THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PROFESSIONAL AND INTERCOLLEGIATE SPORT

Comments welcome- please do not quote without permission The National Collegiate Athletic Association was founded in 1906 to protect the physical well-being of college football players who were being killed and injured at an alarming rate (Zimbalist, 1999). By the middle of the 20th century, the NCAA was more focused on upholding the amateur ideal of college sports than the safety of players. Today, defining the organization’s primary function depends on who you ask. The NCAA’s stated mission is to, “govern competition in a fair, safe, equitable and sportsmanlike manner, and to integrate intercollegiate athletics into higher education so that the educational experience of the student-athlete is paramount ” (NCAA, 2005c). Student-athletes and faculty wonder if academics are really an important concern of the Association, as athletes register for bogus classes in an attempt to stay eligible and miss untold hours of class and study time practicing, traveling, and playing. Economists focus on the NCAA’s function as the cartel of college sports, creating and enforcing rules designed to maximize their member schools’ revenues while minimizing costs. Suggestions to reform the NCAA have been made as far back as 1929, when the Carnegi