Special Admission: How College Sports Recruitment Favors White Suburban Athletes

Abstract

If this book serves as a reader's first entry into the perils of college athletics, they will not be able to look at any sporting event the same. Special Admission coincides with the timing of Operation Varsity Blues, the college acceptance scandal orchestrated by Rich Singer. Kirsten Hextrum contends the fact that families have been paying for their children to be admitted to schools for decades based on false athletic careers is not a big transgression as college admissions have always been “rigged” (xi). She begins the book by assessing the rise of Caylin Louis Moore, a Black male football player from Los Angeles who attended Texas Christian University. He later became a Rhodes Scholar in 2017. Such an honor led many news outlets to recognize Moore's feat (a Black male coming out of poverty receiving such an esteemed scholarship) as a rationale for how sport provides an opportunity for social mobility for people from economically deficient communities. It is an argument that has influenced and shaped much of the discourse around the problems with college athletics. Hextrum claims this type of positioning is based on a false assumption about the utility of a college education.Special Admission disputes the claim that “America is an open and upwardly mobile society.” Hextrum uses the narratives of various student-athletes focusing on issues of race, gender, and socioeconomic status to highlight this point. She contends sports have never been a meritocracy but rather an effort to promote the success of white males in higher education. Hextrum gives a history of how the United States is the only country that integrates sports into the fabric of higher education. In other countries, participants in interscholastic sports are not allowed to play at the collegiate level; rather, they are given the opportunity to attend an academy or turn professional. Why is that not the case across the sporting landscape in the United States? Hextrum argues it is because higher education is authorized through the state. Such a framework may seem awkward to a general reader, but this approach provides a greater understanding of the power dynamics at play within college admissions and athletics. This is seen through the recruitment process, which overwhelmingly favors white athletes from middle-class communities. The author contends this is based on residency, attendance in school districts with adequate resources, and social connections that provide them with ample sporting opportunities.Hextrum's book is well researched using an array of scholarly works in education and sport studies, along with interviews that allow the reader to learn about the experiences of white student-athletes. The author identifies this population of participants in “nonexploited, non-revenue-generating sports” as critical to her overall synthesis (19). Their stories enrich the narrative of this text. The discussion surrounds how the population gained unwarranted access for perceived athletic abilities. The honesty with which many of them realize their privilege is surprising, especially since the meritocracy argument is believed on many fronts. While it can be debated whether they are exploited or not because they do not bring great financial rewards to their respective schools, the inability of students to balance the demands of school and athletic competition across racial, gender, and socioeconomic lines illustrates larger issues within the structuring of college athletics as well. Hextrum's attention to the relationship between college athletics and the admissions process is important. Selection committees have come to favor certain populations who fit prescribed criteria for student-athletes and embrace lower academic standards with a greater guarantee for admission. White middle-class families are given access to highly selective institutions that provide higher graduation rates, better placement in top graduate programs, and better job opportunities through sport.Hextrum does not simply identify the problem of privilege within college athletics. She also provides solutions, encouraging schools, the administrators they hire, and student-athletes to embrace new elements of change to create equity in higher education. For example, new selection criteria need to be developed by admissions offices that will value more than a zip code, one's physical capabilities, and connections to pay for play sporting opportunities. She also argues for a reorganization of college athletics that allows for new sporting forms to be included, recommending activities like karate, surfing, skateboarding, and tai chi. While these recommendations are worthwhile and should be considered, such propositions will be hard to enact, considering many schools focus on their profit margin when determining what non-revenue-generating sports to support financially. Overall, sport studies scholars and practitioners must add Special Admission to their libraries. This work provides insight into the interconnectedness of college athletics and college admissions and how the college athletics arms race encompasses so much of the higher education experience.