Several hundred of the largest American universities do something not seen in universities anywhere else in the world. They sponsor athletic programs whose revenues, media coverage, and notoriety give them a striking resemblance to professional sports franchises. This fact is as unremarkable to most adults who were raised in this country as it must surely be strange to a first-time visitor from abroad. As an American who grew up following football and basketball as a fan and high school sports editor, I accepted as part of the natural order of things that athletic teams sponsored by universities like Georgia Tech and Penn State would compete in highly publicized games and that people like me might become emotionally invested in the outcomes. Even during my college years, when I had a very brief stint as a sports writer, I found nothing out of the ordinary about either the size of the college sports enterprise or the widespread interest in it.

It was not until I became a faculty member that I began to think there might be anything remarkable about the phenomenon of big-time college sports. As I began a career working alongside scholars at two research universities that also operate prominent commercial sports programs, Maryland and Duke, I was surprised at each place not by the attention that the campus and city newspapers devoted to college sports, but by how many faculty and staff members also took a keen interest in the university's teams.