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"Beer, Babes, and Balls explores the increasingly popular genre of sports talk radio and how it relates to contemporary ideas of masculinity. Popular culture plays a significant role in fashioning identities, and sports talk radio both reflects and inspires cultural shifts in masculinity. Through analysis of the content of sports talk radio as well as interviews with radio production staff and audience members, scholar and avid sports talk radio listener David Nylund sheds light on certain aspects of contemporary masculinity and recent shifts in gender and sexual politics. He finds that although sports talk radio reproduces many aspects of traditional masculinity, sexism, racism, and heterosexism, there are exceptions in these discourses. For instance, the most popular national host, Jim Rome, is against homophobia and racism in sport, which indicates that the medium may be a place for male sports fans to discuss gender, race, and sexuality in consequential ways. Nylund concludes that sports talk radio creates a male bonding community that has genuine moments of intimacy and connection, signifying the potential for new forms of masculinity to emerge, while simultaneously reproducing traditional forms of masculinity." --Book Jacket.
Every spring, millions of Americans prepare to take part in one of the oddest, most obsessive, and most engrossing rituals in the sports pantheon: Rotisserie baseball, a fantasy game where armchair fans match wits by building their own teams. In 2004, Sam Walker, a sports columnist for the Wall Street Journal, decided to explore this phenomenon by talking his way into Tout Wars, a league reserved for the nation's top experts. The result is one of the most sheerly entertaining sports books in years and a matchless look into the heart and soul of our national pastime.--Provided by publisher.
This extensively researched book addresses sports fan violence sociologically, using both theoretical models and empirical data. Lewis draws from the theoretical approaches based on the collective behavior models of Neil J. Smelser and Clark McPhail in order to show how to study fan violence using the intensive case history method. This method is then applied to an in-depth analysis of the Ohio State-Michigan football celebration riot in 2002 and the Boston Red Sox celebration riot in 2004. The book concludes by proposing solutions for the prevention and control of sports fan violence.
Sporting contests have provided mass entertainment throughout history, and today generate revenues of approximately $200 billion annually in the US alone. Like in the entertainment industry, the modern sports industry's revenues are based on the entertainment value of output and more entertaining sporting contests imply greater game-day attendance, television revenues and sales of merchandise. Research by economists has attempted to understand and explain behavior as it relates to sporting contests, showing that standard microeconomic theory used to explain consumer and producer behavior can also be applied to the behavior of fans, team owners, league executives and players. One commonality among many ancient and modern sports is the existence of violence and aggression in contests. Compare, for example, a modern NASCAR race with a Roman chariot race: Only the technology has changed. From the perspective of an economist, violence in sporting contests is an outcome of the forces of supply and demand, and the phenomenon exists because fans respond to it. Spectator preferences for violence bid up the monetary return to this behavior, and the rational response is a more violent or aggressive output. The optimum level of violent or aggressive play in sporting contests is an empirical issue and this book contains chapters on violence and aggression in sports, concentrating on the reasons for the existence and persistence of such behavior. Following a chapter devoted to the history of violence and aggression in sports, subsequent chapters are designed to cover the breadth of international professional sports including American football, soccer, ice hockey, basketball, baseball, auto racing, and fighting sports. Each chapter will contain econometric analysis of violence and aggressive play in a given sport. The individual chapters will examine whether or not a given sports league or governing body should intervene to reduce violence, and where intervention is warranted, extent of appropriate interventions is evaluated. In addition to academics and students concerned with the economics and history of sport, the book's emphasis on policies at the league and governing-body levels means this book will also be of interest representatives of those institutions. .
