Senior Honors Projects, 2020-current
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Date of Graduation
5-13-2022
Publish
yes
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts (BA)
Department
Department of History
Advisor(s)
Raymond M. Hyser
Kevin R. Hardwick
Laura Henigman
Abstract
This paper examines the progression of the intercollegiate athletic space, from a small regatta in 1852 to the massive athletic environment we know now in contemporary society. It finds the National Collegiate Athletic Association snared in a trap of circular logic that has been closing in on it since its conception, as it has defined collegiate athletes as amateurs and then proceeded to argue for amateur status for those athletes because of the definition that it wrote. This paper concludes in its final two chapters, after analyzing the recent Supreme Court case NCAA v. Alston, and the Name, Image, and Likeness legalization that followed, that the NCAA has recently taken a seismic blow to its authoritarian regime over collegiate athletics. It also fills an understudied yet extremely important gap in the historiography, due to its analysis of modern NIL deals and the transfer portal – two crucial pieces of contemporary collegiate athletics that have not yet come under academic study because they are so recent. This study finds that the intercollegiate athletic landscape is likely changed forever, and furthermore, that this change is for the better.
Recommended Citation
Kirsch, Terek J., "The NCAA's rise to absolute power and confronting its distortion of amateurism" (2022). Senior Honors Projects, 2020-current. 147.
https://commons.lib.jmu.edu/honors202029/147
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