The president of Williams College faces a firestorm for not allowing the women's lacrosse team to postpone exams to attend the playoffs. The University of Michigan loses 2.8 million dollars on athletics despite averaging 110,000 fans at each home football game. Schools across America struggle with the tradeoffs involved with recruiting athletes and updating facilities for dozens of varsity sports. Does increasing intensification of college sports support or detract from higher education's core mission??;pThe authors introduce facts into a terrain overrun by emotions and enduring myths. Using the same database that informed "The Shape of the River", they analyse data on 90,000 students who attended thirty selective colleges and universities in the 1950s, 1970s and 1990s. Drawing also on historical research and new information on giving and spending, the authors demonstrate how athletics influence the class composition and campus ethos of selective schools, as well as the messages that these institutions send to prospective students, their parents and society at large.The authors show that athletic programmes raise even more difficult questions of educational policy for small private