Winner of the 2018 PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing Winner of The Times Sports Biography of the Year "Stunning . . . Eig's brilliant, exhaustive book is the biography the champ deserves." --NPR.org The definitive biography of an American icon, from a New York Times best-selling author with unique access to Ali's inner circle He was the wittiest, the prettiest, the strongest, the bravest, and, of course, the greatest (as he told us himself). Muhammad Ali was one of the twentieth century's most fantastic figures and arguably the most famous man on the planet. But until now, he has never been the subject of a complete, unauthorized biography. Jonathan Eig, hailed by Ken Burns as one of America's master storytellers, radically reshapes our understanding of the complicated man who was Ali. Eig had access to all the key people in Ali's life, including his three surviving wives and his managers. He conducted more than 500 interviews and uncovered thousands of pages of previously unreleased FBI and Justice Department files, as well dozens of hours of newly discovered audiotaped interviews from the 1960s. Collectively, they tell Ali's story like never before--the story of a man who was flawed and uncertain and brave beyond belief. "I am America," he once declared. "I am the part you won't recognize. But get used to me--black, confident, cocky; my name, not yours; my religion, not yours; my goals, my own. Get used to me." He was born Cassius Clay in racially segregated Louisville, Kentucky, the son of a sign painter and a housekeeper. He went on to become a heavyweight boxer with a dazzling mix of power and speed, a warrior for racial pride, a comedian, a preacher, a poet, a draft resister, an actor, and a lover. Millions hated him when he changed his religion, changed his name, and refused to fight in the Vietnam War. He fought his way back, winning hearts, but at great cost. Like so many boxers, hestayed too long. Jonathan Eig's Ali reveals Ali in the complexity he deserves, shedding important new light on his politics, religion, personal life, and neurological condition. Ali is a story about America, about race, about a brutal sport, and about a courageous man who shook up the world.
Once a shoestring operation built on plywood sets and Australian rules football, ESPN has evolved into a media colossus. A genius for cross-promotion and its near-mystical rapport with its viewers empower the network to set agendas and create superstars, to curate sports history even as it mainstreams the latest cultural trends. Travis Vogan teams archival research and interviews with an all-star cast to pen the definitive account of how ESPN turned X's and O's into billions of $$$. Vogan's institutional and cultural history focuses on the network since 1998, the year it launched a high-motor effort to craft its brand and grow audiences across media platforms. As he shows, innovative properties like SportsCentury, ESPN The Magazine , and 30 for 30 built the network's cultural caché. This credibility, in turn, propelled ESPN's transformation into an entity that lapped its run-of-the-mill competitors and helped fulfill its self-proclaimed status as the "Worldwide Leader in Sports." Ambitious and long overdue, ESPN: The Making of a Sports Media Empire offers an inside look at how the network changed an industry and reshaped the very way we live as sports fans.
The popularity and globalization of sport have led to an ever-increasing migration of black athletes from the global South to the United States and Western Europe. While the hegemonic ideology surrounding sport is that it brings diverse people together and ameliorates social divisions, sociologists of sport have shown this to be a gross simplification. Instead, sport and its narratives often reinforce and re-create stereotypes and social boundaries, especially regarding race and the prowess and the position of the black athlete. Because sport is a contested terrain for maintaining and challenging racial norms and boundaries, the black athlete has always impacted popular (white) perceptions of blackness in a global manner. The Black Migrant Athlete analyzes the construction of race in Western societies through a study of the black African migrant athlete. Munene Franjo Mwaniki presents ten black African migrant athletes as a conceptual starting point to interrogate the nuances of white supremacy and of the migrant and immigrant experience with a global perspective. By using celebrity athletes such as Hakeem Olajuwon, Dikembe Mutombo, and Catherine Ndereba as entry points into a global discourse, Mwaniki explores how these athletes are wrapped in social and cultural meanings by predominately white-owned and -dominated media organizations. Drawing from discourse analysis and cultural studies, Mwaniki examines the various power relations via media texts regarding race, gender, sexuality, class, and nationality.
NFL Films changed the way Americans view football. Keepers of the Flame: NFL Films and the Rise of Sports Media traces the subsidiary's development from a small independent film production company to the marketing machine that Sports Illustrated named "perhaps the most effective propaganda organ in the history of corporate America." Drawing on research at the NFL Films Archive and the Pro Football Hall of Fame and interviews with media pioneer Steve Sabol and others, Travis Vogan shows how NFL Films has constructed a consistent, romanticized, and remarkably visible mythology for the National Football League. The company packages football as a visceral and dramatic sequence of violent, beautiful, graceful, and heroic gridiron battles. Historically proven formulas for presentation--such as the dramatic voiceovers once provided by John Facenda's baritone, the soaring scores of Sam Spence's rousing background music, and the epic poetry found in Steve Sabol's scripts--are still used today. From the Vincent Price-narrated Strange but True Football Stories to the currently running series Hard Knocks, NFL Films distinguishes the NFL from other sports organizations and from other media and entertainment. Vogan tells the larger story of the company's relationship with and vast influence on our culture's representations of sport, the expansion of sports television beyond live game broadcasts, and the emergence of cable television and Internet sports media. Keepers of the Flame: NFL Films and the Rise of Sports Media presents sports media as an integral facet of American popular culture and NFL Films as key to the transformation of professional football into the national obsession commonly known as America's Game.
