ABSTRACT
The first major step in transforming the NCAA into a cartel came in 1948, with the adoption of the so-called "sanity code". The code decisively broke with the amateur ideal by permitting the offer of scholarships and campus jobs to college athletes. Television itself encouraged a growing nationalization and commercialization of college athletic programs. Control of television emerged as the second major source of the NCAA's growing power in college sports. In addition, the decision to grant to the NCAA control of television negotiations strengthened that organization's hegemony over college sports. As college football boomed, college basketball also began to confront the advantages and drawbacks of growing national recognition. The next year, in 1951, the public learned that college basketball was the victim of perhaps the biggest scandal in the history of American sports. Perhaps architecture more than anything else converted college basketball into a sport that attained national attention.
