Historical Perspective On Student Athletes
Competitive intercollegiate sports were not introduced into post secondary education in the United States until the nineteenth century. The first popular collegiate sport was crew but this was short lived as high media coverage and scholarships made football a lucrative industry in the late 1880s. As interest in football grew so also did its aggressiveness and thus its resulting injuries. The NCAA was born out of President Theodore Roosevelt's demand to reform college football. He wanted this because football was an extremely rough sport which caused many serious injuries. Since the 1930s the relationship between sports and universities have been turbulent.
Since the 1930s the media's coverage of sports has proven to be a big time revenue earner for schools' sports programs. This coverage of sports draws attention towards the schools and this in turn not only affects the financial capabilities of the institution but also its enrollment. To deal with many of the ills within intercollegiate sports the NCAA has put together a number of pieces of legislation. In the past two decades, the NCAA has implemented several landmark policies to address some of the persistent concerns about the role of intercollegiate athletics in post-secondary education and the conflicting demands faced by student athletes, notably Proposition 48.
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