Book Reviews
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The Delta Foundation started eight companies to manufacture
bicycle wheels, blue jeans, attic stairs, house fans, railroad spikes,
and electrical mechanical switches in the economically depressed
region where hundreds of thousands of African Americans became
unemployed after the mechanization of cotton production.
By the early 1970s the kairos moment of the 1960s in race relations subsided. Findlay does a superb job of explaining the declining interest in racial justice. The 1960s riots, the rise of black
power, and the debate over fundamental social and economic
change weakened the earlier consensus on civil rights. The “Black
Manifesto” that demanded a half billion dollars in reparations from
all the white churches of America met a strong rebuff. Findlay correctly concludes that the council’s involvement in the 1960s black
freedom movement was vulnerable because it was a top-down commitment by church hierarchy rather than a grass-roots commitment by the church membership.
This excellent study of the Protestant church’s role in the civil
rights struggle, especially in Mississippi, is a major contribution to
an understanding of the region and the era. I t illuminates the
national consensus on racial justice that emerged after World War
I1 but disintegrated by the 1970s.
ROBERTL. HARRIS,JR., is associate professor of African-American history in the
Africana Studies and Research Center, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York. He is
the author of Teaching African-American Hist0r.y (1985)among other publications.
Games Colleges Play: Scandal and Reform in Intercollegiate Athletics. By John R. Thelin. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994. Pp. xviii, 252. Notes, bibliography, index.
$34.95.)
The subtitle of John R. Thelin’s book implies that actual reform
has occurred during the history of college sports whereas his text
proves the opposite. Throughout this century intercollesate athletics have become increasingly corrupt and the people in chargecoaches, athletic directors, and compliant faculty and college
presidents-have become less willing and able to make systemic
changes as well as more adept a t defusing all reform attempts.
Very few schools, notably the Ivy League institutions and Notre
Dame, have been exceptions to this rule.
For readers who do not know the sorry history of the major
reform movements in college sports, Games Colleges Play provides
essential facts and excellent analysis. Thelin shows that college
sports have long been highly commercial enterprises with many
attendant evils and that the first major reform effort, undertaken
in the 1920s by the Carnegie Foundation, produced a brilliant
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Indiana Magazine of History
report and changed nothing because university administrators
were unwilling to implement its proposals on their individual campuses.
By the 1930s such conferences as the Big Ten, while posing as
the reformers of college sports, implemented rules to insure
increasing commercialization. After World War I1 intercollegiate
athletics entered a boom period that culminated in the basketballfixing scandals of the late 1940s-early 1950s. From these events
came the second major reform movement, led by the American
Council on Education’s Presidential Committee. The committee
suggested many wise proposals, all of which were sent to oblivion
by the big-time college coaches and their booster and media allies.
In the late 1950s and 1960s coaches became even more brazen,
and Thelin notes that in the Big Ten, with sports scandals occurring at many schools, including Indiana and Illinois, there was “an
unmistakable tone of levity among coaches” in their reactions to
conference penalties (p. 161). (Only one coach in college sports history escapes the author’s disdain-Knute Rockne of Notre Dameand, inexplicably, Thelin accepts as proof of Rockne’s character, the
film Knute Rockne-All American as well as a propaganda document on the coach-as-character-builder.)
Intercollegiate athletics continued to expand in the 1970s, and
abuses increased to the point where, in 1980, they moved, to quote
the chapter title, “From Sports Page to Front Page.” Again reformers suggested changes-the Knight Commission offered the most
thoughtful ones-but the college sports establishment had long ago
learned how to “cool out” and “wait out” all reform attempts. Thus,
in the 1990s the problems, particularly financial, mount, but the
basic structure of college sports-the autonomy that most universities allow their athletic departments-remains immutable. The
only possible agent of change lies outside the university-government agencies that might make various demands upon athletic
departments but probably will not.
Finally, Thelin’s chronicle of the failures of the attempts t o
reform intercollegiate athletics and the “games colleges play” in
burying those efforts is a profoundly pessimistic book. However,
any fan seriously interested in the reality of college sports will benefit from reading it. But be warned: Games Colleges Play will not
make watching the “Hurryin’ Hoosiers” or most other college teams
any easier.
MURRAY
SPERBER
is associate professor of English and American studies, Indiana
University, Bloomington, and the author of College Sports Znc.: T h e Athletic
Department us. the University (1990) and Shake Down the Thunder: The Creation
of Notre Dame Football (1993).