Overview

He defended the NCAA for a decade. Now he is telling the truth about what came next and why. When Donald M. Remy joined the NCAA in 2011 as its top lawyer, the institution was already absorbing pressures decades in the making: antitrust law reaching back to Board of Regents, state legislatures challenging NCAA self-governance, and the gravitational pull of billions in broadcast revenue. Over the next ten years, as Chief Legal Officer and then Chief Operating Officer, Remy developed litigation strategy, advised university presidents and administrators through governance challenges, and helped lead the institution's defense of amateurism. The Supreme Court opened the door to widespread sports betting in Murphy and ruled unanimously against the NCAA in Alston. The transfer portal enabled de facto free agency, reshaping recruiting and roster construction at every level. Name, image, and likeness contracts rewrote the rules for every coach in America. And the $2.8 billion House v. NCAA settlement set the terms of a new era in which schools, for the first time in history, could pay athletes directly through revenue sharing. Collegiate Capitalism is the story of how college sports evolved, told by a man who helped shape the institutional response and who navigated the scandals that exposed the limits of the old order. Remy traces the organizational challenges presented by O'Bannon, Alston, and House. He examines the institutional response to Penn State, Baylor, Michigan State, Miami, and North Carolina. He recounts the morning the FBI arrested college basketball and the investigation that followed. He revisits the Final Four canceled by COVID, and the viral video at the next Final Four that exposed gender inequity. And he considers how notable figures in culture, government, and business each shaped the trajectory. This is also a leadership memoir. Remy traces his journey from a failed presidential nomination on Capitol Hill, to the NCAA general counsel's office, to public service as the ninth Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. He confronts the cost of defending positions that grew weaker with each ruling, and the difference between defending an institution and serving its people. Drawing on a century of college sports history and offering the clarity of someone who lived its most consequential decade, Remy lays out what college sports must become if it is to survive. He addresses revenue sharing under the House settlement, the future of NIL, private investment in college sports, the reshaping of higher education athletics administration, the unresolved question of student athlete employment and labor union recognition, the corrosive influence of gambling on integrity, and the federal legislative and policy debate over the SCORE Act and the Protect College Sports Act. Collegiate Capitalism is essential reading for athletes navigating a new marketplace, administrators rebuilding a broken model, coaches recruiting in a transformed landscape, lawyers litigating the new questions, investors sensing opportunity, policymakers writing the next round of legislation, and fans wondering what is left of the game they love. It is the definitive guide to the most critical debates in college sports today.

Full Product Details

9781959993728

Table of Contents

Reviews

""Coaching college athletics means operating at the intersection of education, business, and human development in ways that are rarely understood from the outside. Collegiate Capitalism gets it right. Donald writes about this world with the insight of someone who has truly been in the room, and he does so without reducing it to easy heroes and villains. Every coach, current or former, will find something meaningful and true in these pages."" ""My time as a college athlete shaped who I am, but it also raised questions I didn't have the language or context to fully ask at the time. Donald's Collegiate Capitalism gives me that language now. He writes about the collegiate athletic experience with honesty and respect, and he doesn't flinch from the harder truths about how the system is structured. Reading this book felt like finally getting the full picture of something I was only ever allowed to see in part."" ""The NIL era has fundamentally changed the relationship between brands and college athletics, and anyone in marketing or sponsorship who hasn't recalibrated their thinking is already behind. Collegiate Capitalism is the smartest and most grounded analysis of this new landscape that I've come across. Donald understands the commercial dimensions without losing sight of the institutional and human ones, and that balance makes this book genuinely useful for anyone making decisions in this space."" ""As a civil rights attorney, I am acutely aware of how legal structures can either protect or perpetuate inequality, and college athletics is one of the most revealing case studies we have. Donald Remy's Collegiate Capitalism examines those structures with precision and moral seriousness. He doesn't shy away from the hard questions about who benefits and who bears the costs of the current system, and his analysis will sharpen the thinking of anyone doing advocacy or litigation in this space."" ""Collegiate Capitalism arrives at a moment when the financial restructuring of college athletics threatens to deepen existing inequities along gender lines, and Donald Remy does not look away from that reality. His analysis is honest about the tensions between revenue generation and equity obligations, and he treats Title IX as the foundational commitment it is rather than an afterthought. Every administrator, policymaker, and advocate working on gender equity in sports should have this book close at hand."" ""The NIL marketplace was built almost overnight on top of a system that wasn't designed for it, and the friction that has followed is real and significant. Collegiate Capitalism is the most thoughtful account I've read of how we got here and what it means for every stakeholder in the ecosystem. For those of us building businesses in this space, the historical and structural context Remy provides is not just interesting; it is genuinely necessary."" ""As a college president, I am constantly asked about the role of athletics on campus, the finances, the culture, the values. Donald Remy's Collegiate Capitalism gives me, and all of us in institutional leadership, a stronger framework for answering those questions. It is thoughtful, well-researched, and grounded in real experience. I came away from this book with a sharper sense of what is at stake and what is possible.""

Author Information

Donald M. Remy is the former Chief Legal Officer and Chief Operating Officer of the NCAA, where from 2011 to 2021 he developed legal strategy in the landmark cases that reshaped college athletics, including O'Bannon v. NCAA, NCAA v. Alston, and House v. NCAA. He later served as the Ninth Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs after a Presidential Appointment and Senate confirmation. Earlier in his career, Remy was a partner at Latham & Watkins, a Deputy Assistant Attorney General at the Justice Department, Deputy General Counsel and Senior Vice President at Fannie Mae, a Captain in the United States Army, a Senior Associate at O'Melvey & Myers, and a law clerk on the Sixth Circuit. He is Founder and CEO of The Remy Group, a strategic advisory firm, and a co-owner of DC Power Football Club in the USL Super League.

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