Running Head: Commercialization of Intercollegiate Athletics

Commercialization of Intercollegiate Athletics

Joe McCarthy
John Carroll University

Ethical Problems in Sport

Fall 2016

Running Head: Commercialization of Intercollegiate Athletics

CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION
Intercollegiate athletics was once limited to small student organized intramural
contests and activities that focused on physical fitness and the healthy lifestyle at a
particular university. These small-time organizations were non-threatening to the business
world and provided no services to the businessmen of the United States. Universities
acknowledged the work of these students as merely student organizations; there was no
athletic department; no athletic director; no major athletic facilities.
Today, the intercollegiate athletics world has evolved into a multi-million dollar
machine that has combined athletics with business. Because of commercialization, what
was once a harmless student organization has now transformed into a billion dollar
industry that includes million dollar sponsorship deals for championship events that are
viewed by millions of people around the world. This powerful relationship has faced
criticism through the years with claims that athletics takes precedence over academic
duties at universities, sets a stage for illegal compensation methods and a blurred view of
the mission and goals from universities that are skewed by that weekends football game.
As it pertains to college athletics, commercialization plays an interesting role in
how and why the common fan tunes into a football game, and how an athletic department
manages its athletic programs. The million-dollar industry of collegiate sport has been
researched and heavily discussed over the academic and professional arenas, with both
sides providing a look into this impressive world. Through that work, a historical and
effect analysis, viewpoints of major sponsored bowl games and athletic events and
suggested solutions to the moral and ethical dilemmas have been produced.

Running Head: Commercialization of Intercollegiate Athletics

Walter Camp an early American football coach, pioneer for the game and sports
writer once said in 1893, A gentleman does not make his living, however, from his
athletic prowess. He does not earn anything by his victories except glory and satisfaction
(Vanover & DeBowes, 2013). Even during Camps time, business leaders identified and
understood the role intercollegiate competition could play in benefiting the business
bottom line. For example, the first meeting between the Harvard and Yale rowing teams
in 1852 had an estimated one thousand people in attendance. Seven years later there was
a projected twenty thousand spectators in attendance, opening the door to sponsorship
and advertisement of the event in the upcoming years (Vanover & DeBowes, 2013).
For the past 60 years, commercialization in intercollegiate athletics has grown
while NCAA Division I football and mens basketball teams manufacture multi-million
dollar television and broadcasting deals (Mitten & Musselman & Burton, 2009). CBS
made a deal with the NCAA that agreed on terms to allow the broadcasting company to
air the NCAA mens basketball tournament for $6 billion from 2002 through 2013
(Mitten & Musselman & Burton, 2009).
These massive television deals open a major advertisement door to businesses that
put a product or service into the living rooms of millions spectators. In 1996, there was
$4.7 billion spent on advertising during United States national televised broadcasts of
collegiate sporting events (McAllister, 1998). Commercialization also assisted in the
creation and expansion of major collegiate sporting events. The Rose Bowl is often
referred to as the Granddaddy of Them All of college football bowl games. Originally
created in 1902, the game was originally intended to help publicize the Tournament of

Running Head: Commercialization of Intercollegiate Athletics

Roses Parade and the Pasadena, California area (McAllister, 1998). Today, the Rose Bowl
is one of the most watched and highly anticipated bowl games of the post-season.
The Rose Bowl now offers important opportunities to businesses looking to
advertise to an extremely large audience. In 1998, nearly 23-percent of the games
broadcast featured advertisements, meaning nearly a quarter of what television viewers
saw was product and service advertisements and not football (Eadie, 1998). Outside of
advertisements during a broadcast, business leaders are taking an even more overarching
step into placing a product on the television screen. Companies now spend billions of
dollars to fund bowl games in exchange for naming rights, including the Frito Lay
company and the ownership of the Fiesta Bowl.
What was once small time, intramural competition is now a nationally viewed and
heavily followed world known as intercollegiate athletics. Business leaders and
marketing teams have and continue to take advantage of these collegiate sporting events
that draw audients by the millions. This now billion-dollar industry has evolved into a
heavily criticized and examined topic in the field of athletic administration.

