Abstract
The landscape of collegiate athletics has shifted dramatically over the past two years. Much of the change has the potential to benefit not only the enterprise of college sports, but also the raison d’être of college sports—the student-athlete.2 Sadly, however, the litigation-induced and media-propelled antagonism for amateurism stands to harm, rather than benefit, the student-athlete experience. This paper will examine how the paradigm of the collegiate model has fared, both in theory and in practice,3 in the face of numerous legal assaults.4 As a faculty athletics representative5 to the NCAA for a Division 1 FBS institution, 6 the author prioritizes the resulting, practical impact of the demise of amateurism on the paradigmatic student-athlete over the theoretical correctness of the legal and economic theories espoused by lawyers, economists, and pundits and then embraced by judges and justices, most of whom never walked in the shoes (or should I say cleats?) of the student-athlete. Victory in the courts just might mean losing our way with collegiate sports.
Recommended Citation
Black, Lynda Wray
(2023)
"The Day the Fight Song Died: The
Alston Concurrence that Became the
Playbook,"
University of Memphis Law Review: Vol. 53:
Iss.
4, Article 1.
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.memphis.edu/um-law-review/vol53/iss4/1
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