The purpose of this book is to show how college athletes started playing sports as amateurs, but quickly through athletic scholorships have turned towards professionalism. An amateur is one who engages in sports in their free time. This is leisure time, and athletes joining in this time will compete solely on thier will to play and not participate in return for room. board, tuition and fees. An athlete becomes a professional when one accepts an athletic scholorship which may include any of these incentives. This book is primarily about professionlism. The start of the Sanity Code showed signs that the NCAA was turning professional. The Sanity Code stated that financial aid could be awarded to students on the basis of their athletic ability. They called these gifts for play, not pay for play. Recieving any payment at all according to Sack and Staurowsky, makes that athlete a professional. This book touches on the relationships between coaches and players. Under scholorship, athletes must perform under the rules of the coach. I just recently finished my senior year of Division II football. I was under scholorship and my coach did have total control over my actions. My coach acted as the employer, and I was the employee. Schools that don't offer scholorships such as the Ivy League, and Division III schools, players aren't under such strict control. Athletes don't have to practice or play if they don't want to. These players are under no obligation to their coaches. The authors give a good argument that under scholorships, athletes are held under contract, similar to an employee contract. Chapter 5 was a very interesting chapter. The authors explained how sholorships turned into employee contracts through the issue of worker's compensation. In the Van Horn Case the courts awarded Van Horn's family death benefits because Van Horn was under scholorship for his athletic ability, thus making it an employee contract. I thought that adding in the Askew factors made this chapter powerful. The Askew factors were used by the State of Michigan in determining the existence of an employment relationship. One factors is the employer has the right to control the employee. The second factor is the employer can discipline or fire the employee. The third factor is the employee accepts wages to pay for everyday living expenses. The fouth factor is the task provided is a part of the employers business. As a scholorship player I think that athletes under scholorship do meet these criteria. Athletes are under control of the coach and are disciplined. Athletes accept room and board that are used as their everyday living expenses. I also think that since sport revenues go into a universities general fund, then that sport is part of the universities business. This book supports my arguements. Sack and Staurowsky end their book with possible reforms of collegiate sport. I agree with these thoughts. College sport should go to either one extreme or the other. One way is to eliminate scholorships all together. Students will then come first at all universities, and higher learning can be achieved. The other extreme would be to admit that college athletes are paid professionals. This would cause college sports to become stepping stones to professional sports. The revenues generated from that sport would go right back into that program. University funds should not be put into sports, as sports would become an unrelated business to the university. Turning professional will force only the fittest big time colleges to survive in this game. The only unversities that will survive in a professional atmosphere are the schools producing the most revenues. This limits the competition to only a handful, and the rest can only be forced to return to amateur athletics.

In "College Athletes for Hire" Authors Sack andStaurowsky need to be commended for having the courage to create sucha document that takes a very depth and candid look at what collegiate sports have become today in terms of professionalism and commercialism. As a former Division II athlete having participated on both "revenue generating" (football) and "non-revenue generating" (wrestling) athletic teams. I can definitely relate to many of the things the authors have discussed in their book. In addition, being a student of the sports industry, I found the contents to be very helpful as the book took the reader on an educational journey of twist and turns while exposing how people's greed for money has corrupted the essence of amateur sports. This text is one that should be read by all who have any involvement in the grooming of student athletes. This book brings to the surface some very important questions about how, when, where, and for what reasons the authors feel that many of our student athletes have become unpaid professionals. While providing us with an abundance of both primary and archival research material to support their viewpoints and conclusions. By doing this I feel they have eliminated the criticism that this is just a book of hot air stemming from two individual's bad experiences and personal feeling, causing anyone in disagreement to have to produce and organize just as much supporting material as well as to present it in just as an effective manner. The authors hit the reader with an eye-opening jolt of reality by presenting the actual fate of one former collegiate athlete and his quiest for justice. This former football player received a game related injury that left him a quadriplegic. He stresses that if his university's athletic director, coach, or any of the groundskeepers had gotten hurt that day, they would have received workers' compensation for their injury but he as an "amateur scholarship athlete" (by NCAA believes) is not entitled to such coverage even though because of his talents they have jobs. The book showcases the authors' experiences in the sports from the big time Division I revenue generating world of football to the minute world of women's Division III sports. Providing the reader with a revealing look at the amount of time the authors dedicated to investigating and substantiating the material they found. The Introduction sets the foundation for the educational journey on which the reader is about to embark by showing some of the disparities between the various football divisions in the NCAA. It declares what sport is, a taste of the legislative effect on sport, a naming of what they feel is the problem in NCAA sports, a statement as to what the purpose of the book is, and chapter by chapter break down of what the authors are trying to convey in each chapter. Unlike other critiques of collegiate sport they address the historical path that "the evolution of "NCAA-sponsored" professionalism in the form of athletically related financial aid" has taken. In the body of the book the authors express that in Great Britain "the amateur ideal of sport was in many ways supportive of the best academic traditions of the liberal arts when viewed in the context of the British University". But here in America because of spectators' alarming interest in competition (1906) which reached beyond their regional lines, revenue driven individuals leaped at the opportunity to exploit what they saw as an emerging national market giving, the NCAA the boosts it so desperately needed to become what it is today. Helping to propel the NCAA into its present state (a cartel as describe by the authors) was a number of legislative changes which the authors cite as major contributors. These legislative moves were in direct contradiction to the original code of ethics/by laws of the (Articles VI & VII) NCAA that were in place in 1906 forbidding the violations of the amateur principle. Transforming individuals who accepted athletic scholarships into paid professionals based on their very own (NCAA's) historical standards and definitions. The NCAA has always tried to present itself as the "do gooders", but this book reveals the flip side of the coin by containing information on actual court rulings concerning the relationship between athletes, scholarships, employment contracts, compensation, and the strategy used by the NCAA to mask their incorporations of professionalism. The discussion of the emergence of women's sports was a great idea because it shows how women have fought for so many years to preserve the true essence of amateurism by being opposed to the act of having collegiate sports serve the public as an entertainment venue. Which took away from the educational purposes of sports along with exposing the wide spread sexist discriminations that was prevalent against women in the world of sports for so many years. Discrimination lasted until the point where it could be seen that revenue could be generated from the fruits of women's labor right along with that of their male counter parts and through their quest for equality (e.g.Title IX) which sent women leaping into the world of professional sports by now being able to receive athletic scholarships. END

