College Sports
January 2nd, 2009From Thanksgiving to New Years Day and the following weekend, the college football schedule is filled with bowl games. After the New Year begins, college sports fans can turn their attention to the height of the college basketball season that culminates in the annual March Madness NCAA Division I tournament. College athletics is big business although perhaps only ten to twenty Division I programs make money each year.
While many books have been written about sports including college sports, there are a few that I found interesting for their background about the origins of the modern college sports “game” and its current state of commercialization. John Thelin’s A History of American Higher Education is a fairly comprehensive book about the origins and development of America’s colleges and universities. In a chapter entitled “Alma Mater,” Thelin outlines major developments during the 1890’s to 1920, a time period that he calls the “age of university building” and the “golden age of the college.” During this period, going to college became “fashionable and prestigious” and the national media covered the daily life of a college student in the same manner that the lives of the rich and famous are covered today. During that period, university colors and mascots were conceived and adopted and the role of alumni associations and fundraising became very important.
