Unwinding Madness: What Went Wrong with College Sports--And How to Fix It

A critical look at the tension between the role of the university and the commercialization of college sportsUnwinding Madness is a comprehensive examination of how the National Collegiate Athletic Association has lost its way in the governance of intercollegiate athletics-and why it is incapable of achieving reform and must be replaced. The NCAA has placed commercial success above its responsibilities to protect the academic development, health, and well-being of college athletesand has fallen into an educational, ethical, and economic crisis.As long as intercollegiate athletics reside in the higher education environment, these programs must be academically compatible with their larger institutions, subordinate to their educational mission,and defensible from a not-for-profit organizational perspective. The issue has never been a matter of whether intercollegiate athletics belongs in higher education as an extracurricular offering. Rather, the perennial challenge has been how these programs have been governed and conducted.The authors propose detailed solutions, starting with the creation of a new national governanceorganization to replace the NCAA. At the college level, these proposals will not diminish the revenue production capacity of sports programs but will restore academic integrity to the enterprise, provide fairer treatment of college athletes with better health protections, and restore the rights and freedoms of athletes, which have been taken away by a professionalized athletics mentality that controls the cost of its athlete labor force and overpays coaches and athletic directors.Unwinding Madness recognizes that thereis no easy fix to the problems now facing college athletics. But the book does offer common sense, workable solutions that respect the rights of athletes and that can protect their health and well-being while delivering on the promise of a bona fide educational degree program.