John R. Gerdy has seen nearly every side of athletics. He is the son of a high school football coach; he was an All-American and professional basketball player and a legislative assistant for the National Collegiate Athletic Association; and he served as an associate commissioner for the Southeastern Conference.

In Air Ball: American Education’s Failed Experiment with Elite Athletics, Gerdy brings all of those perspectives to argue that the American system of school and community athletics is broken. But he is no mere naysayer. He offers a bold, progressive blueprint for reforming athletics to meet our country’s educational and public health needs.

Given higher education’s historic role of providing leadership in our society, the initiative to restore a more sensible balance between athletics and education must begin with the reform of big-time college athletics. Despite widespread public skepticism regarding higher education’s ability to change the system, Gerdy argues that the opportunity for reform has never been better. Using a provocative mix of research and thoughtful observation, he argues that, for the first time in the history of American higher education, the critical mass of people, organizations, and outside pressures necessary to drive and sustain progressive, systemic reform of the college athletic enterprise are in place.