Play-by-Play: Radio, Television, and Big-Time College Sport. By Ronald A. Smith. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001. Pp. viii, 304. $45.00.

Extract

Ronald A. Smith, professor emeritus of Kinesiology at Penn State University, has written several books on the history of college sports, most notably, Sports and Freedom: The Rise of Big-Time College Athletics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988). This book dealt with the development of American intercollegiate athletics from crew races in the middle of the nineteenth century until the beginnings of the NCAA in response to a football crisis in the first decade of the twentieth century. His focus was on the role of commercialization in college sports from the start, and the attempts by coaches, athletic directors, and university presidents to benefit from athletics.