ABSTRACT
The systemic and structural context for college sports is a milieu of competing goals and values, embedded in traditions and rituals with cultural norms and hierarchical leadership. Internal and external structures are influenced by forces from external laws and regulations as well as internal ones. The same is true for the social and cultural values and economic forces all depicted in the E-I Interaction model. At the very center of the E-I model is the college or university with two concentric rings of interconnection between the university and the department. First is an inner dashed line represents the internal contexts. The second, outer dotted line represents the external contexts. The focus is on athletics, but the same connections represented by the Model can be illustrated by any campus department. According to the National Digest of Education Statistics, there are nearly 4,300 institutions that offer two- and four-year degrees in the United States.