Running Head: Commercialization of Intercollegiate Athletics

CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW
Commercialization as it pertains to collegiate athletics has face strong criticism
over the past five decades. Through this intense criticism from academia and daily
periodicals, important research conducted has brought forth information on the long time
history, effects, issues and solutions to this consistently growing relationship between
collegiate sports and business. Important works of research have focused on the
relationship between business and collegiate sports, especially examining the effects of
student-athletes priorities, graduation rates and university budgets.
Intercollegiate collegiate athletics continues to go through a major evolution from
the humble beginnings of intramural activities focused on physical fitness into the multibillion dollar industry centered on student-athletes (Vanover & DeBowes, 2013). This
transition to a commercialized model in college athletics can be linked to early 19th
century contests between Ivy League universities in contests of rowing, baseball and
football. With growing business interest and expanding collegiate athletic departments,
organizations such as the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) formed in the
hopes of maintaining the meaning of a student-athletes role in intercollegiate athletics.
Some critiques of the NCAA have emerged overtime arguing that organizations like the
NCAA allow for a greater commercialization of intercollegiate athletics with more
interest in money than the student-athlete (Vanover & DeBowes, 2013).
Regardless of the purpose versus the work done by the NCAA, intercollegiate
athletics has developed into a major money business. Student ran intramural departments
quickly developed into major university athletic department managed by professional
administrators on million dollar salaries. A culture of highly paid football coaches whose

Running Head: Commercialization of Intercollegiate Athletics

salaries trump those of athletic directors and university presidents has taken over, giving
the heavily criticized thought that college athletics is more valued at a particular
university than the educational programs. This culture has proved to have important
affects on the role of higher education for the average student, which highlights studying
responsibilities falling behind the responsibilities of being a student-athlete or even just a
fan (Martin & Christy, 2010). With the lure of enormous profitability, athletic
departments are chasing the money through big-time college athletics. By doing so, the
majority of NCAA Division I athletic departments run a budget deficit after dumping
millions of dollars into athletic programs that often fail to bring back an equal return
(Maxwell & Lough, 2009). In 2014, just 23 of the 228 NCAA Division I athletic
programs covered their costs without subsides while just 16 could accomplish the same
without subsides (Goral, 2014).
The NCAA provides two of the most viewed and massive sports events of the
year through the March Madness NCCA Mens Division I Basketball tournament and
NCAA Football bowl games. Both the three-week tournament and the three weeks worth
of bowl games provide numerous opportunities for businesses to showcase products and
services to a larger audience. This is made possible by the massive increase of viewership
from the casual sports fan (Whiteside, Hardin, Ash, 2011). These major collegiate
sporting events also have a severe effect of the campus and student culture at
participating universities. Athletics often times have an adverse effect on the academic
mission and goals of the university with an example of the University of Alabama
canceling classes so that student could attend the 2009 BCS football National
Championship game (Whiteside, Hardin, Ash, 2011). However, this increased coverage

