Ronald A. Smith

Dr. Ronald A. Smith is a noted sport historian and professor emeritus at Penn State University. He grew up on a dairy farm in Southern Wisconsin and attended Northwestern University majoring in history and participating on the baseball and basketball teams. He then played minor league baseball with the Chicago White Sox. Following his Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin, he spent 28 years at Penn State teaching sport history and researching intercollegiate athletics. He has published a number of books including Sports and Freedom: The Rise of Big-Time College Athletics (Oxford University Press); Play-by-Play: Radio, Television, and Big-Time College Sports (Johns Hopkins University Press); and Big-Time Football at Harvard, 1905: The Diary of Coach Bill Reid (University of Illinois Press), Pay for Play: A History of Big-Time College Athletic Reform (Sport and Society), and Wounded Lions: Joe Paterno, Jerry Sandusky, and the Crises in Penn State Athletics (Sport and Society)