{"title":"Ronald A Smith","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"sporting-news-chronicle-of-20th-century-sport-book-ronald-a-smith-9780600574606","title":"\"Sporting News\" Chronicle of 20th Century Sport","description":"This survey of North American sporting history, from 1900 to 1992, presents a page-by-page chronological format, including newspaper-style articles on all the notable sporting achievements of the century together with key sporting facts and figures and quotations. 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As subsequent revelations uncovered an athletic program operating free of oversight, university officials faced criminal charges while unprecedented NCA sanctions hammered Penn State football and blackened the reputation of coach Joe Paterno. In Wounded Lions, acclaimed sport historian and longtime Penn State professor Ronald A. Smith draws from university archives to answer the How? and Why? at the heart of the scandal. The Sandusky case was far from the first example of illegal behavior related to the football program--or the university's attempts to suppress news of it. As Smith shows, decades of infighting among administrators, alumni, trustees, faculty, and coaches established policies intended to protect the university, and the football team considered synonymous with its name, at all costs. If the habits predated Paterno, they also became sanctified during his tenure. Smith names names to show how abuses of power warped the Penn State Way even with hires like women's basketball coach Rene Portland, who allegedly practiced sexual bias against players for decades. Smith also details a system that concealed Sandusky's horrific acts just as deftly as it whitewashed years of rules violations, coaching malfeasance, and player crime while Paterno set records and raised hundreds of millions of dollars for the university.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50334191583505,"sku":"CIN0252081498G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0252081498.jpg?v=1778753171"},{"product_id":"pay-for-play-book-ronald-a-smith-9780252035876","title":"Pay for Play","description":"In an era when college football coaches frequently command higher salaries than university presidents, many call for reform to restore the balance between amateur athletics and the educational mission of schools. This book traces attempts at college athletics reform from 1855 through the early twenty-first century while analyzing the different roles played by students, faculty, conferences, university presidents, the NCAA, legislatures, and the Supreme Court.Pay for Play: A History of Big-Time College Athletic Reform also tackles critically important questions about eligibility, compensation, recruiting, sponsorship, and rules enforcement. Discussing reasons for reform--to combat corruption, to level the playing field, and to make sports more accessible to minorities and women--Ronald A. Smith candidly explains why attempts at change have often failed. Of interest to historians, athletic reformers, college administrators, NCAA officials, and sports journalists, this thoughtful book considers the difficulty in balancing the principles of amateurism with the need to draw income from sporting events.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50346335011089,"sku":"CIN0252035879G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0252035879.jpg?v=1767354277"},{"product_id":"big-time-football-at-harvard-1905-book-ronald-a-smith-9780252020476","title":"Big-Time Football at Harvard, 1905","description":"In 1905, twenty-six-year-old Bill Reid, a former Harvard athlete, was wooed back to the campus by the offer of a salary higher than that of any faculty member and approaching that of long-time president Charles W. Eliot. His mission: beat Yale. With the intent of providing a how-to manual for future coaches, Reid set down day by day an account of his activities on and off the field. In so doing, he provides clear evidence of what many have suspected for a long time: that the unethical conduct so common in modern-day football has roots in the early history of the game and has not been limited to the so-called football factories. Reid offhandedly discusses such topics as spying on other teams, pressuring faculty members to give players passing grades, requiring that players cut classes to attend practice, and hiding injuries from players to keep them on the field. By coincidence, Reid kept his diary during the single most inflammatory year in the history of college football. In the fall of 1905, President Roosevelt called a White House conference, attended by Reid and the coaches at Yale and Princeton, to discuss brutality and unethical conduct in college football. Harvard was among a number of institutions that considered dropping the sport in 1905, and a few actually did, including Columbia, California, Northwestern, and Stanford. After the death of a Union College player, a national conference was held to discuss the future of college football, which resulted in the formation of the National Collegiate Athletic Association.