Posted on: April 4, 2018
By: Allen Wallace, wallacej7@mailbox.sc.edu, 803-777-5667

The College Sport Research Institute’s 2018 CSRI Conference will take place at the University of South Carolina Alumni Center April 12-14. Now in its 11th year, the event brings college sport scholars, students and industry professionals together to discuss pertinent research findings and issues facing the field.

Speaker highlights include: Marcus Lattimore, director of player development for the South Carolina Gamecocks; Andy Schwarz, sport litigation expert and partner at OSKR, LLC; and Ivan Soto, executive director of the Arena Football League Players Union.

This year’s conference topics include: college athlete post-eligibility transition issues, alternatives to NCAA big-time college sports, and ethical concerns in college sport research.

The three-day event also includes over 115 research presentations by scholars from across the country and a case study competition.

This year’s conference will also feature a special reception at the Thomas Cooper Library to celebrate and preview the launch of the College Sport Research Collections. The curated archive is dedicated to the preservation, celebration and study of artifacts that are critical to college sport history.

The donation of the Jerry and Lois Tarkanian Collection was foundational in establishing the collections and includes NCAA v. Tarkanian U.S. Supreme Court case documents, as well as practice plans, photos, regalia, mementos, children’s books and other material related to Tarkanian’s coaching legacy.

The College Sport Research Collections also includes the Mary Willingham Papers. Willingham, the whistleblower at the University of North Carolina in what has since been documented as the longest running athletic and academic fraud case in the history of college sport, will be a special guest and speaker at the reception.

For more information on CSRI, visit sc.edu/hrsm/research/csri.