Doing, Undoing, And Redoing Collegiate Athletics: Conceptual Tales Of Marginality And Mattering

This work disrupts the normalization of athletics (big-time sports programs) in higher education and problematizes status-quo issues related to collegiate athletics such as: amateurism, sports careerism, the admission of academically underprepared athletes, academic and athletic rivalry, and escalating athletic expenditures. Primary poststructural theories of language, subjectivity, and power are used, alongside specific textual resources, to interrogate different aspects of the recent academic scandal at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC). The theoretical analysis puts to work the poststructural concepts of marginality (Spivak, 1993) and mattering (Butler, 1993) to create a different critique of academics and athletics in higher education. Crafted in the form of different conceptual tales, the first part of the analysis shows how individuals are marginalized by the operations of the athletic machine and the second analytical tale highlights the critical role race plays in the ways some bodies matter more than others. This theoretical analysis draws attention to the marginalization of individuals, the exploitation of student athletes, especially Black male athletes, and the prevalence of racism in collegiate athletics. Through this theoretical and methodological undoing of collegiate athletics, recommendations are presented as ways of redoing collegiate athletics from structural, operational, and socio-cultural standpoints.