College Sports Commercialization

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The college athletics industry has had an impact within the American society for almost one hundred seventy-five years, starting with its oldest university, Harvard, which came into competition with Yale (Smith, 2000). These types of competition caused questionable ethics on both sides from unclear academic status of players to excessive rewarding, including an example of an athlete receiving commissions of cigarette sales through the American Tobacco Company. In the early 1900s the Intercollegiate Athletics Association was formed at the urging of multiple colleges and universities along with President Roosevelt. Renamed in 1910, the National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) maintains its purpose to protect the integrity of amateurism as well as prevent the commercialization of all college athletes by way of regulation. Beginning in the 1920s, public interest towards college sports sky rocketed with the growing opportunities of higher education for everyone, regardless of social status. This effect caused the Carnegie Foundation for Advancement of Education to take a closer look into this fast growing industry in the “Carnegie Report” in 1929. The report made a plea to the NCAA to reduce the level of commercialization and improve academic integrity for all student-athletes. This is just the first time the NCAA receives this very recommendation. Post World War II brought another increase in college attendance with government financed aid to veterans. Widespread availability of televisions and radios lead to broadcasting of college sport events, bringing in a multitude of fans as well as the expected friends and family of athletes. Soon gambling and excessive means of recruiting tempted the industry and the NCAA was forced to... ... middle of paper ... ...ls have been granted waivers for in return for promises to improve their reporting. Yet another antitrust lawsuit, this time against the Bowl Championship Series (BCS), was filed by the University of Utah (Cosh, 2010). To them it’s personal, twice in the last ten years Utah successfully went undefeated and twice they were denied a spot in the post season bowl games despite the bowls being chosen by an algorithm designed to choose the best teams of the season based off win records. The BCS claims that the lawsuit is unfounded on account that they are not an entity, meaning they cannot exist on their own. Yet, they maintain a profitable system that pays for dozens of employees. The Playoff Political Action Committee has reported the BCS to the IRS for misallocation of tax exempt funds; the bowls are run by tax exempt organizations that share the revenues with the BCS.

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