Date of Award
5-10-2026
Date Published
June 2026
Degree Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Social Science
Advisor(s)
Gretchen Purser
Keywords
college football;emotional labor;labor rights;power and inequality;Professionalization Paradox;status coercion
Subject Categories
Business | Labor Relations
Abstract
This dissertation examines the labor conditions of college football players at the intersection of professionalization, coercion, and emotional labor. Drawing on qualitative data, I argue that four historical developments – the intentional construction of the term “student-athlete,” the expansion of television contracts following NCAA v. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma, the advent of the transfer portal, and the emergence of Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) policy – have produced what I call the professionalization paradox: a structural condition in which college football players operate within a professional-like model while remaining excluded from the protections and recognition afforded to employees. I demonstrate that this paradox does not simply produce inequality – it actively deepens it. Using Erin Hatton’s (2020) framework of coerced labor, I show that athletes experience systematic status coercion across the domains of compensation, mobility, and visibility. Rather than liberating athletes, reforms such as the transfer portal and NIL have reproduced and, in some cases, intensified these coercive conditions, extending the commercial logic of professional sport without extending its protections. Building on this foundation, I argue that structural coercion generates a demand for emotional labor. Drawing on Arlie Hochschild’s ([1983] 2012) theory of emotional labor, I center three distinct areas – time extraction, brand ambassador obligations, and physical and psychosocial demands – as the mechanisms through which coercion levies emotional compliance. This dissertation shows the human cost of these two structural conditions – status coercion and emotional labor demands – as they converge within the professionalization paradox, with each intensifying the other in ways the existing literature has not yet fully examined. In doing so, it contributes three distinct elements to the college sports conversation: the professionalization paradox as an original organizing concept, the combined application of Hatton’s (2020) status coercion framework and Hochschild’s ([1983] 2012) theory of emotional labor, and the centering of the college football experience through the perspective of current players in a political moment where employment status is continuously dismissed while professional demands increase. This dissertation contributes to the sociological understanding of labor, sport, power, and inequality by illuminating the mechanisms through which college athletics extracts value from athletes whose status is carefully constructed and managed to deny them the recognition that their value would otherwise provide.
Access
Open Access
Recommended Citation
Lopoo, Melissa, "THE PROFESSIONALIZATION PARADOX: LABOR DEMANDS WITHOUT WORKER PROTECTIONS IN COLLEGE FOOTBALL" (2026). Dissertations - ALL. 2292.
https://surface.syr.edu/etd/2292