Running Head: Commercialization of Intercollegiate Athletics

and following of intercollegiate athletics has been linked with increased admission to
universities while also providing some reasoning behind participation increases in certain
sports (Hughes & Coakley, 1984).
Examples like the March Madness tournament and bowl games both have
humble beginnings, including a total transformation to the spectacles as they stand today.
This transformation includes the role of athletics in the college culture, creation of major
division and conference structures that span the entire country and the amount on money
invested in the game. Intercollegiate athletics has, from an early date, been based on the
idea of the athletes holding an amateur status. However, even the earliest moments of
college athletics had strong hypocrisy when it came to terms of amateurism. For example,
in the 1850s, Harvard University paid athletes on the Universitys rowing team with
payments ranging from $100-$500 (Mitten & Musselman & Burton, 2009). Although
instances of direct payments of athletes from universities is not as commonplace, the
compensation of athletes through other means is an extremely prevalent issue in the
current climate of intercollegiate athletics.
Any compensation, whether it is legal or illegal, of student-athletes is minuscule
in comparison of the money that is pumped into collegiate sporting events. Major
corporations and businesses use large scale sporting events, such as NCAA football bowl
games, to advertise services and products to a large and captive audience, leading into the
growing commercialization involved with intercollegiate athletics.
Sponsorship and major advertisements in these nationally televised bowl games
have become commonplace since the early parts of the 20th century (McAllister, 1998).
The fast growing and largest sector of this growing commercialization comes in the form

Running Head: Commercialization of Intercollegiate Athletics

of sponsored bowl games. Sponsored bowl games in the United States went from less
than $1 billion in 1985 to a projected $6.8 billion in 1998 (Kasrel, 1997). The massive
amount of money involved in these bowls games has created one of the most
commercialized sectors of popular entertainment in the United States (Andersen, 1995).
Television, radio and other media platforms provide the arena for this commercialization
to reach a national audience. In doing so, major media corporations also find a massive
cut of the fiscal pie that is created by the demand of intercollegiate athletics. Multimillion dollar media deals has aided in the creation of collegiate athletic conferences and
how athletic departments operate (Zimbalist, 2001).
To draw comparison, college football bowl games can be compared to the Super
Bowl, in terms of commercialization effect. The Fiesta Bowl a NCAA football bowl
game that does not determine the NCAA national champion had only 54-percent of its
air time advertising free, while the Rose Bowl had 77-percent of add-free time, and the
Super Bowl 76-percent ad-free time (Eadie, 1998). Meaning The Fiesta Bowl has
approximately five times the graphic advertising when components the National Football
Leagues (NFL) championship game.
As a whole, college sports generate $12 billion in annual revenue, $10 billion of
which comes from NCAA Division I. The majority of this money comes from advertising
costs and spent by the large corporations and businesses. Many academics believe that
Congress and the United States government needs to be called into regulate and mange
the major work done by collegiate athletics (Johnson, 2014).
Commercialization of college sports has been under the microscope over the past
three decades, however, the relationship between business and intercollegiate athletics is

Running Head: Commercialization of Intercollegiate Athletics

not a new subject area. This relationship has been prevalent since the earliest moments of
intercollegiate athletics to the massive football bowl games today. Research into the
effects and roles both businesses and athletic departments take continue to be put into the
academic and professional light. To allow for a thoughtful and objective view of the
dilemmas produced by the relationship, it is essential to examine both the works
completed by outsides observers and former professionals.

Running Head: Commercialization of Intercollegiate Athletics

CHAPTER III: SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
The intercollegiate athletic and commercialization relationship has flourished over
the past five decades to the point where the two go hand-in-hand. Intercollegiate athletics
continues to be a medium for business leaders and marketers to place products and
services into the homes of spectators through the commercialization of college athletics.
This relationship extends from the usage of student-athletes, events, facilities and
universities, which has brought on dilemmas and benefits through its time.
Commercialization in intercollegiate athletics has pushed the major business
dealings to the forefront of the ethical discussions involving college athletics. Through
those discussions and publications, former professionals and academics covering the field
have manufactured possible solutions to these ethical dilemmas.
Because of the enormous amount of money and massive amount of eyes watching
collegiate athletics, some critics are pointing to government involvement as a solution.
The same academics make the point to say that the NCAA is too small in comparison to
the amount of people and money the organization must manage within intercollegiate
athletics. To solve this issue, a call to the United Stats Congress to regulate and control
the collegiate athletics is the suggestion from the ones looking for a solution (Johnson,
2014).
The NCAA is called to regulate close to a half-million college athletes and
athletic department personnel every year. As the collegiate athletic scene grows, more and
more slips out of the reach of the NCAA, including the importance of the education for
the student-athletes. According to the College Sports Research Institutes 2013 report, 18percent fewer men graduated in the FBS than their full-time student counterparts. For

