Beer and Circus: How Big-Time College Sports is Crippling Undergraduate Education

Earlier reviewers' criticisms that claim Sperber overstates his argument are oblivious to the economic politics of book publishing. It is common place for authors to rescind control over book titles as publishers continue to market books based on their "cover" not on their content. In fact, Sperber argued with Henry Holt and Company over the subtitle because, he claimed, it overstated what his data suggested. Anyone who actually read--and paid attention to--the limitations of this work as set forth in the "Preface" would know that. But, given the sophmoric banter that apologists for the interests under scrutiny have advanced in previous reviews, it is evident that they did not attend to them (the limitations). Anyone who claims that the over-emphasis placed on binge drinking in college communitites--which is really Sperber's argument (college communities not college campuses)--is defensible is blind to a significant matter of public health and is merely in denial. Sperber makes clear that he is neither anti-college athletics NOR anti-Big Time University. Anyone coming away from this work believing so both embodies and performs his argument about the climate in which "quality" education is currently marketed.In the end, Sperber's work functions to explain, simply, ONE of the many factors contributing to unhealthy, addicitive, and destructive environments in which college students currently find themselves. He doesn't claim to do anything more, so when he doesn't I'm not sure why he receives mis-placed criticism

I was raised on SEC sports, and a huge Tennessee fan my entire life. I graduated from a NAIA school with a nationally ranked football team, but being a late bloomer from an academic standpoint, a vocational, as well as a Gamma Delta Iota, I was unaware of the magnitude of the problem facing large public universities regarding the mix(er), no pun intended, between academics and athletics. While the book is well written and contains an enourmous amount of statistical information, it does indeed break my heart to realize that higher education has stooped to this level. I'm thankful that I received a good liberal arts education from my small (1200 enrollment) NAIA school.

I love college sports, especially basketball, but college sports has serious problems. Things have gotten so bad that sports are sometimes getting in the way of education. Sperber has done his research well and identified the problem well. Sperber is not the typical granola-eating sports hater; he knows too much about college sports not to be a knowledgeable fan. But he also knows the system is sick and needs to be fixed. This book makes me glad I chose to attend a Division III school.

Sperber has been one of the most incisive observers of college sports since the publication of College Sports, Inc. Since then he has written perhaps the definitive history of Notre Dame during the Knute Rockne years.In this book he brings the story of college sports and all its attendant ills into the decade of ESPN and the unholy alliance of "24/7" sports broadcasting, alcohol manufacturers and distributors (e.g. "Spuds MacKenzie" and the proliferation of "sports bars"), and university administrations which have turned relatively petty corruption into big business. Sperber, a former fraternity president, knows all too well that there are many different college students, but even the unreconstructed "party animals" are not his targets, rather it's the broadcasting/advertising/admissions complex mentioned above. The consequences range far beyond the "professionalization" of college sports to being a factor--albeit one factor--in the decline of undergraduate education itself.Sperber played the role of Cassandra at Indiana through the Bobby Knight years and for his trouble been emailed death threats. More proof that the truth hurts and some people can't handle it. Also recommended is Hoberman's DARWIN'S ATHLETES (hell, anything Hoberman writes is recommended).

This latest effort by Prof. Murray Sperber, who made himself almost famous recently by taking the semester off from Indiana University to avoid the Bobby Knight cauldron, should be read by every concerned layman, university president, trustee, faculty member and investigative journalist. Sperber's larger theme -- that universities have abandoned undergraduate education for research while pushing the college kids toward beer-and-circus seven-day weekends -- is well illustrated. He also notes how university administrations have sharpened their accounting methods to make it harder and harder for anyone to keep track of how much XXXX money --- I almost said beer -- they actually pour into their intercollegiate programs. Reviews in major publications have run from warm to enthusiastic. Sperber's one-semester sabbatical from IU seemed to me like overkill a few months ago, but now that the IU president himself has sought off-campus shelter I don't think Sperber was off the mark at all. His book is a bull's-eye. His earlier seminal work -- College Sports, Inc. -- could have been titled The Emperor's New Clothes. It's worth reading today. I understand he has another book in the works. If enough people read what he says and then talk to each other then perhaps the system could be shamed into the radical change it needs. That includes a return to needs-based scholarships and the end of the one-year athletic scholarship that is plainly a salary for work.