college sport exploitation Research Papers (original) (raw)

Special Admission contradicts the national belief that college sports provide upward mobility opportunities. Kirsten Hextrum documents how white middle-class youth become overrepresented on college teams. Her institutional ethnography of one elite athletic and academic institution includes over 100 hours of interviews with college rowers and track & field athletes. She charts the historic and contemporary relationships between colleges, athletics, and white middle-class communities that ensure white suburban youth are advantaged in special athletic admissions. Suburban youth start ahead in college admissions because athletic merit—the competencies desired by university recruiters—requires access to vast familial, communal, and economic resources, all of which are concentrated in their neighborhoods. Their advantages increase as youth, parents, and coaches strategically invest in and engineer novel opportunities to maintain their race and class status. Thus, college sports allow white, middle-class athletes to accelerate their racial and economic advantages through admission to elite universities.

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- Sociology of Sport, Sociology of Education, Feminist Theory, Higher Education

Research into racism and college sports largely explores how universities profit off the undercompensated labor of predominately Black men in Division I football and basketball. This research frames
college sports as an institution that dehumanizes, marginalizes, and exploits athletes of color (Beamon, 2014; Eitzen, 2016; Hawkins, 2010; Sack & Staurowsky, 1998). Yet to truly understand the bounds of systemic racism in college sports, studies must also interrogate how white people are elevated, centered, and rewarded at the expense of people of color. Drawing upon critical whiteness studies (Cabrera, 2012;
DiAngelo, 2011; Leonardo, 2009), I analyzed 47 college athlete narratives and identified 3 interrelated themes—racial segregation, racial innocence, and racial protection—within higher education that protect whiteness. Findings outline how colleges recruit white athletes from predominately white communities who, as a result of their segregated environments, adopted underdeveloped notions of race and racism. Rather than reeducating athletes upon arrival, institutions further racial segregation, innocence, and protection. Ultimately, these processes have allowed white athletes to dodge their role in racism and avoid racial justice responsibilities.

The NCAA’s purported philosophical justifications
for its ‘‘Collegiate Model of Athletics’’ are
embedded within its seven stated ‘‘Core Values’’ and
‘‘Principles’’, which are based on a distribution principle of
strict, or radical, equality in which it is believed societal
benefit or the ‘‘greater good’’ is achieved if universities can
lawfully conspire to compensate all athletes at the same
level. From this theoretical perspective, the authors scrutinize
two ethical frameworks most often asserted by the
National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) to justify
exploitation of profit-athletes in the revenue-generating
sports of Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) football and
Division I men’s basketball: Classical Utilitarianism and
Paternalism. From an analysis of several court rulings over
the past 40 years involving challenges to the NCAA’s
‘‘amateurism’’ principles, the authors found, in rulings
favoring the NCAA, the judges implicitly supported their
decisions utilizing the NCAA’s utilitarian and paternalistic
justifications for its Collegiate Model of Athletics. They
recommend courts should balance considerations of utilitarianism
and paternalism against normative principles of
honesty, harm, autonomy, justice, and an adult individual’s
fundamental right to maximize economic value and selfworth
free of conspiratorial restraints.

- by Richard M Southall and +1
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- Sports Ethics, Social Injustice, college sport exploitation

The purpose of this study was to explore the experiences and impact of student-athletes’ perceptions of their coaches’ ethical and unethical behaviours. A total of four baseball players, all of whom ultimately transferred out of their NCAA Division I institution to alternative institutions, were interviewed via semi-structured interview protocol. Open, axial, and selective coding was used to qualitatively analyse the collected data. Two themes emerged from the interviews. The first theme titled: Abuse, Exploitation, Dominance, and Dishonesty, arose from the athletes’ first collegiate baseball experience and included the following: 1) Coach used abusive/derogatory language, 2) The athlete was scared and fearful, 3) The coach had a dictator type approach, and 4) The coach was not honest during the recruiting process. The second theme titled: Growth, Empowerment, Sense of Belonging, and Integrity, arose from the athletes’ college baseball experience at the institution they transferred to. This included the following: 1) The previous experience allowed for growth/development, 2) The coach had a genuine concern for player well-being, 3) The coach was honest with players during the recruiting process, 4) The coach empowered players, 5) The coach was a person of character and integrity, and 6) The coach treated his players with respect. All of the players interviewed in this study had an overall more positive and rewarding experience at the school they transferred to, because of the atmosphere, the manner in which the coach conducted himself, and the coach’s ability to relate and communicate with players.

Dr. Darron Smith’s book, When Race, Religion, and Sport Collide makes the connection between historical teachings of Christianity, more specifically Mormonism, and the contemporary realities of the Black male student-athlete. This exploration is heavily informed by Feagin’s (2009) theory of racial framing, which is a generic meaning system that rationalizes the system of material of oppression. Since Smith is Black, Mormon although not practicing, and graduated with his doctorate from Brigham Young University (BYU), his analysis is informed by personal experience, as well as theoretical research. This insider examination of the ways religious universities exploit Black athletes allows the secular individual to understand how religion is used disproportionally against non-religious student-athletes but ultimately exploits most student-athletes similarly.

- by Dr. Darron T Smith and +1
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- Sociology of Sport, Black Studies Or African American Studies, Sociology of Education, Race and Ethnicity

Correspondence: ajudge@ucalgary. ca Werklund School of Education at the University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada Book Details. Hextrum, K. (2021). Special admission: How college sports recruitment favors white, suburban athletes: Rutgers University Press. Special admission: How college sports recruitment favors white, suburban athletes by Kirsten Hextrum offers a critical exploration of the political, economic, and cultural factors that shape and influence college admission. The author looks at issues and asks questions about the availability of both community resources and the impact on athletic college admission. Hextrum (2021) is an athlete, a former national champion rower and holds a PhD from the University of California. The author is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Oklahoma and through roles in student support services for college athletes and academic publication has developed expertise on college athletic admissions. Readers engaging with this book can e...

- by Kirsten Hextrum
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- Sociology of Sport, Sociology of Education, Feminist Theory, Higher Education

In this episode, we have the great and highly unlikely pleasure of speaking to Michael Hsu, a Regent at the University of Minnesota since 2015 representing Congressional District 6. As a leader in higher education, he is one of only three Regents in the United States to publicly speak out against the system of compensation in college sport, including in a column he published on Deadspin. This wide-ranging interview delves into labor activism in college sport, recent NIL developments, the surveillance of athletes and faculty, and the unsustainability of football as a cultural practice, among many other subjects.