Author Profile

Murray Sperber

Murray Sperber taught at Indiana University, Bloomington, from 1971-2004 and is now professor emeritus of English and American studies.*

At Indiana, he published seven books, most recently, Beer & Circus: How Big-Time College Sports is Crippling Undergraduate Education. His previous books on college sports include: College Sports Inc.: The Athletic Department vs. the University; Shake Down the Thunder: The Creation of Notre Dame Football; and Onward to Victory: The Crises That Shaped College Sports. His books have won many awards.Sports Illustrated placed Beer & Circus on its list of "100 Best Sports Books of All-time" and named Shake Down the Thunder as the second best sports history book.

Sperber is also a former chair of the Drake Group, a national faculty committee advocating reform of college sports. In conjunction with his work on college sports he has appeared on many national TV and radio programs, including ABC-TV's Nightline and Good Morning America, CBS-TV's 60 Minutes, NPR's Morning Edition, All Things Considered and Talk of the Nation, and PBS-TV's Lehrer Newshour. He also frequently contributes op-ed pieces to The Chronicle of Higher Education and other periodicals, including The New York Times.

Sperber was born in Montreal, Canada, in 1940. He is married to Aneta Wharry and they had two children, Giselle Everett Sperber and Oliver Joseph Sperber (deceased). He received his B.A. from Purdue University in 1961, and both his M.A. (1963), and Ph.D. (1974) from the University of California, Berkeley. Sperber currently lives in Concord, CA; he continues to write and lecture about college life and college sports. Since 2008, he has been a Visiting Professor in the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley.

*Bio courtesy of Wikipedia