History of College Sports

Student-controlled intercollegiate contests quickly transformed into big-time college sports by the early twentieth century, revolutionizing the sports industry in the United States as well as the landscape of higher education. The American college sports enterprise is unique; nowhere else in the world does a large, amateur, multi-billion-dollar system of school sports exist. After an exploration of the origins of intercollegiate athletics and the creation of the modern National Collegiate Athletic Association, topics covered in this course include the desegregation of predominantly white universities, sports at historically black colleges and universities, women’s intercollegiate athletics, the big business of the ideology of amateurism, international athletes in U.S. college sports, and scandal and reform. Students place today’s often-controversial topics in the context of the long history of the NCAA and broader societal context.