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Readings

Freshman Seminar 49y: Amateur Athletics

Readings will be drawn from several books and from other sources. Used copies of the books are available inexpensively through Amazon and Alibris. The total cost of all books should be well under $100. Let me know if any are unavailable or available only at a high price.

Books to buy

  1. Ronald A. Smith, Sports and Freedom, 1988.
  2. David C. Young, The Olympic Myth of Greek Amateur Athletics, 1984.
  3. Alan Guttmann, The Olympics, a History of the Modern Games
  4. James Shulman and William Bowen, The Game of Life
  5. Murray Sperber, Beer and Circus, 2001
  6. Harry Lewis, Excellence Without a Soul (I will pass out the parts I assign)

Some other readings 

  1. Lawrence M. Kahn, The Economics of College Sports: Cartel Behavior v. Amateurism, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=918743
  2. Taylor Branch, The Shame of College Sports, The Atlantic, http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/10/the-shame-of-college...
  3. Henry Beach Needham, The College Athlete, McClure's Magazine. Part I: Recruiting and Subsidizing, June 1905; Part II:"Summer Ball," The Gate-Money Evil, "Unnecessary Roughness" in Football , July 1905.
  4. Santayana, "Philosophy on the Bleachers"
  5. T. W. Higginson, Saints, and Their Bodies (Atlantic Monthly 1:5, March, 1858; Google Books)
  6. James L. Shulman and William G. Bowen, A Gladiator Class?, Yale Alumni Magazine, April 2001.
  7. The High Cost of Winning (Yale Alumni Bulletin)
  8. Themes in the History of Sport up to the Twentieth Century, from British Studies Web Pages
  9. Craig Lambert and John Bethell, First and 100, Harvard Magazine, September-October 2003.
  10. The Harvard Book, accessible via the Narrative Histories section of the University Archives website.
  11. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Saints and Their Bodies, Atlantic Monthly, March 1858, 582-595.
  12. Annual Reports of the Presidents of Harvard
  13. 1859-60, 31-34
  14. 1881-82, 16-19
  15. 1887-88, 10
  16. 1892-93, 14-15
  17. 1901-02, 131-134
  18. 1904-05, 52-53
  19. Archives of The Harvard Crimson
    1. October 10, 1873: Sophomore ball club
    2. November 7, 1873: Base ball
    3. May 22, 1874: No headline ("There seems to be some indications ...")
    4. May 22, 1874: The foot-ball match
    5. October 6, 1876, Brevities
    6. March 8, 1878, No headline ("A petition has been sent ...")
    7. May 3, 1878, Our sporting column: Boating
    8. May 17, 1878, Our sporting column: Rowing
    9. October 14, 1881: Short history of football at Harvard
    10. October 9, 1882: Amateur or professional?
    11. March 8, 1883: Fact and rumor
    12. February 14, 1884: The resolutions adopted by the conference committee on athletics
    13. February 20, 1884: No headline ("It is frequently said ...")
    14. February 21, 1884: Professor Richards on the proposed regulations
    15. February 22, 1884: No headline ("The time has come ...")
    16. February 22, 1884, The athletic question
    17. February 23, 1884: No headline ("The air is filled with denunciations ...")
    18. January 18, 1989, Grappling with the burdens of a dual life
  20. J. P. Mahaffy, The olympic games at Athens in 1874, MacMillan's Magazine, XXXII, 1875, 324-327
  21. J. P. Mahaffy, Old Greek athletics, MacMillan's Magazine, XXXVI, 1877, 61-69
  22. The Harvard Graduates Magazine
    1. October 1892, p. 31. Harvard's loss of athletic prestige
    2. January 1893, p. 209. The constution, authority, and policy of the committee on the regulation of athletic sports
    3. September 1893, p. 1. College athletics
    4. March 1897, 340-343
    5. March 1903, 350-355. Football
    6. June, 1904, 607-617. The physicque of scholars, athletes, and the average student
  23. Articles by Caspar Whitney in old Harper's Magazines, available through Harvard Library Electronic Resources
  24. Craig Lambert, The Professionalization of Ivy League Sports, Harvard Magazine, Sept-Oct 1997.
  25. Doug Lederman, What Price Victory? Princeton Alumni Weekly, December 17, 2003.
  26. Louis Menand, Sporting Chances, The New Yorker, January 22, 2001, p. 84 ff.
  27. Hal S. Scott, What game are they playing? A review of The Game of Life by James L. Shulman & William G. Bowen, Journal of College and University Law, 28, 3, 2002, p. 719ff. (Authors respond, 29, 1, 2002, 189 ff.)