Share This PageCounterfeit Amateurs: An Athlete's Journey Through the Sixties to the Age of Academic Capitalism
“In Counterfeit Amateurs, Allen Sack craftily integrates his own experience as a high school and college (Notre
Dame) football player with the larger story about the professionalization and perversion of intercollegiate athletics. The result is a compelling and enlightening
tale about what has gone wrong and what can be done about it. Frankly, I couldn’t put the book down.”
—Andrew Zimbalist, Robert A. Woods Professor of Economics, Smith College, and author of Unpaid Professionals: Commercialism and Conflict in Big-Time
College Sports
"Allen Sack has written a superb book, lively and fascinating, and one that both entertains and educates. He writes about his amazing experiences at Notre Dame and he also convinces the reader that the college sports system is irretrievably broken. Moreover, he has a plausible solution to repair it. Everyone interested in college sports—participants, fans, and observers—should
read this book."
—Murray Sperber, Professor Emeritus, Indiana University, and author of Beer & Circus: How Big-time College Sports Is Crippling Undergraduate Education
“Exploitation, hypocrisy, duplicity are harsh words yet precisely describe the workings of the NCAA and its member schools in their treatment of college revenue athletes, the young men and women upon whose backs this multibillion dollar college revenue sports
empire rests. It is America’s modern plantation.”
—David Meggyesy, author of Out of Their League and NFL Players Association, Western Regional Director, retired
University Park, PA—One need not look far in today’s media outlets to find tabloid headlines about big-time college sports. Whether it’s the commercialization of universities or player exploitation, the debate has once again moved from simmering to hot. Athletes are challenging the NCAA for a bigger piece of the revenue pie and Congress continues to investigate the tax-exempt status of the NCAA. On the sidelines are a growing number of faculty groups who are voicing their concerns regarding the rampant effects of sports on campus life. What rights and resonsibilities should players and
universities have? Who should benefit from the huge payoffs, and what is the cost to higher education standards?
Written by a former Notre Dame football player under legendary coach Ara Parseghian and a co-founder of the Drake Group of concerned faculty, this book combines the personal experiences of a highly recruited student
athlete with the cognant analyses of a scholar-activist in a compelling way. Sack’s writings and public appearances, including work as an expert witness in law suits, have gained him wide recognition as an outspoken
advocate for athletic reform.
Sack distinguishes his own position, as an advocate of athletes’ rights, from the reformist stance of NCAA President Myles Brand, who believes that commercialized sport and education can peacefully coexist, and the
“intellectual elitist” position of people like William Dowling, who would like to see big-time college sports kicked off campus altogether.
The stakes are high for all concerned, not least the athletes whose exploitation by the system has been the motivating force for Sack’s own campaign, now stretching over several decades.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Foreword by Ara Parseghian
Preface
Acknowledgments
Part I: College Football in the Sixties
1 Playing Football in Ara’s Era
2 Scholastic Sports as a Pipeline to the Pros
3 The Game of the Century
Part II: Linking Sports and Politics
4 Politics, Protest, and the Athletic Revolution
5 Laying the Groundwork for Professional College Sports
6 Taking a Stand at Fort Apache
Part III: Shouting from the Ivory Tower
7 Building an Industry on Athletes’ Backs
8 Fighting for Market Share in the 1990s
9 Inside the Billion-Dollar Beast
10 College Sports in the Age of Academic Capitalism
Notes
Suggested Reading
Index
THE AUTHOR
Allen L. Sack is Professor of Management and Director of the Institute for Sports Management at the University of New Haven. He is co-author of College Athletes for Hire: The Evolution and Legacy of the NCAA’s Amateur
Myth (1998).
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