Stark and Staurowsky have created a book about college athletes that explores the issue of professionalism in college sports like no other. The purpose of this book is to prove that college athletes who receive scholarships based on athletic ability are in fact paid professionals who are compensated in the form of room, board, tuition, and fees. In spite of this fact, the NCAA still labels these athletes amateurs. As a result, the NCAA is protected under rules that allow them to get away with behavior that they otherwise could not if these athletes were considered professionals in the true sense of the word. The authors contend that by labeling athletes amateurs the NCAA is able to avoid taxes, workers compensation claims of injured athletes, and antitrust scrutiny. The author's focus is on athletes involved in revenue producing sports, mainly men's Division IA football and basketball. The authors do a good job of proving that the role these sports are playing in universities more closely resembles an unrelated business of the university rather than an academic supplement.

Other books talk about the evils of college sports in terms of commercialism and illegal payments. These books focus mainly on the outrageous amounts of money that some college sports generate and how it is corrupting the athletes who participate. This is one of the few books that address the issues of professionalism in college sports. The primary focus of this book is on professionalism and the problems it has caused in college athletics.

According to the authors amateurism began in Great Britain in the early 19th century and centered around the British aristocracy. The traditional definition of amateurism included the belief that it involved an activity that was done in one's spare time, separate from activities that involved making money or a living. The amateur ideal spread to academic universities. It was not long until universities found that they could make money off of these athletic events. In the early 1900's, as universities were defying amateur ideals by finding ways to subsidize athletes as incentives to play for their university, the NCAA came along to play the role of regulator. The authors not only contend, but prove through rulings and behavior of the NCAA that the NCAA never once tried to prevent professionalism from forming in college sports. As a matter of fact, according to the authors the NCAA has not only been unsuccessful in stopping professionalism, but has actually accommodated it.

The authors have quite a few chapters of their book devoted the history of women's sports. These chapters are very important to their argument. They illustrate that women's sports in college began quite differently than men's sports. The women's sports model, as the authors refer to it, strove to separate itself from the money and exploitations associated with men's college sports. This model balanced education and athletics and strove to provide all female students with the opportunity to be involved in athletics. This is what the authors believe that the role of sports should be in universities. Up until very recently, focus in women's sports has remained on the athletes, not the spectators or the revenue being produced by their sport.

The authors spend a whole chapter proving that athletic scholarships have changed from gifts given to students into contracts of employment. This transformation of the athletic scholarship is the very root of the problem that has turned college athletes into professionals. It is in this chapter that the authors do a great job of combining their views and the history of the previous chapters with actual court cases. Although most of these cases deal with the issue of workers compensation for college athletes, they illustrate the transformation of the college athlete from amateur to professional with the introduction of athletic scholarship in the 50's. Awarding financial compensation in the form of scholarships to talented athletes constitutes payment and violates amateur rules. But it was not until 1967 that the NCAA turned these scholarships into employment contracts by allowing athletic scholarships to be canceled by the university, in affect giving the university the power to "fire" an athlete.

What makes this book interesting is that the authors not only talk about the issues and problems with college athletics, but they also offer solutions to the problems they discussed. There are two solutions presented. The first solution presented is for colleges to do away with athletic scholarships and concentrate on educating students. This solution involves bringing college athletics back to the amateur level. This model is successful in Ivy League schools. The second solution offered is to acknowledge that athletes receiving scholarships for their ability are in fact paid professionals and to support these athletes to their fullest potential. In some cases this would involve running the revenue producing sports of a university as an unrelated business, one that has employees and pays taxes.

This book was thorough and very well researched. The authors discussed cases and archival material from the NCAA that I have never seen discussed before. By doing this the authors were able to illustrate their opinions with facts. Although I liked that their opinions were backed up by facts I found this book to be difficult to read at some points. Parts of the book read like a history book, and although the history was very interesting and in some regards necessary to their mission, I would have enjoyed more opinion and less history. Since the authors were involved in college athletics themselves I would have enjoyed reading about some of their experiences. On the other hand, because there was so much history and facts throughout this book I was really able to understand the issues. Overall I enjoyed this book because it explored a side of college athletics that has never been looked at in this kind of detail. I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in college athletics.