Sporting Revolutions: The 1970s and the Making of Modern College Athletics

At the beginning of the 1970s, college sports were on turbulent ground. “Colleges prepare for the impact of rising costs and more campus unrest,” warned the New York Times.¹ The Los Angeles Times was a bit blunter in its prognosis, reporting that “like housewives everywhere, athletic directors of the nation's colleges [were] having budget trouble.” National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) Executive Director, Walter Byers, warned of “cadres of disgruntled athletes,” demanding rights, money, and control. Byers was also troubled by Title IX, the new educational amendment mandating gender equity in federally funded schools, including in athletic departments. “The possible doom of our collegiate sports is near,” Byers proclaimed.² “There is not an athletic department in the country where officials are optimistic,” University of Michigan's Athletic Director (AD), Don Canham, lamented. Norv Richey, University of Oregon's AD concurred, declaring, “The future of intercollegiate athletics are in peril.”³

The 1970s was a pivotal decade that altered the form and function of intercollegiate athletics. As historian Frank Guridy notes, the social and political transformations of the 1960s–1980s were reflected in and impacted by the sports world. This “Second Reconstruction” era brought both visions of change and possibility, as well as institutional responses and entrenchment that reinforced inequality in new ways.⁴

For college sports, this contradictory reconstruction era was shaped by race, gender, and corporate capitalism. This was not a single revolution, but rather overlapping disruptions, particularly potent in the early 1970s, that were simultaneously exploding and rocking the very foundation of college sports. The integration, rise, and revolt of Black college athletes triggered this sporting revolution. The passage of Title IX furthered it. The boom of boosterism, television deals, and athletic department budgets also disrupted the existing order. All together, these sporting revolutions fundamentally altered collegiate sport in this country and birthed modern college athletics as we know it.

The college sports revolution began amid social revolution and the long Black freedom struggle. In the 1950s and 1960s, civil rights activists deemed college athletics a highly visible site for necessary and fruitful action. By the early 1970s, in the wake of desegregation, more Black athletes were competing at predominately white schools. Guridy reminds us, however, that “the collapse of Jim Crow college football was a realignment, rather than a demolition of social hierarchies.” On the backs of Black athletic labor, athletic departments and universities were earning power, prestige, and profit. “The negro athlete has helped us tremendously,” University of Texas, El Paso (UTEP) coach Bobby Dobbs told Sports Illustrated. “We wouldn't have built this fine institution as quickly without the Negro.”⁵ By 1970, Black athletes were pushing back on the status quo.

From 1968 to 1972, Black college athletes, spurred on by their growing grievances, began a “sporting revolution.”⁶ At UTEP as well as at universities like Syracuse, Wyoming, and San Jose State, an “athletic revolt” was underway. Black athletes walked off teams and threatened boycotts, Black cheerleaders refused to stand for the national anthem, and non-athlete Black students used football games for public protests.⁷ “The new breed of athletes refuse to sell their soul for the right to play big time basketball or football,” wrote Claude Harrison Jr. at the Philadelphia Tribune.⁸ By 1973, one Black sportswriter declared that “by flexing their muscle,” Black college athletes had “scored the first triumphs in the revolt of the Black athlete.”⁹

Coaches and administrators pleaded for help against the “militant activists” and “jealous faculty” who were allegedly influencing their players. “This is the worst thing that's ever happened,” claimed the basketball coach at the University of Oregon. His colleague at Oklahoma State concurred, lamenting that this was “the greatest crisis in sports history.” They positioned themselves not simply as patriarchal figures turning boys into men, but also as the “last stronghold of discipline” on rapidly changing campuses. Black athletes simply “mistake discipline for discrimination,” one Sports Illustrated writer claimed. “Football is a not a democracy. We have rules,” explained Syracuse coach Ben Schwartzwalder, whose Black players would boycott the entire 1970–1971 season. Instead, Schwartzwalder viewed himself and his fellow coaches as “benevolent dictators.” For college athletics to survive in the 1970s, the NCAA insisted that power must be returned to the coach. “The next decade is respectfully dedicated to the c-o-a-c-h,” NCAA Executive Director Walter Byers simply declared.¹⁰

Byers's words were not merely empty rhetoric. In the 1970s the NCAA sought to diminish the power of athletes. The first move was the controversial passing of the “manifest disobedience clause,” which allowed schools to “terminate the financial aid of a student-athlete if he is adjudged to have been guilty of manifest disobedience through violation of institutional regulations or established athletic department policies.” While clearly aimed at curbing activism, manifest disobedience also strengthened the position of coaches over their players. “Under this new regulation, an opportunistic coach can assume extraordinary control over his players,” observed Sports Illustrated magazine.¹¹

