TY - BOOK AU - Hextrum,Kirsten TI - Special Admission: How College Sports Recruitment Favors White Suburban Athletes T2 - The American Campus SN - 9781978821248 AV - GV350.5 .H48 2021 U1 - 796.04/3092 23 PY - 2021///] CY - New Brunswick, NJ : PB - Rutgers University Press, KW - College athletes KW - Recruiting KW - United States KW - College sports KW - Corrupt practices KW - Discrimination in higher education KW - Universities and colleges KW - Admission KW - EDUCATION / General KW - bisacsh KW - college sports, college athletics, white middle class, middle class, white students, white athletes, suburb, suburban youth, white suburban, suburban athletes, sports association, coaches, class status, elite universities, athletic talent, segregated sports, athletic scholarship, college athletes N1 - Frontmatter --; Contents --; Preface --; Introduction --; 1 Gentlemen’s Agreement. College Sports Become a State Institution --; 2 The State Alignment White Suburbia and Athletic Talent --; 3 Build a Wall The State Segregates Sports --; 4 Activating Capital Pay-to- Play Sports --; 5 A Guide Socializing Future College Athletes --; 6 The Offer Letter Athletic Talent Secures Preferential College Access --; Conclusion Altering the Path --; Appendix A Study Participant Background Characteristics --; Appendix B Participant Recruitment --; Appendix C High School Sports Relative to College Sports --; Acknowledgments --; Notes --; References --; Index; restricted access N2 - Special Admission contradicts the national belief that college sports provide upward mobility opportunities. Kirsten Hextrum documents how white middle-class youth become overrepresented on college teams. Her institutional ethnography of one elite athletic and academic institution includes over 100 hours of interviews with college rowers and track & field athletes. She charts the historic and contemporary relationships between colleges, athletics, and white middle-class communities that ensure white suburban youth are advantaged in special athletic admissions. Suburban youth start ahead in college admissions because athletic merit—the competencies desired by university recruiters—requires access to vast familial, communal, and economic resources, all of which are concentrated in their neighborhoods. Their advantages increase as youth, parents, and coaches strategically invest in and engineer novel opportunities to maintain their race and class status. Thus, college sports allow white, middle-class athletes to accelerate their racial and economic advantages through admission to elite universities UR - https://doi.org/10.36019/9781978821248?locatt=mode:legacy UR - https://www.degruyter.com/isbn/9781978821248 UR - https://www.degruyter.com/document/cover/isbn/9781978821248/original ER -