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In the 1980s, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) passed several eligibility rules to address concerns about the academic and personal development of its participants (Gaston-Gayles, 2009). Despite garnering publicity, fostering school pride, providing entertainment, and generating billions of dollars in revenue for the Division I-affiliated institutions they attend (Sylwester, M., & Witosky, T. (2004). Athletic spending grows as academic funds dry up. USAToday.com , February 18. Retrieved from http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/2004-02-18-athletic-spending- cover_x.htm), student-athletes are prevented from receiving compensation beyond athletic scholarships by the NCAA’s amateurism principle. Consequently, the ethical question at the center of college sports is: how do participants benefit from the college experience relative to their non-sport peers? While the NCAA typically reports benefits, research that disaggregates the data by sport, division, race, and sex reveals long-standing and pervasive inequities (Harper, Williams, & Blackman, 2013). Accordingly, this chapter juxtaposes NCAA’s rhetoric, principles, and espoused goals with the lived realities of the most populous demographic group within high revenue-generating collegiate sports, Black male student-athletes.

The overrepresentation and lack of academic success for Black male athletes on college campuses are problems that warrant attention in the 21st century. A recent report from the University of Pennsylvania shows that over the four-year period between 2007 and 2010, Black males were overrepresented in college sports (Harper, Williams, & Blackman, 2013), a startling reality considering that Black males are severely underrepresented in the general student body. Further complicating matters is the fact that Black male student-athletes do not graduate from college at rates comparable to their peers (Harper et al., 2013). Focused primarily on the experiences of Division I Black male student-athletes, this chapter begins with an overview of literature relevant to successful academic support programs. The authors also present an overview of best practices for advising African American male student-athletes, derived from athletic departments with a demonstrated record of academic success for Black males.

Intercollegiate athletics is a tremendous part of today’s society and encompasses numerous American lives. Its wide spectrum attracts various people from gender, race, ethnicity, cultures, religion, and sexuality. Black male student-athletes, a target of higher education institutions, are affected by sociological, institutional, and athletic factors. This population is highly sought after by college coaches due to their athletic abilities and ability skills in their specific sport in order to elevate their respective sports team, athletics’ department, and university into the national limelight. Current institutional and intercollegiate athletics’ trends that are incorporated to recruit Black male student-athletes are explored. Specific recruiting techniques utilized by college coaches to persuade this population are examined. The sociological issues in current intercollegiate athletics are analyzed with their direct effect on the college selection choice of Black male student-athletes.

Purpose: The purpose of the study was to gain insight into fans' perceptions, attitudes and behavioural responses toward their favourite college football team in the context of a new beer sponsorship agreement. Specifically, the chapter examines differences in fans' attitudes and behaviours based on their gender, team identification and drinking habits.

Design/methodology/approach: A quantitative, cross-sectional survey design was employed. The sample was comprised of Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) workers who self-identified as college football fans. A hypothetical scenario was used as a manipulation, whereby participants were asked to imagine their favourite college football team had entered into a new alcohol sponsorship agreement while completing a questionnaire.

Findings: Highly identified fans exhibited more positive attitudes and behaviours after being presented with the hypothetical scenario than less identified fans. In terms of gender, female fans had increased attitudes toward sponsorship compared to males, and highly identified females had the most positive attitudes and behavioural intentions toward their favourite teams of any of the four subgroups in the study.

Research limitations/implications: The small sample sizes of some fan subgroups affected statistical power, which may have led to falsely insignificant findings. The range of favourite teams among the participants (50 universities) meant there was likely a high degree of variation between fans' previous experiences with beer/alcohol at college sport venues.

Originality/value: The study offers valuable insight into the intersection of sport fandom and gender in the context of alcohol sponsorship in US college sport, and is also among the first investigations of the effects of team identification on perceptions toward alcohol sponsorship.

