Overrepresented and Underscrutinized: How White Athletes Prevail in US College Athletic Recruitment and Admission

This chapter applies Critical Whiteness Studies (CWS) to review research on US higher education’s college athletic admission system. US college sports permit coaches to admit athletes as university students who may not have otherwise matriculated. Preferential athletic admission seems meritocratic because Black men – once barred from higher education and their sports teams – are now overrepresented in the prominent revenue-generating teams of American football and basketball. Scholars have characterized revenue-generating college athletics as a racially exploitative labor system. But the visibility of Black athletes disguises how White, middle-class athletes are overrepresented in all other sports. Applying CWS to diverse areas of literature including sociology of youth sports, critical race theories, sports management, physical education, and higher education access scholarship, I identify three mechanisms that permit the overrepresentation of White athletes to go unrecognized in athletics: racial segregation, preserving White advantage, and interpreting Whiteness. In doing so, this chapter opens new terrains for critiquing sport as meritocratic by (re)positioning Whiteness as a structuring force in athletic access and opportunity.