Abstract
In 1982 and 1983, the Indiana Court of Appeals and the Indiana Supreme Court, respective ly, reached opposite answers to the question: Is an athletic scholarship an employment contract which entitles an injured athlete to workers' compensation? Both decisions, in Rensing v. Indiana State University, highlight the inability of narrowly drawn judicial rulings to recognize and remedy the most egregious manifestations of professionalism in college athletics.
The following article draws two lessons from the limitations of the Rensing decisions. First, judicial involvement is necessary when due process or procedural fairness are implicated, but when the athlete's "conditions of participation" (based upon the scholarship agreement) are at issue, judges must permit educators to make necessary policy choices. Second, the existing system of college athletics is beset by a host of problems which derive from the "employment- like" conditions under which the scholarship athlete lives. Several means of diminishing the resemblance between athletic participation and employment are suggested.
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