I am pleased to welcome Professor Andrew Zimbalist, Robert A. Woods Professor of Economics at Smith College. Dr. Zimbalist is a national leader in studying and writing about the money side of revenue-generating college sports—an enterprise that has migrated over the years from an amateur to a professionalized status with pro-like commercialization. His book titles include Unpaid Professionals: Commercialism and Conflict in Big-time College Sports (1999), Equal Play: Title IX and Social Change (2007), Unwinding Madness: What Went Wrong with College Sports and How to Fix It (2017), and most recently, Whither College Sports: Amateurism, Athlete Safety, and Academic Integrity (2021, Rutgers University Press). Dr. Zimbalist is also president-elect of The Drake Group, a national network dedicated to defending academic integrity in higher education from the corrosive aspects of commercialized college sports. Michigan State University colleagues Ruben Martinez and Steven Miller join Dr. Zimbalist and me in today's program. (The program was produced in collaboration with FutureU: Conversations about Values and Change in Higher Education.)