Running Head: Commercialization of Intercollegiate Athletics

black men, the number fell to 24-percent fewer; for white men, the number was seven
percent fewer. Athletic achievement is being placed above that of educational
achievement, which some consider to be a disservice to the student-athlete. To aid in the
solution to this issue, some critics have provided the solutions of Congress intervention
but amending the National Labor Relations Act to allow all student to unionize, meaning
student-athletes would be able to negotiate cost of college rates through a union. Through
a union, a student-athlete can put a price on his or her services to the university in return
for profits and academic setbacks because of the time committed to play a sport (Johnson,
2014).
Money and commercialization and the relationship it has with intercollegiate
sports will continue to be an important ethical issue examined for decades to come.
Throughout history, this relationship has produced record setting profit and viewership
lines, caused scandal with illegal actions between booster clubs, athletes and athletic
departments and has created a thriving business model. Through these situations in
history, commercialization has shown its ability to make a major impact on the
intercollegiate world.
As it pertains to college athletics, commercialization will continue to play a role
in the evolving business structure. The changes from the NCAA and governing bodies on
the issues of student-athlete educational development in balance with athletic excellence
will be a major question moving forward for collegiate athletics. Even with possible
changes on the horizon, the Americans that enjoy college sports will continue to tune in,
buy tickets and be a part of the action, building on the foundation of commercialization in
intercollegiate athletics.

Running Head: Commercialization of Intercollegiate Athletics

References
Andersen, R. 1995. Consumer culture and TV programming, Boulder, CO: Westview
Press.
Delany, J. E. (1997). Commercialism in intercollegiate athletics. Educational
Record, 78(1), 39.
Eadie, B. (1998). College football bowl games more commercialized than the
Super Bowl, researcher finds. Spectra, 34(12), 6.
Goral, T. (2014). Escaping the athletic trap. University Business, 17(6), 8-10.
Hughes, R., & Coakley, J. (1984). Mass society and the commercialization of
sport. Sociology Of Sport Journal, 1(1), 57-63.
Kasrel, D. 1997. Corporate sponsorship grows. Philadelphia Business Journal, May 2: 3
4.
Martin, K. L., & Christy, K. (2010). The Rise and impact of high profile spectator
sports on American Higher Education. Journal Of Issues In Intercollegiate
Athletics, 1.
Maxwell, H., & Lough, N. (2009). Signage vs. No signage: An analysis of
sponsorship recognition in women's college basketball. Sport Marketing
Quarterly, 18(4), 188-198.
McAllister, M. (1998). College bowl sponsorship and the increased
commercialization of amateur sports. Critical Studies In Media Communication,
15(4), 357-381.
Mitten, M. J., Musselman, J. L., & Burton, B. W. (2009). Commercialized

Running Head: Commercialization of Intercollegiate Athletics

Intercollegiate Athletics: A Proposal for Targeted Reform Consistent with
American Cultural Forces and Marketplace Realities. Journal Of Intercollegiate
Sport, 2(2), 202.
Nixon, H. L. (2014). The athletic trap : how college sports corrupted the
academy. Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014.
Whiteside, E., Hardin, M., & Ash, E. (2011). Good for society or good for
business? Division I Sports Information Directors' Attitudes Toward the
Commercialization of Sports. International Journal Of Sport Communication,
4(4), 473.
Yost, M. (2008). Madness is the correct description of this culture crisis. Street &
Smith's Sportsbusiness Journal, 10(46), 26.
Zimbalist, A. (2001). The Media Commercialization and Stratification. In, unpaid
professionals: Commercialism & conflict in big-time college sports (pp. 90-124).
Princeton University Press.