiveness of our nation's colleges and universities. The third in a series on college student expectations, aspirations, academics, attitudes, values, beliefs, social life and politics, this book presents an accurate portrait of today's undergraduate college students. Covering the main topic areas of the two previous works, it also contains new chapters and makes comparisons across generations. Timely and comprehensive, this volume gives researchers, practitioners, and policymakers a much-needed grasp of the forces shaping the experiences of current undergraduates
