Play-by-Play: Radio, Television, and Big-Time College Sport
The phenomenal popularity of college athletics owes as much to media coverage of games as it does to drum-beating alumni and frantic undergraduates. Play-by-play broadcasts of big college games began in the 1920s via radio, a medium that left much to the listener's imagination and stoked interest in college football. After World War II, the rise of television brought with it network-NCAA deals that reeked of money and fostered bitter jealousies between have and have-not institutions. In...
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"A well-researched, historical analysis... Provides an often troubling account of the corruptive power of money, broken promises, misguided priorities, crushed dreams and academic compromises." -- Journalism and Mass Communication Editor
Contents:AcknowledgmentsIntroduction1 The Media and Early College Sport2 Marconi, the Wireless, and Early Sports Broadcasting3 The Broadcasters4 Graham McNamee and Ted Husing Dominate the Airwaves5 The Radio Threat to College6 In the Image of Rockne: Notre Dame and Radio Policy7 Radio Goes "Bowling": The Rose Bowl Leads the Way8 Sport and the New Medium of Television9 Networks, Coaxial Cable, Commercialism, and Concern10 Notre Dame Chooses Commercial TV11 Penn Challenges the NCAA and the Ivy League12 The NCAA Experimental Year and Reactions13 Networks: The Du Mont Challenge14 Regional Conferences Challenge a National Policy15 TV and the Threat of Professional Football16 Roone Arledge and the Influence of ABC-TV17 Advertising, Image versus Money, and the Beer Hall Incident18 The Television Announcer's Role in Football Promotion19 The Cable Television Dilemma: More May Be Less20 TV Money, Robin Hood, and the Birth of the NCAA21 TV Property Rights and a CFA Challenge to the NCAA22 Oklahoma and Georgia Carry the TV Ball for the CFA Team23 TV, Home Rule Anarchy, and Conference Realignments24 Basketball: From Madison Square Garden to a Televised Final Four25 TV's Unfinished Business: The Division I-A Football ChampionshipAppendix: Radio, TV, and Big-Time CollegeSport: A TimelineNotesBibliographical EssayIndex
\ Journal of Economic HistoryIn addition to its obvious appeal to sports fans, Play by Play provides an interesting examination of how society deals with new innovations and their changes over time, the conditions under which cartels attempt to organize, and the factors in their success or failure.\ — Stanley L. Engerman\ \ \ \ \ \ Journal of American HistoryBased on a nearly exhaustive investigation into the primary sources, including some fifty archives,... Smith's research makes abundantly clear that the presidents and athletic departments of America's leading education institutions have consistently tried to use the media—newspaper, radio, and television—for their own gain.\ — Randy Roberts\ \ \ \ AethlonSmith's book provides a mother lode of information for those interested in the merger of big-time sports with big-time media... Smith has clearly combined a fan's interest with a scholar's devotion in researching his subject.\ — Thomas Alan Holmes\ \ \ \ \ \ American Historical ReviewNo one knows more than Ronald A. Smith about the history of intercollegiate sports in the United States... [ Play-by-Play] offers an extraordinarily detailed historical examination of the relationship among top-flight college sports (principally football), the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), and television.\ — Warren Goldstein\ \ \ \ \ \ Journalism and Mass Communication EducatorA well-researched, historical analysis... Provides an often troubling account of the corruptive power of money, broken promises, misguided priorities, crushed dreams and academic compromises. Not exactly uplifting stuff, but required reading for anyone who wants to gain a greater understanding of why it's too often true that concerns about the records of a university's football and basketball teams seem more important than the quality of a school's faculty or the educating of its students.\ — K. Tim Wulfemeyer\ \ \ \ \ \ American Historical ReviewNo one knows more than Ronald A. Smith about the history of intercollegiate sports in the United States... [ Play-by-Play] offers an extraordinarily detailed historical examination of the relationship among top-flight college sports (principally football), the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), and television.\ — Warren Goldstein\ \ \ \ \ \ Journal of American HistoryBased on a nearly exhaustive investigation into the primary sources, including some fifty archives,... Smith's research makes abundantly clear that the presidents and athletic departments of America's leading education institutions have consistently tried to use the media—newspaper, radio, and television—for their own gain.\ — Randy Roberts\ \ \ \ \ \ Journal of Economic HistoryIn addition to its obvious appeal to sports fans, Play by Play provides an interesting examination of how society deals with new innovations and their changes over time, the conditions under which cartels attempt to organize, and the factors in their success or failure.\ — Stanley L. Engerman\ \ \ \ \ \ AethlonSmith's book provides a mother lode of information for those interested in the merger of big-time sports with big-time media... Smith has clearly combined a fan's interest with a scholar's devotion in researching his subject.\ — Thomas Alan Holmes\ \ \ \ \ \ Journalism and Mass Communication EducatorA well-researched, historical analysis... Provides an often troubling account of the corruptive power of money, broken promises, misguided priorities, crushed dreams and academic compromises. Not exactly uplifting stuff, but required reading for anyone who wants to gain a greater understanding of why it's too often true that concerns about the records of a university's football and basketball teams seem more important than the quality of a school's faculty or the educating of its students.\ — K. Tim Wulfemeyer\ \ \
