Revenue Sport Fever

Abstract

The day of reckoning in the to-pay-or-not-to-pay debate over college revenue sports — a day many higher education advocates have awaited for decades — is just about here. Many people believe that the debate will yield one of two outcomes: university trustees will pay the players, or they will not. Yet in fact the trustees have three outcomes to consider, and the one they aim for will tell us a lot about the role higher education will play during coming decades as America tries to rebuild from the global financial crisis.