Though Americans spend more than $25 billion a year on sports and sporting events, this book argues that the influence of sports on our lives is even more profound than this huge figure would seem to suggest. Exploring such topics as the role of sports in the creation of mass culture, cheating, the abuse of illegal drugs, the strange and fascinating role that numbers play in sporting events, and the future of spectator sport, this book surveys the outsized impact that sports have on American culture. The author draws from new work in such fields as history, economics, politics, sociology, psychology, and ethics to support his claims. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.
Women fans have entered the traditionally male domain of the sports stadium in growing numbers in recent years. Watching professional sport is important for women for so many reasons, but their expectations and experiences have been largely ignored by academics. This book tackles these shortcomings in the literature and sheds new light on the many ways in which women become sports fans. This groundbreaking study is the first to focus on the phenomenon of the feminization of sports fandom. Including original research on football and rugby union in the UK, it looks at the increasing opportunities for women to become sports fans in contemporary society and critically examines the way this form of leisure is valued by women. Drawing upon feminist thinking and intersectionality, it shows how women from different social classes and age groups consume the spectacle of sport. This book is fascinating reading for any student or scholar interested in sport and leisure studies, sociology and gender or women's studies. in sport and leisure studies, sociology and gender or women's studies.
This book - the first to link feminism, sport and media theory - provides a broad cultural studies orientation. In addition to a theoretical analysis, it provides a practical look at models of sport, media effects and the construction of the sportswoman and women's sports.Divided into three parts, the book: provides an overview of the three areas; focuses on the print and broadcast media portrayal of women's sport, examining such issues as the relationship of sports promotion to media representations of women's sports and the ways in which sports reporting is taught to future journalists; and seeks to develop a new model for the future.
Souled Out? That's the question author Shaun Powell poses and ultimately answers with regard to the nature of blacks'participation in American sports. Neither blacks nor whites—athletes, coaches, administrators, owners, media, parents, and yes, even fans—are without blame for race still being an issue in the athletic arena. And Powell, perhaps like you, is fed up with the excuses. Souled Out? boldly addresses the following dilemmas and more:-Do today's black athletes and coaches have the purpose to follow the leads of pioneers like Jackie Robinson, Althea Gibson, Robert Johnson, or Tony Dungy?-Is Muhammad Ali's great legacy being misused to justify the behavior of today's prima donnas and their preconceived, self-centered celebrations? -Why, with tremendous models like Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Venus and Serena Williams, and Candace Parker, is black female participation not more encouraged across a wide array of sports? -Are portrayals of professional black athletes, centered on gaining luxury possessions and material wealth rather than giving back to the community, ensuring that a me-first mind-set carries over to the next generation of athletes? -Will more blacks break through the glass ceiling in coaching and sports management positions to achieve strong decision-making roles?-Can negative attitudes about race, held by segments inside and outside the black community, be overcome so that faster and enduring progress can be made in the future? Powell's answers will surprise, anger, please, and—most of all—challenge you.
Athletic contests help define what we mean in America by "success." By keeping women from "playing with the boys" on the false assumption that they are inherently inferior, society relegates them to second-class citizens. In this forcefully argued book, Eileen McDonagh and Laura Pappano show in vivid detail how women have been unfairly excluded from participating in sports on an equal footing with men. Using dozens of powerful examples--girls and women breaking through in football, ice hockey, wrestling, and baseball, to name just a few--the authors show that sex differences are not sufficient to warrant exclusion in most sports, that success entails more than brute strength, and that sex segregation in sports does not simply reflect sex differences, but actively constructs and reinforces stereotypes about sex differences. For instance, women's bodies give them a physiological advantage in endurance sports, yet many Olympic events have shorter races for women than men, thereby camouflaging rather than revealing women's strengths.
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