Amateurism revisited: how U.S. college athletic recruitment favors middle-class athletes.

This study uses Bourdieusian (1977, 1978, 2011) approaches to reproduction to position athletic bureaucracies as legitimating institutions that convert capital. I examine how the cultural production of amateurism in U.S. college sports facilitates class reproduction by enabling a direct conversion between accrued economic, social, and physical capitals for cultural capital. I use 47 life-history interviews with college athletes to explore how college sport bureaucracies enable capital conversion by differentially regulating potential participants based upon their class background. The interviews revealed three areas of recruiting with disparate regulations: sports camps, recruiting agents, and unofficial visits. Reproduction is achieved and the class structure is maintained as middle- and upper-middle-class athletes utilize these areas of disparate regulations to translate their economic, physical, and social capital to cultural capital through college admission via athletics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]