Summary
Excerpt
Table Of Contents
- Cover
- Title
- Copyright
- About the author
- About the Book
- This eBook can be cited
- Table of content
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- Part One: College Athletics
- Chapter One: The World of College Athletics
- Chapter Two: Athletic Identity
- Chapter Three: College Athletes and Sport Retirement
- Part Two: Narratives of Former College Athletes
- Chapter Four: Bruce
- Chapter Five: Dave
- Chapter Six: Kimani
- Chapter Seven: Carlie
- Chapter Eight: Jessica
- Chapter Nine: Tony
- Chapter Ten: Eric
- Chapter Eleven: Elizabeth C.
- Part Three: Preparing to Leave Sport
- Chapter Twelve: Leaving Sport: Mental Health Implications
- Chapter Thirteen: Easing the Transition Out of Sport
This work would not be possible without the prodding and the assistance of many people along the way. The first of which were former college athletes who ran across a brief article on the transition out of sport which I wrote in 2013. This article appeared in an online publication and was found by former athletes who ran across the article with a simple Internet search. These former athletes saw themselves in the narratives expressed in the piece. One by one they reached out to me wanting more information, wanting more to be done to ease the transition that they—and some of their friends and teammates—struggled through. They were the impetus for this project. I also must thank the other former athletes who allowed their stories to appear in this text. Some chose pseudonyms, others kept their names. I hope they all know that sharing their story helps others understand the process better.
I was further encouraged by colleagues in the Department of Leadership. Drs. Eric Platt and Edith Gnanadass provided guidance and encouragement through all stages of the work. Finally, I owe a debt of gratitude to the Center for the Study of Higher Education at the University of Memphis. Director, Wendy Griswold, offered unwavering ←vii | viii→support for this project. I am especially grateful for the Center’s assistant, Leslie Vanelli. Her impressive attention to detail, and her time and efforts editing this manuscript, made the final work much improved from its original form.
The World of College Athletics
A recent online blurb read: “He was an NBA legend, now he’s working 9–5” (Castoral, 2019). This teaser is meant to arouse the curiosity of the reader. It may sound shocking or scandalous to the average sports fan. As someone who studies higher education and college sports, I find this incredulous. After finishing college, most students, athletes included, go into the regular workforce. Some college athletes move on to a professional sports career, but for those lucky few (2% in men’s basketball) their professional sports career will last on average 4.9 years (Chalabi, Nov. 2015). If the player left college at 22, his or her professional basketball career is over by the time they are 26 years old. At that young age, a second career is a logical next step.
This is not, however, the reaction of most college sports fans. College sports—and most notably, college football and basketball—are tightly nestled into our American culture. The athletes who play sports are celebrities if not heroes. Fans plan weekends around college football games, and college basketball tournaments are major events (Clotfelter, 2011; Dunnavant, 2004). Annually, Americans spend billions of dollars on college sports. Sales from college athletic merchandise alone, ←3 | 4→“including everything from T-shirts to coffee mugs to calendars to prints, generate about $5 billion annually” (Gaul, 2016, p. 150). College sports has become a big business, bringing in billions of dollars at some universities, which then raises questions about rising tuition costs and where the money goes. In turn, this has raised questions about the place of intercollegiate athletics in academic institutions. As former University of Michigan president, Duderstadt (2003) writes, “Big-time college athletics has little to do with the nature of objectives of the contemporary university” (p. 11).
Details
- Pages
- X, 164
- Publication Year
- 2020
- ISBN (PDF)
- 9781433168697
- ISBN (ePUB)
- 9781433168703
- ISBN (MOBI)
- 9781433168710
- ISBN (Hardcover)
- 9781433168680
- DOI
- 10.3726/b16855
- Language
- English
- Publication date
- 2021 (January)
- Published
- New York, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Oxford, Wien, 2020. X, 164 pp., 2. b/w ill., 1 tables.
- Product Safety
- Peter Lang Group AG