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50347310809361,"sku":"CIN0252020472G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0252020472.jpg?v=1750844646"},{"product_id":"myth-of-the-amateur-book-ronald-a-smith-9781477322864","title":"The Myth of the Amateur","description":"In this in-depth look at the heated debates over paying college athletes, Ronald A. Smith starts at the beginning: the first intercollegiate athletics competition—a crew regatta between Harvard and Yale—in 1852, when both teams received an all-expenses-paid vacation from a railroad magnate. This striking opening sets Smith on the path of a story filled with paradoxes and hypocrisies that plays out on the field, in meeting rooms, and in courtrooms—and that ultimately reveals that any insistence on amateurism is invalid, because these athletes have always been paid, one way or another.  From that first contest to athletes’ attempts to unionize and California’s 2019 Fair Pay to Play Act, Smith shows that, throughout the decades, undercover payments, hiring professional coaches, and breaking the NCAA’s rules on athletic scholarships have always been part of the game. He explores how the regulation of male and female student-athletes has shifted; how class, race, and gender played a role in these transitions; and how the case for amateurism evolved from a moral argument to one concerned with financially and legally protecting college sports and the NCAA. Timely and thought-provoking, The Myth of the Amateur is essential reading for college sports fans and scholars.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50376342765841,"sku":"CIN1477322868G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1477322868.jpg?v=1763473638"},{"product_id":"pay-for-play-book-ronald-a-smith-9780252077838","title":"Pay for Play","description":"In an era when college football coaches frequently command higher salaries than university presidents, many call for reform to restore the balance between amateur athletics and the educational mission of schools. This book traces attempts at college athletics reform from 1855 through the early twenty-first century while analyzing the different roles played by students, faculty, conferences, university presidents, the NCA, legislatures, and the Supreme Court.Pay for Play: A History of Big-Time College Athletic Reform also tackles critically important questions about eligibility, compensation, recruiting, sponsorship, and rules enforcement. Discussing reasons for reform--to combat corruption, to level the playing field, and to make sports more accessible to minorities and women--Ronald A. Smith candidly explains why attempts at change have often failed. Of interest to historians, athletic reformers, college administrators, NCA officials, and sports journalists, this thoughtful book considers the difficulty in balancing the principles of amateurism with the need to draw income from sporting events.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50418971902225,"sku":"CIN0252077830G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50571330683153,"sku":"CIN0252077830VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ LIKE_NEW \/ SBYB","offer_id":50608925180177,"sku":"CIN0252077830LN","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0252077830.jpg?v=1767352091"},{"product_id":"sports-and-freedom-book-ronald-a-smith-9780195065824","title":"Sports and Freedom","description":"The development of inter-college athletics in America is traced from the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries, looking in particular at the influence of Harvard and Yale.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50482795053329,"sku":"CIN0195065824VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":50761582870801,"sku":"CIN0195065824A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52121273827601,"sku":"NLS9780195065824","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52804287103249,"sku":"CIN0195065824G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0195065824.jpg?v=1751005671"},{"product_id":"play-by-play-book-ronald-a-smith-9780801866869","title":"Play-by-Play","description":"The phenomenal popularity of college athletics owes as much to media coverage of games as it does to drum-beating alumni and frantic undergraduates. Play-by-play broadcasts of big college games began in the 1920s via radio, a medium that left much to the listener's imagination and stoked interest in college football. After World War II, the rise of television brought with it network-NCAA deals that reeked of money and fostered bitter jealousies between have and have-not institutions. In  Play-by-Play: Radio, Television, and Big-Time College Sport noted author and sports insider Ronald A. Smith examines the troubled relationship between higher education and the broadcasting industry, the effects of TV revenue on college athletics (notably football), and the odds of achieving meaningful reform.  Beginning with the early days of radio, Smith describes the first bowl game broadcasts, the media image of Notre Dame and coach Knute Rockne, and the threat broadcasting seemed to pose to college football attendance. He explores the beginnings of television, the growth of networks, the NCAA decision to control football telecasts, the place of advertising, the role of TV announcers, and the threat of NCAA \"Robin Hoods\" and the College Football Association to NCAA television control. Taking readers behind the scenes, he explains the culture of the college athletic department and reveals the many ways in which broadcasting dollars make friends in the right places.  Play-by-Play is an eye-opening look at the political infighting invariably produced by the deadly combination of university administrators, athletic czars, and huge revenue.