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NCAA



  • The Century-Long History of the College Football Coaching Carousel

    by Andrew McG

    Mass media helped build the lucrative world of college sports by establishing sports as a news beat; today's highly-paid and transient coaches ride the wave of an economy that thrives on making a splash in the headlines. 



  • Biden NLRB Counsel Says College Athletes are Employees

    "Jennifer Abruzzo took issue with the term “student-athletes,” calling it a misclassification of college players, and warned that using it could be construed as an attempt to lead players to believe that they’re not protected by labor laws."


  • Group of Historians Recognized for Best SCOTUS Brief of the Year

    by Ronald A. Smith

    A group of six historians has been recognized by the Education Law Association for the best Supreme Court brief of the year. Their historical deconstruction of the myth of amateurism in college athletics influenced a unanimous decision that the NCAA cannot bar college athletes from profiting from the commercial use of their names, images, or likenesses.



  • Texas and Oklahoma's Move to the SEC is a Major Blow to the NCAA

    by Andrew McGregor

    The move by two power programs in college football will create a Southeastern Conference that rivals the NCAA in power, part of a longstanding battle between individual colleges and the NCAA that may overthrow the rules of amateurism in college sports. 



  • Women’s College Sports Was Growing. Then the NCAA Took Over

    The Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women was pushed aside by the NCAA as universities dedicated more resources to women's sports to comply with Title IX. Critics say that the NCAA has not followed through on the need for equity while squeezing out women coaches and athletic administrators.


  • Will the Supreme Court Uphold the NCAA's Version of Amateurism?

    by Ronald A. Smith

    A pending Supreme Court case will test whether the NCAA can bar student athletes from making money from products that make use of their images, a form of property right of "Name, Image, or Likeness." A historian who wrote an amicus brief says the NCAA's claim to protect the amateurism of the athletes is selective and hypocritical.



  • Cancel the Fall College Football Season

    by Victoria L. Jackson

    For too long, instead of facilitating the intellectual advancement and economic empowerment of young Black men, college sports have helped make American universities another institution perpetuating the undervaluing of Black lives.

  • A Brief History of College Cheating Scandals

    by Fatima Ahmed-Farouta

    Cheating and college sports go hand-in-hand. This is especially true in college football, with its extreme competitiveness and the potential to launch careers. Cheating scandals have embroiled most of the top colleges in the country for decades, and the cases run the gamut from cash payments to players, free (and illegal under NCAA rules) perks, academic fraud, financial aid fraud, and -- of course -- drugs, alcohol, and prostitutes. Here is a list of some of the most prominent and cringe-worthy scandals in the history of college sports:1) 1986: SMU gets the death penalty. In 1986, the ABC affiliate in Dallas revealed that the Southern Methodist University football program had been paying its players signing bonuses of up to $25,000. Further investigations by Dallas media unearthed apartments provided to players rent-free, and an NCAA investigation showed that thirteen players had been paid about $61,000 from a slush fund set up for that specific purpose. This practice had gone on for years, with the complicity of both coaches and top school officials.



  • Jonathan Zimmerman: Why I Love, But Also Hate, March Madness

    Jonathan Zimmerman is a professor of history and education at New York University. He is the author of “Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory” (Yale University Press).I’m a crazed basketball fan, so I love it when the NCAA tournament rolls around. But I’m also an educator, and so I hate myself for watching.That’s because college sports are – to put it bluntly – a plague on American higher education. They add a big-ticket item to our mounting costs, and they compromise our academic quality. And now we’ve got the numbers to prove it.Let’s start with costs. Colleges in the Football Bowl Subdivision – the most competitive of the Division I programs – spent an average of nearly $92,000 per athlete in 2010, according to a January study by the American Institutes for Research. For the student population at large, the average per capita spending was less than $14,000.I’ll spare you the math: These schools spend more than six times as much on athletes as they do on students generally....