ABSTRACT
American higher education is unique in that it is the only nation that looks to its colleges and universities to provide a large, expensive array of varsity sports in which students are athletes. It includes a small number of about 300 institutions who sponsor highly competitive and highly commercialized intercollegiate conferences and competitions indelibly linked to spectators, stadiums, ticket sales, advertising, and media broadcasts. A department of intercollegiate athletics often is a unit that is a part but apart from most programs and departments in a modern university, enjoying special privileges and exemptions from standard procedures in hiring, firing, financial subsidies, and some exemptions from accountability. In recent years issues of rights and responsibilities for student-athletes have been paramount in priority and controversy.
