Unpaid Professionals: Commercialism and Conflict in Big-Time College Sports.

• Author: Humphreys, Brad R.
• Position: Review

Andrew Zimbalist

Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999. Pp. xii, 252. $24.95.

A college racing stable makes as much sense as college football. The jockey could carry the college colors; the students could cheer; the alumni could bet; and the horse wouldn't have to pass a history test. (p. 3)

Robert Hutchins

Former president of the University of Chicago

With this pithy epigraph, Andrew Zimbalist, a professor of economics at Smith College, begins his scathing indictment of the current state of intercollegiate athletics played at the highest level in the United States. Zimbalist, who admits he "didn't catch college sports fever while in college" (p. ix) and teaches at an institution that does not offer athletic scholarships, has produced a fine piece of scholarship on a complex topic. Zimbalist recognizes the important benefits generated by college sports, but he clearly feels that in its current state, the benefits are far outweighed by the costs, including the detrimental impact of college athletics on the intellectual standards and educational process at American universities.

Chapter 1 focuses on the hypocritical nature of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and its dismal track record of attempted reform of college athletics. To illustrate the hypocrisy at the core of the NCAA, Zimbalist contrasts a statement on the first page of the NCAA Manual describing the NCAA's basic purpose as to "retain a clear line of demarcation between intercollegiate athletics and professional sports" (p. 3) with an extra point in a 1996 college football game that cost the losing team $8 million in potential revenues. Although commercialism in intercollegiate athletics predates the NCAA, Zimbalist argues convincingly throughout the book that the NCAA has aided and abetted commercialism rather than deterring it. Readers will find Zimbalist's account of the early history of radio and television broadcasts of college sports illuminating; both the NCAA and most of the member institutions initially opposed radio and television broadcasts because of fears that they would reduce gate and con cession revenues.

In the following chapters, Zimbalist examines the impact of commercialism on every important facet of intercollegiate athletics. Zimbalist devotes considerable attention to the important issue of gender equity for both participants and coaches. Despite his background as a consultant in at least one prominent equal-pay lawsuit...