ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the relationship between collegiate and athletic culture in the United States. For the most academically selective schools, admissions are a zero-sum game: the more athletes who are recruited, the less room there is for other students. The research and the work of the authors suggest that an athlete culture has spread widely and can be found in small coed liberal arts colleges and Ivy League universities as well as in Division IA universities offering athletic scholarships and other amenities. Recruiting athletes for up to 40 intercollegiate teams at colleges and universities that are vastly oversubscribed by talented applicants has major opportunity costs—especially at the smaller Ivy League universities and the coed liberal arts colleges. Maintaining an appropriate balance between the pulls of the marketplace and the core educational values of colleges and universities produces a very real predicament.
