Murray Sperber taught at Indiana University, Bloomington, from 1971-2004 and is a Professor Emeritus of English and American Studies of the school. He is currently a visiting professor at the Cultural Studies of Sport in Education program at University of California, Berkeley. At Indiana, he published seven books, most recently, Beer & Circus: How Big-Time College Sports is Crippling Undergraduate Education. His previous books on college sports include: College Sports Inc.: The Athletic Department vs. the University; Shake Down the Thunder: The Creation of Notre Dame Football; and Onward to Victory: The Crises That Shaped College Sports. His books have won many awards - Sports Illustrated placed Beer & Circus on its list of "100 Best Sports Books of All-time" and named Shake Down the Thunder as the second best sports history book. Sperber is also a former chair of the Drake Group, a national faculty committee advocating reform of college sports. In conjunction with his work on college sports he has appeared on many national TV and radio programs, including ABC-TV's Nightline and Good Morning America CBS-TV's 60 Minutes, NPR's Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and Talk of the Nation, and PBS-TV's Lehrer Newshour. He also frequently contributes op-ed pieces to The Chronicle of Higher Education and other periodicals, including The New York Times. Sperber was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, on 30 November 1940. He is married to Aneta Wharry and they had two children, Giselle Everett Sperber, and Oliver Joseph Sperber (deceased). He received his B.A. from Purdue University in 1961, and both his M.A. (1963), and Ph.D (1974) from the University of California, Berkeley. Sperber currently lives in Concord, CA; he continues to write and lecture about college life and college sports. Since 2008, he has been a Visiting Professor in the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley. Works Beer & Circus: How Big-Time College Sports is Crippling Undergraduate Education College Sports Inc.: The Athletic Department vs. the University Shake Down the Thunder: The Creation of Notre Dame Football Onward to Victory: The Crises That Shaped College Sports http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_Sperber College athletics in the United States refers primarily to sports and athletic competition organized and funded by institutions of tertiary education (universities, or colleges in American English). In the United States, college athletics is a two-tiered system.[1] The first tier includes the sports that are sanctioned by one of the collegiate sport governing bodies. The major sanctioning organizations include the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) and the National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA). Individual sports not governed by umbrella organizations like the NCAA, NAIA, and NJCAA are governed by their own organizations, such as the National Collegiate Boxing Association and Intercollegiate Rowing Association. Additionally, the first tier is characterized by selective participation, since only the elite athletes in their sport are able to participate. The second tier includes all intramural and recreational sports clubs, which are available to a larger portion of the student body. Competition between student clubs from different colleges, not organized by and therefore not representing the institutions or their faculties, may also be called "intercollegiate" athletics or simply college sports. College sports originated as student activities. Unlike in the rest of the world, in the United States today, many college sports are extremely popular on both regional and national scales, in many cases competing with professional championships for prime broadcast and print coverage, and for the top athletes. The average university will play at least twenty different sports and offer a wide variety of intramural sports as well. In total, there are approximately 400,000 men and women student-athletes that participate in sanctioned athletics each year. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/College_athletics_in_the_United_States

• published: 14 Feb 2015
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