Sport is deeply interwoven with institutions of higher education in America today. Sports—as intramural and intercollegiate activities for students, as a segment of the entertainment industry within American society, as cultural objects of intense popular interest and media coverage, and as research subjects for faculty and students in a varied and expanding range of disciplines, whether at major public research institutions or small, private liberal arts colleges—are indisputably a central aspect of the landscape of American higher education. The value of sport in the university context, however, is not beyond dispute.On the contrary, as sports play an ever greater role in higher education and in American society, debates have arisen, on the pages of daily newspapers and specialized academic journals, about their role and the costs and benefits they carry—from financial to educational, physical to cultural to moral. These questions, furthermore, intersect in complex ways with broader social issues related to gender, race, and sexual orientation, and the symposium will seek to shed light on the ways in which approaches to and assessments of the question of value change when these factors are taken into account.

SCHEDULE

Keynote Lectures on Friday, November 14

4:00pm
Lecture by Amy Perko, Executive Director of the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics

5:00pm
Lecture by Taylor Branch, historian and author of numerous books and articles, including "The Shame of College Sports," "Why Scholarships Don't Count as Payment for College Athletes," and "Why I Can't Get Excited About the NCAA's New Reforms"

Saturday, November 15

10:30am: Economics
Rodney Fort - What Can We Know About College Sports Financial Data?
Lawrence Kahn - The Economics of the NCAA:  Cartels and Amateur Sports.
Stephen F. Ross - The Contested Values of College Sport: How Economists Can Help Lawyers and Policymakers

12:00pm: Well-Being
Rebecca Hasson - Sport: An Investment in Human Health, Well-Being, and Capital
Billy Hawkins - Collegiate Spectator Sports and Institution Building
Jane Ruseski - Exploring the Role of University Sponsored Sport on Health and Well-Being: An Economic Perspective

2:15pm: Education
Yago Colás - Fan, Scholar, Teacher: Ambiguities of Value Where Sport Meets the Classroom
Jimmy King - The Politics of Sport and Higher Education: A Player's Perspective
Rob Sellers - Opportunity or Exploitation: The Case of African American Student-Athletes and Intercollegiate Athletics

3:45pm: Ethics
Bruce Berglund -  Big-Time Sports and Student Recruiting: Enrollments, Budgets, and Social Justice at the Public University
Jack Hamilton - Young Men, Old Money: Professional Sports' Amateurism Problem
William Morgan - Markets and Intercollegiate Sports: How Not to Solve an Ethical Problem

5:00pm: Closing Remarks



This event sponsored by the Department of Comparative Literature, the LSA Theme Semester, the School of Kinesiology, the Department of Psychology, the Department of History, the Institute for the Humanities, the Department of American Culture, the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies, the U-M Office of Research, Rackham Graduate School, and the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts.

Event organization by Yago Colàs, Stefan Szymanski, and Silke-Maria Weineck.