Perhaps more than any other two colleges, Harvard and Yale gave form to American intercollegiate athletics -- a form that was inspired by the Oxford-Cambridge rivalry overseas, and that was imitated by colleges and universities throughout the United States. Focusing on the influence of these prestigious eastern institutions, this fascinating study traces the origins and development of intercollegiate athletics in America from the mid-19th century to the early 20th century. Smith begins with an historical overview of intercollegiate athletics and details the evolution of individual sports -- crew, baseball, track and field, and especially football. Then, skillfully setting various sports events in their broader social and cultural contexts, Smith goes on to discuss many important issues that are still relevant today: student-faculty competition for institutional athletic control; the impact of the professional coach on big-time athletics; the false concept of amateurism in college athletics; and controversies over eligibility rules. He also reveals how the debates over brutality and ethics created the need for a central organizing body, the National Collegiate Athletic Association, which still runs college sports today. Sprinkled throughout with spicy sports anecdotes, from the Thanksgiving Day Princeton-Yale football game that drew record crowds in the 1890s to a meeting with President Theodore Roosevelt on football violence, this lively, in-depth investigation will appeal to serious sports buffs as well as to anyone interested in American social and cultural history.

Sports and Freedom: The Rise of Big-Time College Athletics (Sports, History, and Society)

Sports & Outdoors

Smith, Ronald A.

Miscellaneous

Oxford University Press

Perhaps more than any other two colleges, Harvard and Yale gave form to American intercollegiate athletics--a form that was inspired by the Oxford-Cambridge rivalry overseas, and that was imitated by colleges and universities throughout the United States. Focusing on the influence of these prestigious eastern institutions, this fascinating study traces the origins and development of intercollegiate athletics in America from the mid-nineteenth century to the early twentieth century. Smith begins with an historical overview of intercollegiate athletics and details the evolution of individual sports--crew, baseball, track and field, and especially football. Then, skillfully setting various sports events in their broader social and cultural contexts, Smith goes on to discuss many important issues that are still relevant today: student-faculty competition for institutional athletic control; the impact of the professional coach on big-time athletics; the false concept of amateurism in college athletics; and controversies over eligibility rules. He also reveals how the debates over brutality and ethics created the need for a central organizing body, the National Collegiate Athletic Association, which still runs college sports today. Sprinkled throughout with spicy sports anecdotes, from the Thanksgiving Day Princeton-Yale football game that drew record crowds in the 1890s to a meeting with President Theodore Roosevelt on football violence, this lively, in-depth investigation will appeal to serious sports buffs as well as to anyone interested in American social and cultural history.

Sports and Freedom: The Rise of Big-Time College Athletics (Sports and History)

History

Americas

Pay for Play: A History of Big-Time College Athletic Reform (Sport and Society)

In an era when college football coaches frequently command higher salaries than university presidents, many call for reform to restore the balance between amateur athletics and the educational mission of schools. This book traces attempts at college athletics reform from 1855 through the early twenty-first century while analyzing the different roles played by students, faculty, conferences, university presidents, the NCAA, legislatures, and the Supreme Court. Pay for Play: A History of Big-Time College Athletic Reform also tackles critically important questions about eligibility, compensation, recruiting, sponsorship, and rules enforcement. Discussing reasons for reform--to combat corruption, to level the playing field, and to make sports more accessible to minorities and women--Ronald A. Smith candidly explains why attempts at change have often failed. Of interest to historians, athletic reformers, college administrators, NCAA officials, and sports journalists, this thoughtful book considers the difficulty in balancing the principles of amateurism with the need to draw income from sporting events.

University of Illinois Press

Wounded Lions: Joe Paterno, Jerry Sandusky, and the Crises in Penn State Athletics (Sport and Society)

The Jerry Sandusky child molestation case stunned the nation. As subsequent revelations uncovered an athletic program operating free of oversight, university officials faced criminal charges while unprecedented NCAA sanctions hammered Penn State football and blackened the reputation of coach Joe Paterno. In Wounded Lions , acclaimed sport historian and longtime Penn State professor Ronald A. Smith draws from university archives to answer the How? and Why? at the heart of the scandal. The Sandusky case was far from the first example of illegal behavior related to the football program--or the university's attempts to suppress news of it. As Smith shows, decades of infighting among administrators, alumni, trustees, faculty, and coaches established policies intended to protect the university, and the football team considered synonymous with its name, at all costs. If the habits predated Paterno, they also became sanctified during his tenure. Smith names names to show how abuses of power warped the "Penn State Way" even with hires like women's basketball coach Rene Portland, who allegedly practiced sexual bias against players for decades. Smith also details a system that concealed Sandusky's horrific acts just as deftly as it whitewashed years of rules violations, coaching malfeasance, and player crime while Paterno set records and raised hundreds of millions of dollars for the university.