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51328932905233,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51328935559441,"sku":"CIN0801866863VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51727476326673,"sku":"CIN0801866863G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0801866863.jpg?v=1751075929"},{"product_id":"nailed-to-the-crossbar-book-ronald-a-smith-9781632334091","title":"Nailed to the Crossbar","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51334233358609,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51334235652369,"sku":"CIN1632334097VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52482999255313,"sku":"NLS9781632334091","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52753059610897,"sku":"NIN9781632334091","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":53262068711697,"sku":"CIN1632334097G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1632334097.jpg?v=1751277334"},{"product_id":"debutante-s-passion-a-coach-s-erotica-book-ronald-a-smith-9780979551895","title":"A Debutante's Passion-A Coach's Erotica","description":"Excerpt: We could get partly undressed-so that we had only such clothes as would be delicious to hug \u0026amp; squeeze in \u0026amp; then you could sit in my lap \u0026amp; we'd kiss \u0026amp; hug \u0026amp; squeeze \u0026amp; cuddle each other until we couldn't stand it any longer. . . . Ronald A. Smith, a well-known sport historian and emeritus professor at Penn State University, has published several books in sport history, including an edited diary belonging to the subject of these love letters. Big-Time Football at Harvard, 1905: The Diary of Coach Bill Reid chronicles the most important year in college football, when the crisis in brutality led to the creation of the National Collegiate Athletic Association and the legalization of the forward pass. Bill Reid had another side to his life, however-a passionate one in which he and his girlfriend, fiance, and wife exchanged intimate love letters for well over a decade. The passionate nature of Bill and Christine's letters during the late Victorian period and early twentieth century are rare and distinguish them from other collections. Bill and Christine wrote intimate love letters when they first met, through their engagement and a lengthy separation while Christine took an eight-month voyage with her parents to Europe, and especially after their marriage and the birth of their first three children. The explicit love letters of upper-middle and upper class individuals are an exceptional find, and they broach issues between couples that are almost universal, often appearing timeless. The love letters of Bill and Christine not only illuminate aspects of life in the early twentieth century, but also they make us reflect on our own lives.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52478929568017,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52478930682129,"sku":"NLS9780979551895","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780979551895.jpg?v=1759847917"},{"product_id":"walter-byers-and-the-ncaa-book-ronald-a-smith-9781621909491","title":"Walter Byers and the NCAA","description":"Walter Byers, the first executive director of the NCAA, oversaw the organization’s transformation from a small rule-making body into a billion-dollar enterprise that wielded immense power over collegiate athletics. In Walter Byers and the NCAA, historian Ronald A. Smith delves into the complexities of Byers’s leadership during a period of great cultural and institutional change. Under Byers’s guidance, the NCAA navigated significant milestones, such as the racial integration of college sports and the passage of Title IX, which mandated gender equality in athletics. At the same time, the commercialization of college football and basketball during his tenure led to skyrocketing coaching salaries and television contracts, pushing the NCAA into a new, profit-driven era.     Smith provides a nuanced portrait of Byers, showing him as a man who remained committed to the ideal of the nonprofessional athlete, even as college athletics evolved around him. Yet Byers’s perspective shifted later in his career, as he began to question the fairness of this system. In his book, Unsportsmanlike Conduct, Byers publicly criticized the exploitation of student athletes, a stance that foreshadowed today’s debates about athletes’ rights and NIL compensation.     Smith's work not only offers an in-depth look at Byers’s role in the NCAA's expansion but also critiques the institution’s long-standing emphasis on amateurism. The book underscores how the tension between amateur ideals and the increasing commercialization and professionalization of college sports has persisted, both during and after Byers’s tenure. Ultimately, Smith provides a compelling study of one of the most influential and controversial figures in the history of American sports governance.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52737766850833,"sku":"NIN9781621909491","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53181309419793,"sku":"NLS9781621909491","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781621909491.jpg?v=1763432296"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/en-gb\/collections\/author-books-by-ronald-a-smith.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}