Sale!

Confessions of a Spoilsport: My Life and Hard Times Fighting Sports Corruption at an Old Eastern University (Penn State Press)

Amazon.com Price:  $7.95 (as of 12/04/2019 03:49 PST- Details)

Categories: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Description

In 1998, Milton Friedman’s commentary drew national attention to Rutgers 1000, a campaign in which students, faculty, and alumni were resisting the takeover of their university by commercialized Division I-A athletics. Therefore, the movement received extensive coverage in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Chronicle of Higher Education, Sports Illustrated, and other publications.

Today, “big-time” college athletics remains a hotly debated issue at Rutgers. Why did an old eastern university that had long competed against such institutions as Colgate, Columbia, Lafayette, and Princeton, choose, by joining the Big East conference in 1994, to plunge into the world of such TV-revenue-driven extravaganzas as “March Madness” and the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl? What’s the moral for universities where big-time college sports have already turn out to be the primary source of institutional identity?

Confessions of a Spoilsport is the story of an English professor who, having seen the University of New Mexico sink academically in the period of a major basketball scandal, was once galvanized into action when Rutgers joined the Big East. It is usually the story of the Rutgers 1000 students and alumni who set out against enormous odds to withstand the decline of their university—eviscerated academic programs, cancellation of minor sports, loss of the “best and brightest” in-state students to the nearby College of New Jersey—whilst tens of millions of dollars were being lavished on Division I-A athletics. In the end, alternatively, the story of Rutgers 1000 is what the New York Times called it when Milton Friedman issued his ringing commentary: a struggle for the soul of a major university.

Related products

Home » Shop » Books » Subjects » Arts and Photography » History and Criticism » History » Americas » United States » State and Local » Confessions of a Spoilsport: My Life and Hard Times Fighting Sports Corruption at an Old Eastern University (Penn State Press)

Recent Products