Reform Models in Collegiate Sports

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Over the past 100 years, college sports have attracted controversy pertaining to how they should be treated, that is, as business opportunities or academic vocation. Different reforms have been initiated, with academicians and researchers coming up with different models explaining how college sports and sports people should be treated. These models seek to understand and give directions on the need for balancing education with commercialized sports. Three key conceptual models have been initiated to reform college sports by scholars such as Craughron, Benford, Smith and Gerdy (Sack, 2009). In addition, Roy, Graeff & Harman (2008) underscore that these models include the intellect elitism, the athletes’ rights and academic capitalists. These three models represent varying views pertaining to the role of commercialized college sports in today’s learning education or higher education. This understanding portends that the major focus, despite their contrasting views, is on revenue generating sports, emphasizing the increasing stakeholder’s roles, including college athletes and institutions of higher learning. However, they vary on their interpretation of the relationship that exist academic values and sports commercialization, athletic scholarships legal status and educational impact and finally on higher education’s mission. Intellectual elitism reformers are of the view that highly commercialization of college athletics negatively affects the higher education in America, as sale of athletic programs by universities to corporate sponsors or television networks leads to the trumping of academic values by television ratings (Sack, 2009). As a result, they argue that commercialization of college athletics make universities to admit stu... ... middle of paper ... ...ducation sector, and encouraged to balance their academics with sporting activities. Works Cited Roy, D. P., Graeff, T. R., & Harman, S. K. (2008). Repositioning a university through NCAA Division IA football membership. Journal of Sport Management, 22, 11-29. Sack, A. (2009). Clashing Models of Commercial Sport in Higher Education: Implications for Reform and Scholarly Research. Journal of Issues in Intercollegiate Athletics, 2, 76-92 Slaughter, S., & Rhoades, G. (2004). Academic capitalism and the new economy: Markets, state, and higher education. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Sobocinski, E. J. (2000). College athletes: What is fair compensation? Marquette Sports Law Review, 7, pp. 257-294. Svare, B. (2004). Reforming sports before the clock runs out: One man’s journey through our runaway sports culture. Delmar, NY: Bordalice Publishing.

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