"Excellent...The best book ever written on the history of American intercollegiate athletics. It is not likely that anytime soon another scholar will surpass Smith's research efforts, which involved work in some thirty-one archival repositories."--Reviews in American History "Gives the reader a broad understanding of the social institutions, cultural values, intellectual structures, and human events that influenced the beginnings of athletics in eastern institutions."--Sociology of Sport Journal "[A] wonderful piece of historical scholarship."--Canadian Journal of the History of Sport "There is a great deal of valuable information packed into this...volume, and the careful reader will be rewarded numerous times...Smith has already added appreciably to our knowledge of the life and drama of turn-of-the-century America with his studies of athletics. With [this book] he has expanded and extended our information."--Journal of Sport History "[An] excellent history...Although Smith tells the story of commercialization, his main theme is the shift in control of intercollegiate sports from the students to the faculty and administration and from them to the boards of trustees and the NCAA...Smith has combed the archives and come up with the facts."--The Los Angeles Times "Smith's careful study...provides much needed historical perspective on an important contemporary issue."--The Louisville Courier-Journal "The best book available on early American collegiate sport."--New England Quarterly

Ronald A. Smith is Professor Emeritus of Exercise and Sport Science at Pennsylvania State University. He has written, edited, or collaborated on several books on sport history, among them American Baseball, Big-Time Football at Harvard, 1905, and Saga of American Sport.