"This may sound so silly," she [former hostess Charlotte Henry] said, "but my experience with the Orange Pride [University of Tennessee's hostess program] really altered the way I thought of the university. And it altered it in a bad way. People there were crazy about sports. The reputation that Tennessee built was to bleed orange through and through. Integrity. Tradition. So when you get there and you're in it, the people that work there every day could care less about the colors they represent. It comes down to what's going to bring in the money. To be honest, people don't step back and say, 'At what cost?' Nothing came to be more important than winning football games."
The System: The Glory and Scandal of Big-Time College Football by Jeff Benedict and Armen Keteyian
Major football teams use hostess programs to bring in recruits without breaking NCAA rules. Hostesses show recruits around campus, hang out with them, and they're exclusively attractive young women. The implication of the hostess programs are, if you come to our school you can date one of these women. Whether or not recruits are into the hostesses can actually determine the school they choose to play at. Once again, women's bodies are used as incentives in sports, and used to fuel the wealth of those who benefit off of the young (unpaid) men who play football.
- K.O.