In 1973, the NCAA further strengthened the role of coaches by passing legislation making scholarships a one-year renewable contract. That meant that athletes could be disposed of easily, with very little justification required. Not only did this curb protest but it also increased the prioritization of athletics over education as players’ futures were tied to their athletic performance and compliance with team rules. Sportswriter John Underwood described the modern college athlete–coach dynamic best when he noted that it was “essentially that of employer–employee with a dash of father–son.”¹²

Indeed, this new legislation increasingly tipped the scales of power away from Black athletes to entirely white coaching bodies. This was racial paternalism. White coaches took on new importance. They were now cast as father figures who could discipline, train, and “make men” out of Black boys who they recruited from under-resourced places. The paternalistic relationship of institutions to the athletes who labored for them was bolstered by the NCAA's longstanding invocation of amateurism.

Indeed, amateurism was not simply an ideal; it was a method of control. Walter Byers had concocted the term “Student-Athlete” in the 1950s to limit institutional liability from athletes and their families who filed workers compensation claims for injuries and deaths sustained while playing. Byers and the NCAA, in a full-throated defense of amateurism, argued that college athletes were students who happened to play sports. Over the next two decades, the NCAA remained firm in its stance. The number of Americans in college had grown from 2.1 million to 8.6 million. Varsity athletic programs expanded, and increased coverage of college sports heightened their popularity. The NCAA now oversaw over 100 schools with major college football programs and nearly 200 college basketball programs. College athletics had become big business; the NCAA and Byers was its Chief Executive Officer (CEO), and amateurism remained its shield and its hammer.¹³

Even as the NCAA moved into a cushy new 26,000-square foot office in suburban Kansas City (Byers's hometown) in 1973, it continued to insist that despite the rapid commercialization of college sports, college athletes were still amateurs. This even as the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) paid more for college football rights than it paid the NFL for Monday Night Football, and as budgets at athletic departments soared into the millions and schools broke ground on new arenas and stadiums. At Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech), officials justified a $2.5 million stadium expansion by arguing that it would help recruit top talent, schedule bigger opponents, and increase gate receipts. Virginia Tech's rival, the University of Virginia, was keeping pace with its own $3.2 million dollar stadium expansion, which featured a press box and president's box.¹⁴ On game days, the new 76,000-seat stadium at the University of Nebraska became the third largest “city” in the state. Critics concerned about this “gold rush world of college sports” complained that the outsize money, coverage, and investment was leading to “corruption” and “a distortion of the role of sports in education.”¹⁵ But the boom showed no signs of subsiding.

The racial politics of this commercialization were stark. Integration had occurred on the field and court only. The ever-expanding professional class of college athletics—the coaching staffs, trainers, administrators, journalists, managers, and promoters, who were growing more bloated with power—remained overwhelmingly white. While emerging critics of college sports were frustrated by large budgets, corruption, and win-at-all-cost mentalities, some Black journalists, educators, and sports figures were growing increasingly concerned with the racialized infrastructure of these modern athletic departments. These schools were “profiteering off of Black athletes,” with little care for their health, well-being, or educational experiences, they decried. Some journalists compared sports’ “wide-spread exploitation” to a “modern-day slave market” where Black labor was used to line the pockets of the entire system.¹⁶

As more and more Black athletes were recruited to big-time, predominantly white schools, historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) were paying the price of integration. Black colleges struggled to keep up with the ballooning athletic department budgets and expanding stadiums, and the talent pools they recruited from were now being tapped by schools with vastly more resources. Moreover, Black colleges could not rely on large alumni donations to subsidize their programs. Historian Derrick White explains that Black college football programs found themselves isolated in this changing athletic landscape. The increase of TV revenue only furthered the disparity, as Black college sports were not seen as marketable and did not receive the same coverage. “The southern black colleges with the rich athletic traditions are moving to the back of the basketball bus,” lamented one sportswriter.¹⁷ By the end of the 1970s the disparity was so stark that many schools began cutting athletics altogether. Some observers openly wondered if Black college athletics would continue to exist at all.

HBCUs were not the only schools feeling the weight of modern college athletics. Smaller schools were fighting for their futures as well. In 1973, the NCAA split college athletics into three divisions based on school size and scholarship allotment. While the divisions were supposed to govern themselves, major university football programs in the Division 1 schools were given outsized voting power in the NCAA. As the gap widened between the “haves and “have nots,” the NCAA tried (clumsily) to level the playing field. By the mid-1970s, restrictions on scholarships and roster sizes had been implemented to curtail the growth at large schools. Yet when smaller schools proposed increased revenue sharing from TV money, the powerhouses balked. They declared it a “Robin Hood” system of the poor robbing the rich and threatened to secede from the NCAA.¹⁸ The NCAA danced delicately between the increasingly divided factions. However, its primary goal was to retain authority over the member institutions and generate revenue for itself. By sprinkling some restrictions here and some restructuring there, the NCAA brokered a tenuous power-protecting peace.