Most professional athletes are broke financially within a short few years after they stop playing. It is easy for outsiders to place the blame squarely on the athlete himself. This rush to judgment, however, is not entirely accurate. Black student-athletes who have the talent and ability to play professional sports are hyper-focused on getting to the next level, and the system around them is built to accommodate that focus. A lack of educational, financial, and legal structures creates a dynamic that sets the athlete up for failure. This chapter will focus on the legal and financial realities that Black males face when transitioning into and out of professional sports. In order to shift the current paradigm, this chapter will also provide solutions for both the athlete and the coaches, friends, family members, and agents who surround the athlete, in order to empower the athlete to positively impact himself, his family, and his community.

On a home game weekend of collegiate football, thousands of fan visitors spend their weekend participating in college football games, showing significant potential of sports tourism businesses in the USA. Understanding the original personality of sport tourists and their travel motivation factors is imperative to develop appealing tourist attractions at the destinations of sports team fandoms. The purpose of the study is to examine the relationships among tourists' personality characteristics, their push and pulls motivations, satisfaction with travel experience, and loyalty toward destination and team using structural equation modeling.

The author collected information from a total of 301 sports tourists who had traveled to a college football game within the past year, staying at least one night in a hotel or other lodging place. This study employed PASW Statistics 25.0 and structural equation modeling using LISREL 9.30 for data analyses.

Personality has a significant relationship with push factors, especially for socialization motivation, and pull factors (i.e. access and affordability, other attractions) had more significant effects on sports tourists' satisfaction than push factors. The findings indicate the key roles for the entertainment motivation in generating tourists' satisfaction and destination loyalty and important roles of destination loyalty in building team loyalty.

The present study provides an approach of sports tourists' travel behaviors and experiences in the sporting event tourism. The outcome of this research can help both sports event organizers and destination marketers to understand the motivations for sports game attendance and to develop marketing strategies and products/services for attracting various types of sports tourists to games.

This study examined how a US college athletic department’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives influenced fans’ online donation intentions.

Data were collected from 490 fans of a Division I intercollegiate athletic program and analyzed using structural equation modeling.

Results indicated that the quality of CSR information positively affected e-satisfaction with CSR initiatives, which, in turn, predicted fans’ online donation intentions, university attachment, and fan–athletic department identification. Moreover, the relationship between e-satisfaction with CSR initiatives and online donation intentions was mediated by fan–athletic department identification.

This study has a limitation in terms of generalizability. The current focus on a single athletic department does not apply the results to athletic programs at other US universities and colleges. Future research should confirm the generalizability of the study’s findings by collecting data from fans of other athletic departments.

It is important to understand the impact of CSR activities on online donor intentions because marketing these activities could serve as an effective fundraising tool for athletic departments. The findings from this study inform athletic administrators of factors they might consider when promoting CSR initiatives through online media to encourage fans’ donations.

This qualitative study focused on how girls' high school coaches in the United States Southwest thought about Latina teens' participation in school sports. Semi-structured interviews with coaches (4 women, 11 men) indicated they continue to rely on cultural (deficit) discourses implicating girls' families and culture when discussing Latina teens' sports participation. Coaches suggested that Latina teens' parents do not see the value of sports for girls, do not view sports as a pathway to college, are not involved or interested in their daughters' participation for cultural reasons, and are overly productive. These conceptualizations shape coaches' recruitment and pedagogical strategies within school sports contexts. More critical reflections could aid coaches and schools in developing more adaptive school contexts and strategies to better meet the needs of Latina teens and their families.

In order to solve many new problems in the planning and design of university sports venues, in this study, the planning and design of university sports venues in China with the method of audience emotional experience are mainly studied. Based on the existing theories and practices of campus planning, in this study, the ideas of meeting the needs of university sports activities, shaping the campus environment and exploring the development of planning and design of university sports venue is put forward. At the same time, the theory and specific practices of the overall planning and design of university sports venues is also proposed. The original intention of the planning and design is to expect that the planning and design of university sports venues can be implemented and reflected in the construction, use and operation of the project. Therefore, it is helpful to build a harmonious and complete space environment on the campus, to integrate the campus into the urban environment organically, and to achieve the goal of sustainable development of university sports venues through resource sharing.