In today’s episode, we talk about how the NCAA has engaged in bad faith efforts to use Title IX to shield it from being held accountable for business practices that exploit and discriminate against college athletes. Prior to pursuing a doctoral degree in sport management, Sam worked as a sports agent, consultant, and immigration attorney so he brings a wealth of experience and insight to this topic as a lawyer and scholar.

Host: Dr. Ellen Staurowsky

Guest: Dr. Sam Ehrlich, Assistant Professor, Legal Studies, Department of Management, Boise State University

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An Ithaca College Park School of Communications and High Tops Media Podcast

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In this episode, we discuss how discredited ideas about college sport amateurism shaped the April 8, 2025 U.S. House Committee on the Education and the Workforce Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions hearing entitled The NLRB, Student-Athletes, and the Future of College Sports. We explore the implications of continuing to perpetuate the underlying assumptions and mythologies that have formed the basis for an exploitative system that harms college athletes economically, educationally, physically, and psychologically. Along the way, we get into the problematic way in which Title IX is used to preserve the status quo instead of challenging the power structure that suppresses the value of all college athletes.

Host: Dr. Ellen Staurowsky

Guest: Dr. Richard Southall, Professor in the Department of Sport and Entertainment Management and Director of the College Sport Research Institute at the University of South Carolina

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An Ithaca College Park School of Communications and High Tops Media Podcast

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In this episode, we go inside the athletic training room to examine more closely the impact of profit-motives on the decisions made regarding college athlete health and well-being and how athletes experience the training room environment. We will also be discussing the racial and gender dynamics that affect injured athletes, their perception of injury, and how injury affects their relationships with coaches, teammates, and sports medicine staff. Dr. Kaitlyn Pericak, author of Body Factory: Exploiting University Athletes’ Healthcare for Profit in the Training Room, shares her work based on her time observing the inner workings of athletic training rooms.

Host: Dr. Ellen Staurowsky

Guest: Dr. Kaitlyn Pericak, Assistant Professor, University of Oklahoma

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An Ithaca College Park School of Communications and High Tops Media Podcast

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Few would dispute the fact that sport as it is organized in the United States and many places around the world is a gendered environment. Structured around a gender binary, the predominant structure of sport is sex segregated. As much as laws like Title IX are generally thought to foster equal access to sport for men and women, the very act of separating places a spotlight on difference. For women athletes developing in such a system, what gender logics shape their sense of who they are and how do they co-construct these logics? In a fascinating autoethnography, Bowling Green State University sport management professor Meredith Flaherty, who is a former NCAA Division I women’s soccer player, professional soccer player and coach at the youth and college levels, reflects on her own experiences through the lens of gender, discourse, and agency. In this episode, we speak with Meredith about her journey as an athlete, coach, and scholar and the insights she has gained by putting her own athletic career under the microscope.

Host: Dr. Ellen Staurowsky

Guest: Meredith Flaherty, Assistant Professor, Sport Management, Bowling Green State University

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An Ithaca College Park School of Communications and High Tops Media Podcast

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In today’s episode, we are talking about the exciting work being done by University of Louisville associate professor of sport management Meg Hancock and her colleagues, Nick Kopka and Ehren Green. They created The Pipeline Project, which is an expansive study of the state of women in intercollegiate athletic administration, documenting where progress has been made for women in athletic administration, points in the industry that call for greater attention and change, and how to advance women in athletics administration.

Host: Dr. Ellen Staurowsky

Guest: Dr. Meg Hancock, Associate Professor, Sport Management, University of Louisville; Nick Kopka, Doctoral Student, University of Louisville

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An Ithaca College Park School of Communications and High Tops Media Podcast

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In this episode, we discuss the status of women in college coaching with Vanessa Fuchs, CEO of WeCOACH, an organization that is dedicated to recruiting, advancing, and retaining women coaches in all sports at all levels through year-round professional growth and leadership development programs.

Host: Dr. Ellen Staurowsky

Guest: Vanessa Fuchs, CEO, WeCOACH

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An Ithaca College Park School of Communications and High Tops Media Podcast

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In this episode, we talk about the critical role storytelling plays in creating narratives that affect decisions that impact women college athletes, how the public views and engages with women college athletes, and how women college athletes tell their own stories.

Host: Dr. Ellen Staurowsky

Guest: Shannon Scovel is an assistant professor of journalism and media at the University of Tennessee with a research focus on sports media and athlete branding

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An Ithaca College Park School of Communications and High Tops Media Podcast

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For those familiar with the history of college sport and higher education, athletics has played a key role in admission and enrollment efforts in colleges and universities since the late 1800s to the present. In the very early days when land grant institutions like LSU and private colleges like Stanford or Notre Dame were getting established, men’s sports programs became vehicles to attract new applicants and to create name brand recognition. In describing the relationship of athletics to a college campus, Scott Barnes, then athletic director at Utah State University in 2009 offered the metaphor that “Athletics are the front porch of the university. It’s not the most important room in the house, but it is the most visible”. For small private institutions in the 21st century, athletics has increasingly become a critical consideration in enrollment planning. From a strategic perspective, some schools have added men’s sports to respond to declining interest from male applicants. Other schools have added both men’s and women’s teams as part of what is a sports enrollment strategy to build enrollment. And still others gambled on sports enrollment as a survival strategy and lost. To help us gain a better understanding of how “sports enrollment” fits within a larger enrollment strategy for small private colleges, we are joined today by Dr. Steve Dittmore. Steve is dean of the College of Education and Human Services with the University of North Florida.

Dr. Dittmore is a seasoned administrator who is a nationally recognized thought leader on issues related to intercollegiate athletic administration. His primary academic research areas include the role of athletics within higher education, Olympic and college sport policy and governance, government regulation of sport broadcasting and baseball history. He has been the assistant editor and content creator for AthleticDirectorU college athletics news platform and holds prior sport industry practitioner experience with a variety of high-profile organizations. He has authored numerous books and research articles on the industry, including a forthcoming biography Jim Gilliam: The Forgotten Dodger and his substack newsletter, Glory Days.

Host: Dr. Ellen Staurowsky

Guest: Dr. Steven Dittmore, Dean, College of Education and Human Services, University of North Florida

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An Ithaca College Park School of Communications and High Tops Media Podcast

Follow for more High Tops Media content on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hightopsmedia/ Check out more podcasts from HTM on our website: https://hightops.media