In 1977, ABC paid the NCAA $118 million dollars for the broadcasting rights of college football through 1981.¹⁹ In college basketball, the NCAA only held broadcasting rights for the postseason tournament. Yet the 1973 gamble to move the final four and championship game into primetime had paid off and given the NCAA a model for the money-making tournament moving forward. As the revenue sports grew, however, nonrevenue sports suffered, particularly Olympic sports governed by the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU), which competed on four-year cycles. Despite the NCAA fighting the AAU for control of Olympic sports, the nonrevenue nature of the sports meant that many athletic departments deprioritized them in favor of developing football and basketball programs.

Amidst the changing divisions and new TV deals, the second major realm of sporting revolution quietly began. When Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 was passed, organized athletics were not its focus, yet the thirty-seven-word amendment soon proved to be pivotal for the sporting realm. Title IX said that schools receiving federal funds could not discriminate on the basis of sex. Short on words but vast in its implications, this legislation institutionalized women's sports, shaking up athletic departments and transforming college sports entirely in the process.

In 1969, amid a growing women's liberation movement, a group of women had approached Byers and the NCAA to address the future of female college sports. Byers took the meeting but conveyed in no uncertain terms that the NCAA was an organization “by men and for men,” and would have nothing to do with the governance of women's sport.²⁰ Undeterred, the women formed their own organization in 1971. The Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW) began to organize and oversee women's college sports and tournaments.

When Title IX was first passed, the AIAW oversaw nearly 300 member institutions and organized eleven championship tournaments across ten sports. The leadership of the AIAW did not seek to replicate men's college sports. Instead, the AIAW offered a competing vision of college sports that downplayed competition in favor of promoting sportsmanship, health, and fitness. The budding women's athletic departments were run by women's athletic directors who operated miniscule budgets that paled in comparison to those managed by their male counterparts. In 1972, Indiana University gave women's athletics a budget of $7,000, while the men's department operated a budget of nearly $2 million dollars.²¹ Despite the constant clamoring from athletic directors that Title IX would be “impending doom” that would spell the “end of college sports,” women's athletic budgets continued to be, on average, just 2–4 percent of men's budgets in the years after its passage.²²

The transformation of women's college sports after Title IX was, in one word, messy. The legislation was vague, and many different groups scrambled to interpret it and gauge its impact on college sports. In boardrooms, locker rooms, newspapers, and magazines, people debated and tried to make sense of the legislation. The new periodical, WomenSport, launched by Billie Jean King, devoted frequent column space to breaking down the ever-changing interpretations.²³ The Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) set out to define regulations for athletic departments to ensure they were in compliance with the law. Simultaneously, the NCAA and its allies took to congress and the courthouse in attempts to exempt football and basketball from Title IX considerations. At the AIAW, internal disagreements about the future of women's programs created a growing fissure. While some in the organization continued to articulate a vision for women's sports that avoided the “mistakes” made in men's college athletics, others began to lobby for scholarships, bigger budgets, and more exposure. As one administrator lamented, the “male model proved to be a powerful magnet,” and not everyone in the AIAW wanted to resist the pull.²⁴

It may be tempting to think about the revolt of Black athletes as only about race and Title IX about gender, but both revolutions were overlapping in ways that gendered integration and racialized Title IX. Black women athletes and athletic administrators found themselves at the nexus of these shifting terrains and facing a sporting future that seemed to leave them in the gap.

Much like the impact integration had on Black college football and basketball, the expansion of women's athletic departments resulted in a talent drain from HBCUs, which once again bore the cost of changing times. The AIAW's early ban of scholarships had effectively prohibited many HBCUs from competing in the AIAW championships. Despite their storied legacies, their early use of scholarships for Black women athletes meant that they were marginalized from the growing governance of women's sports. Eventually some AIAW members began advocating for scholarships, and the ban was lifted as more schools began to offer aid. Instead of bringing HBCU's back into the fold, this change only served to further the disparities between programs.

