Abstract
This article aims to (1) properly understand the current state of college sports in the U.S. and (2) consider the prerequisites for relativizing and improving the state of college sports in Japan by reviewing the book, “Buying in: Big-Time Women’s College Basketball and the Future of College Sports.” This book describes the culture of a women’s collegiate basketball team, focusing on the positive aspects of collegiate sports as a part of higher education, particularly from the point of view of a coach who takes the game seriously but also serves as an educator. The author further places the micro-cultural description into the context of the history of college sports and American society, where women have been excluded from the center, in order to properly evaluate the positive aspects of college sports on a different level than that of criticism of the exploiting establishment or sympathy for the exploited student athlete. The undertaking also demonstrates the relationship between researchers and their research, the attitudes and purposes of academic research in the humanities and humanistic social sciences, and the potential for researchers to be actively involved in social change. The reviewer evaluates this book for presenting the possibility that big-time college women’s basketball can be a symbolic means of opening up the lives of student athletes themselves, not merely a means of promoting personal growth or forcing young women to accept the traditions of patriarchal society. However, it is concluded that a long and arduous road lies ahead for its introduction into college sports in Japan.
