Description

In Changing the Playbook, Howard P. Chudacoff delves into the background and what-ifs surrounding seven defining moments that transformed college sports. These changes involved fundamental issues--race and gender, profit and power--that reflected societal tensions and, in many cases, remain pertinent today:

the failed 1950 effort to pass a Sanity Code regulating payments to football players;
the thorny racial integration of university sports programs;
the boom in television money;
the 1984 Supreme Court decision that settled who could control skyrocketing media revenues;
Title IX's transformation of women's athletics;
the cheating, eligibility, and recruitment scandals that tarnished college sports in the 1980s and 1990s;
the ongoing controversy over paying student athletes a share of the enormous moneys harvested by schools and athletic departments.

A thought-provoking journey into the whos and whys of college sports history, Changing the Playbook reveals how the turning points of yesterday and today will impact tomorrow.