WILMINGTON, N.C. ? UNC Wilmington Director of Athletics Kelly Mehrtens has been invited to serve on a panel that will explore the arms race in collegiate athletics as part of the 2009 Scholarly Conference on College Sport in Chapel Hill.
The 2nd annual conference, scheduled on Thursday, April 16, is designed to provide students, scholars and college sports administrators with a public forum to discuss relevant and timely intercollegiate athletics issues.
The three-day conference features three panels: (1) Special Admit Limbo: How Low Can You Go? (2) ESPNification of College Sport and (3) The College Sport Arms Race: Is There An End In Sight?
Mehrtens and three other individuals will address the college arms race in the third and final panel of the day. Dick Baddour, Director of Athletics, UNC Chapel Hill, Dr. Robert Malekoff, Professor and Coordinator of Sport Studies, Guilford College, and Dr. Andrew Zimbalist, Robert A. Woods Professor of Economics, Smith College, will also be on the dais.
Other panelists and speakers at the conference include: Dr. Richard Lapchick, Endowed Chair and Director, DeVos Sport Business Program/University of Central Florida; Jay Bilas, ESPN Basketball Analyst; Amy Perko, Executive Director, Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics; James Rayburn, Vice-President of Operations and Executive Producer, Raycom Sports; Burke Magnus, ESPN Senior Vice President for College Sports Programming; Debbie Yow, Director of Athletics, University of Maryland; Bill Rhoden, Sports Writer, New York Times; and Jeremy Bloom, Olympic Skiing Champion.
