Beer and Circus presents a no-holds-barred examination of the troubled relationship between college sports and higher education from a leading authority on the subject. Murray Sperber turns common perceptions about big-time college athletics inside out. He shows, for instance, that contrary to popular belief the money coming in to universities from sports programs never makes it to academic departments and rarely even covers the expense of maintaining athletic programs. The bigger and more prominent the sports program, the more money it siphons away from academics. Sperber chronicles the growth of the university system, the development of undergraduate subcultures, and the rising importance of sports. He reveals television's ever more blatant corporate sponsorship conflicts and describes a peculiar phenomenon he calls the "Flutie Factor"--the surge in enrollments that always follows a school's appearance on national television, a response that has little to do with academic concerns. Sperber's profound re-evaluation of college sports comes straight out of today's headlines and opens our eyes to a generation of students caught in a web of greed and corruption, deprived of the education they deserve. Sperber presents a devastating critique, not only of higher education but of national culture and values. Beer and Circus is a must-read for all students and parents, educators and policy makers. “It is hard to read Sperber's book without having a sinking feeling about the future of American culture. He has managed to document our national decline in painstaking detail, and the result is an admirable, timely and profoundly disturbing work.” ― The New York Times Book Review “The case [Sperber] marshalls against these places--'schools' scarcely seems the right word--is overwhelming, a devastating condemnation of 'higher education' in America.” ― Washington Post Book World “' Beer and Circus ' does a terrific job of illustrating how collegiate sports has shielded the decline in education from public scrutiny. . . .[I]t is a powerful and important book.” ― The Chicago Tribune Murray Sperber is a regular media commentator on college sports. A professor of English and American studies at Indiana University, Bloomington, his books include College Sports, Inc. ; Onward to Victory: The Creation of Modern College Sports ; and Shake Down the Thunder: The Creation of Notre Dame Football. Beer and Circus How Big-Time College Sports Has Crippled Undergraduate Education By Murray Sperber Holt Paperbacks Copyright © 2001 Murray Sperber All right reserved. ISBN: 9780805068115 Beer and Circus PART ONE THE RISE OF BEER-AND-CIRCUS 1 ANIMAL HOUSE T he 1960s marked a low point for the collegiate subculture onAmerican campuses; numerous fraternities and sororities downsized or closed their doors as some of their members, and many incoming students, joined the rebel subculture. But scores of Greek organizations, particularly at large public universities, survived the 1960s and, during the following decade, wanted to attract a new generation of college students. The popular film Animal House proved crucial to the recruiting campaign of the collegiate subculture.    Animal House is to me the story of a fraternity house full of friends. They don't have much in common, just drinking beer and drinking some more beer, but isn't that enough? ... [People] underrate the importance of Animal House . The movie came out during my freshmen year in college when I joined a fraternity. Of course I can barely remember the three years that followed. It is more than a movie, it is a social statement, a commentary on a generation.--Kyle, an Animal House fan on the World Wide Web Animal House is one of the most remarkable movies in Hollywood history. Costing only $2.3 million to make--and turned down by most studios before Universal reluctantly backed it--the film grossed $141 million domestically, and earned many more millions abroad and in video sales. Most film reviewers disliked the movie, but the public embraced it, legions of young people returning to see it again and again. An important elementin the 1978 film's success was its setting--not the post Vietnam present but the pre-Vietnam past. The filmmakers consciously placed Animal House in the early 1960s, attempting to exploit the nostalgia for the simpler pre-Vietnam era--as George Lucas had done in his popular 1970s film about youth culture, American Graffiti --but with a collegiate twist.The main writer on Animal House explained: "We wanted to blow away that Graffiti sentimentality," and show that "people in college were bad then, because it was fun, people were into being sick," vomiting from over-drinking, and also playing "sick" jokes. Thus, Animal House connected to the old collegiate tradition in student life, but, contrary to the filmmakers' intentions, the movie reflected the late 1970s as much as the early 1960s. Such characters and