Same Players, Different Game
Same Players, Different Game
An Examination of the Commercial College Athletics Industry
2020 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards Finalist for Adventure, Sports & Recreation
In this thought-provoking new book, John C. Barnes examines the contemporary state of commercial college athletics as a guide for current and potential administrators, coaches, regents, and others involved in collegiate athletic operations and decision-making. Each chapter provides an overview of an industry shaped by such current realities as Title IX requirements, commercial investments, student testing, and television contracts. Barnes provides an accessible outline of the historical background and potential future of the commercial college athletics industry from a nonjudgmental perspective. Same Players, Different Game not only serves as a text and guide for governance and leadership but also as a primer for the economic and political realities of modern college athletics that students and sports fans will find fascinating.
(This book) not only covers historical issues and precedents in the crazy world of commercialized college sports in America, but it also includes a focus on the current and relevant issues of intercollegiate athletics literally as they are happening.…This book eloquently covers the issues outside the fields and courts that will shape intercollegiate athletics far into the future and shows how different it may one day look.’—B. David Ridpath, author of Tainted Glory: Marshall University, the NCAA, and One Man’s Fight for Justice
John C. Barnes is an associate professor of sports administration at the University of New Mexico. He formerly served as the head athletic trainer at Chaffey College and as an athletic trainer with the California Angels and the Montreal Expos organizations. For almost two decades he has worked in sports-management education, focusing his research on various issues in college athletics.
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter One. Ivory Towers: A Business Model
Chapter Two. An Unstable Marriage: Academics in College Athletics
Chapter Three. Students, Athletes, and Student Athletes
Chapter Four. The Athlete, Not the Enterprise
Chapter Five. The Doomsday Machine
Chapter Six. Television Creates a Monster: NCAA’s 1%
Chapter Seven. Some Are More Equal
Afterword
References
Index
