Abstract
Aremarkable feature of the recent literature on college sports is its virtually unanimous agreement that commercialized athletics has been a destructive force in American higher education. Disagreement comes only in the various—and endless—proposals about what is to be done. Yet even here there is substantial agreement, with a majority of critics arguing that the solution is to make athletics in Division IA of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) openly professional—the school operates the franchise, the stadium is sold to shareholders, the players are hired on the same terms as those in the NBA or NFL, and the charade of trying to pass them off as “student athletes” is quietly put to rest. Allen Sack, coauthor of the hardhitting study College Athletes for Hire, has recently said that this is his own favored option.1 Andrew Zimbalist, the Smith College economist whose Unpaid Professionals undertakes a sophisticated economic analysis of big-time college sports, argues that it would put an end to an intolerable hypocrisy: “Kids who have no academic talent and/or interest in attending college are compelled to be there. REVIEW ESSAY
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