Commercialism in College Athletics

Archive Report

Spur to Reform by College Sports Scandals

With the approach of the college football season, interest centers on the effects of numerous reforms and reform proposals on 1952–53 intercollegiate competition. The reform movement was set in motion by a aeries of college sports scandals which exposed not only corruption of athletes by gamblers, but threw the spotlight on an assortment of malpractices that brought the colleges themselves under critical fire.

Basketball produced the most serious scandals, but the reform movement has been concerned mainly with college football. The offending practices arose primarily out of the commercialization of intercollegiate athletics; the chief remedy prescribed has been to bring college sports and their practitioners under tighter control of academic authorities.

Basketball Scandals of 1951–52

A series of arrests during 1951 ...

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