In an era when college football coaches frequently command higher salaries than university presidents, many call for reform to restore the balance between amateur athletics and the educational mission of schools. This book traces attempts at college athletics reform from 1855 through the early twenty-first century while analyzing the different roles played by students, faculty, conferences, university presidents, the NCAA, legislatures, and the Supreme Court. Pay for Play: A History of Big-Time College Athletic Reform also tackles critically important questions about eligibility, compensation, recruiting, sponsorship, and rules enforcement. Discussing reasons for reformùto combat corruption, to level the playing field, and to make sports more accessible to minorities and womenùRonald A. Smith candidly explains why attempts at change have often failed. Of interest to historians, athletic reformers, college administrators, NCAA officials, and sports journalists, this thoughtful book considers the difficulty in balancing the principles of amateurism with the need to draw income from sporting events.

Vision in Action: Putting a Winning Strategy to Work

Tregoe, Benjamin B.

Zimmerman, John W.

Tobia, Peter M.

Business & Money

Fireside

Noted sports historian writes on the relationship of the media to college athletics.
Chosen as an Outstanding Academic Title for 2003 by Choice Magazine
The phenomenal popularity of college athletics owes as much to media coverage of games as it does to drum-beating alumni and frantic undergraduates. Play-by-play broadcasts of big college games began in the 1920s via radio, a medium that left much to the listener's imagination and stoked interest in college football. After World War II, the rise of television brought with it network-NCAA deals that reeked of money and fostered bitter jealousies between have and have-not institutions. In Play-by-Play: Radio, Television, and Big-Time College Sport noted author and sports insider Ronald A. Smith examines the troubled relationship between higher education and the broadcasting industry, the effects of TV revenue on college athletics (notably football), and the odds of achieving meaningful reform.
Beginning with the early days of radio, Smith describes the first bowl game broadcasts, the media image of Notre Dame and coach Knute Rockne, and the threat broadcasting seemed to pose to college football attendance. He explores the beginnings of television, the growth of networks, the NCAA decision to control football telecasts, the place of advertising, the role of TV announcers, and the threat of NCAA "Robin Hoods" and the College Football Association to NCAA television control. Taking readers behind the scenes, he explains the culture of the college athletic department and reveals the many ways in which broadcasting dollars make friends in the right places. Play-by-Play is an eye-opening look at the political infighting invariably produced by the deadly combination of university administrators, athletic czars, and huge revenue.

Play-by-Play: Radio, Television, and Big-Time College Sport

Johns Hopkins University Press

In the pages of this book the reader will find a brief but unique history of Winston Churchill as seen through the eyes of artists, modelers and sculptors. From the wealth of mediums through which the spirit of Churchill has been portrayed it becomes evident that no other leader of modern times can equal the truly worldwide acclaim of his greatness.
Churchill has been portrayed in many guises throughout the major part of this century, from the Boer War cigarette cards of 1900 to the present day. Throughout his life he played the part of the young soldier, the war correspondent, the painter, the historian, the Lord Admiral, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the War leader, the Prime Minister and the revered statesman. And in all these parts he has been represented in one art form or another. 
Every artist attempts to capture some aspect of the great man, and through this book the reader will develop a deeper understanding of that greatness.

Churchill: Images of Greatness

Kevin Francis Pub

A Debutante's Passion-A Coach's Erotica: Love Letters of a Harvard Man and a Boston Elite

Passionate correspondence between Harvard football coach William T. Reid and his wife, Christine Williams Lincoln Reid, 1896-1924

A Debutante's Passion-A Coach's Erotica: Love Letters Of A Harvard Man And A Boston Elite

Biographies & Memoirs

Eifrig Publishing

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Smith, Ronald A.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Smith, Ronald A.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Smith, Ronald A.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Sports and Freedom: The Rise of Big-Time College Athletics (Sports, History, and Society)

Sports and Freedom: The Rise of Big-Time College Athletics (Sports and History)

Pay for Play: A History of Big-Time College Athletic Reform (Sport and Society)

Wounded Lions: Joe Paterno, Jerry Sandusky, and the Crises in Penn State Athletics (Sport and Society)

Pay for Play: A History of Big-Time College Athletic Reform (Sport and Society)

Wounded Lions: Joe Paterno, Jerry Sandusky, and the Crises in Penn State Athletics (Sport and Society)

Vision in Action: Putting a Winning Strategy to Work

Play-by-Play: Radio, Television, and Big-Time College Sport

Churchill: Images of Greatness

A Debutante's Passion-A Coach's Erotica: Love Letters Of A Harvard Man And A Boston Elite