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Welcome new readers! The SportsThink Weekly Read highlights my favorite sport-related article of the week. On the last Friday of each month, I send out the Monthly Review, a longer digest of readings and other content of interest. Most articles are recently published, but some are not; the only rule is that I’ve read them within the past week (or the past month, in the case of the Monthly Review). Some are relevant to my day job as a professor teaching courses on the business, history, and philosophy of sports. Others are just plain interesting, relevant to my life-long obsession with the games we play. I also occasionally share articles and assorted musings on Twitter. The newsletter is free, but comes with two requests. 1. I’m always open to suggestions, so send me the good stuff that you read! 2. If you enjoy the newsletter, please share it with other folks who might enjoy it as well. Finally, I try to focus on non-paywalled writing, but if you find yourself unable to access anything, just hit reply to the email and I’ll do my best to get you a copy. Thanks for reading!
The Weekly Read
‘A Rethinking of Sports Governance at the Highest Level’: How College Sports Can Thrive Without the NCAA, by Victoria Jackson, via Global Sport Matters.
Even when I don’t totally agree with all of the ideas present, I really like pieces like this one. In general, society has a hard time envisioning a future (also a past) much different than the current landscape. This tends to be even harder for the denizens of SportsWorld, which borders on the Orwellian: things have always been this way and should always stay this way. (Two reminders here: pro bowlers in the 1960s-70s made twice as much as NFL players; we are all conservatives when it comes to things we care the most about.)
So, yeah, I like this article for challenging us to imagine a college sports world that needn’t look like the present day. A talented historian of sports and a former NCAA champion herself, Jackson is uniquely suited to explore this subject. Definitely worth a read if you’re a fan of college sports, maybe even more so if you’re a critic.
See you next week for the Monthly Review, should be a good one!
Thanks for reading,
Tolga