Within the AIAW, Black women leaders struggled for a voice in a rapidly shifting space.²⁵ Forming a special caucus, Black women in the AIAW used their position to try to advocate for Black women and girls in college sports. As a group they commissioned surveys and held meetings to ensure Title IX was being equitably applied and that Black women athletes—particularly at HBCUs—were getting their fair share of opportunity. They often found that this was not the case. “The AIAW is exploiting Title IX and using black schools to bolster their treasures but not including us on plans to make money,” lamented one member. “It's awful that women, always complaining of male domination, would now turn around and discriminate against blacks from black schools,” said another, before adding: “Those who live in glass houses shouldn't cast stones against the NCAA!”²⁶

Despite the NCAA's public admonishment of Title IX, Byers had quitely begun to explore the ways in which the organization might begin to oversee women's athletics. While still suing to limit Title IX's reach, the NCAA quietly removed the gender restrictions in its bylaws, formed a women's sports committee, and in 1975 teased a “pilot” program of postseason tournaments. “If Byers can grab hold of the women, he can keep them quiet,” explained an internal source from the NCAA. “He can give them a bone once in a while without really having to develop their programs … without having to give them equal representation and power.”²⁷ The AIAW blasted these developments as “athletic piracy,” “a red herring,” and a “disingenuous power play.”²⁸ The more money and exposure that the AIAW raised for women's sports, the more interested the NCAA became.

Since Title IX's initial passage in 1972, the number of girls participating in sports had risen from 295,000 to 1.6 million, and athletic budgets for women's sports had increased from 2 percent to 16 percent by the end of the decade.²⁹ In 1979, nearly seven years after it was introduced, the final regulations were announced, with no exemption for football or basketball. Title IX was constitutional and here to stay. Almost immediately, the NCAA appointed a women's athletic commissioner and began plans for postseason tournaments. NCAA officials were moving in on the AIAW's governance. Two years later the AIAW would shut down for good, unable to withstand the NCAA's hegemony. The organization that had spent nearly the entire time opposed to women's college sports was now in complete control of them.

Despites Byers's panicked pronunciations at the start of the 1970s, college sports seemed to be flourishing and the NCAA's control over them had hardened into a death grip. By the end of the decade, televisions deals and boosterism lined the pockets of athletic administrators. The “threat” of activist athletes had been neutered and the position of coaches strengthened. While the rich were getting richer, the disparity between the big-time football and basketball schools and the smaller Division II and III schools continued to widen. And while HBCUs kept searching for footing in this new landscape, Black athletic labor at predominantly white schools continued to build up athletic programs and academic institutions. Title IX was being begrudgingly managed. New opportunities for women athletes were emerging even as women's governance of sports—as coaches and administrators—was rapidly decreasing. Ever-expanding athletic departments provoked conversations about the role of sports in higher education, and despite the rampant commercialization, the NCAA still boasted about its “student-athletes” and ideals of amateurism. As the decade ended, it was clear, in all its contradictions, that the modern era of college sports had arrived.

In 1979, ESPN launched its around-the-clock sports programming. The cornerstone of the network was its deal with the NCAA providing coverage rights to a variety of sports that would make up 60 percent of the new channel's programming. In 2024, the two entities would extend their 45-year-old partnership, with a new deal worth $920 million.³⁰ Byers’ efforts to make coaches powerful stewards of this system had also been widely successful. In 2023, 80 percent of the top-paid state employees in the nation were college coaches. The seeds planted in the 1970s had borne fruit for the decades to come.

Race, gender, and corporate capitalism continue to shape college sports.³¹ While the lucrative business of college sports is evident, the other sporting revolutions of the 1970s look incomplete. Those highly paid, very powerful college coaches are still over 80 percent white. In Division 1 college football—where Black men make up over 50 percent of players—the number of Black coaches is still less than 10 percent.³² For Black female athletes, the opportunities produced by Title IX have largely been concentrated to participation in track and basketball. While their participation in volleyball is growing—now comprising nearly 11 percent of volleyball rosters, in all the other major college sports, Black women make up less than 5 percent of athletes.³³ HBCUs are still fighting for legibility and footing in the college sports landscape, and the gap between the haves and have-nots has only widened.

As it was at the start of the 1970s, so it is today: college sports are once again on turbulent ground. The festering rot of college sports has become harder to ignore. The harm ignored in pursuit of power and prestige, the constraints on athletic labor, the disparity between schools, the treatment of nonrevenue sports, the lack of compliance with Title IX, and the marginalization of trans, intersex, and nonbinary athletes are pulling at the seams of the institution. While renewed athletic activism, the “Name, Image, and Likeness” (NIL) agreement, conference realignment, and gender equity task forces have shaken the status quo considerably, the 1970s should be a lesson and reminder to us all that the NCAA is very good at giving an inch to control the mile. The ground might be shifting, but the decades-old power structure that sprouted in the 1970s is nowhere close to being uprooted.