Sports in American History Final Test

Title IX

No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.

Play Days

Women's opportunities for competitive physical activity were limited in America until Federal Legislation, commonly referred to as Title IX, became law. It required American society to recognize a woman's right to participate in sports on a plane equal to that of men. Prior to 1870, activities for women were recreational rather than sport-specific in nature.

Trashsports

ade-for-TV sports programming; sporting events that wouldn't exist were there not time slots to be filled. Arena Football, for instance, or "The World's Strongest Man"; aerobics and lumberjack championships; the X-Games. Invented long ago by ABC (see: Roone Arledge), it's now the mainstay of ESPN and its competitors; it's relatively cheap to produce (compared to extensive coverage of "real" sports) and therefore much-loved by execs.

Bill Veeck

also known as "Sport Shirt Bill", was a native of Chicago, Illinois, and a franchise owner and promoter in Major League Baseball. Veeck was at various times the owner of the Cleveland Indians, St. Louis Browns and Chicago White S

Sohn Kee-Chung (Kietei Sun)

became the first medal-winning Korean Olympian, when he won the gold medal in the marathon at the 1936 Berlin Olympics as a member of the Japanese delegation.

Andrew Foster

founder and first president of the Negro National League, is known as the Father of Black Baseball. An outstanding pitcher who began his own career as a player at age 17, Foster supported black teams throughout his life and worked for the legitimization, respect, and financial success of African-American baseball.

Alex Karras

fter first threatening to retire rather than give it up, Karras admitted placing bets on NFL games and was suspended by the league, along with Green Bay Packers' running back Paul Hornung, for one season (1963). A minor but memorable role came one year later in the western parody Blazing Saddles (1974): the very strong and slow-witted thug Mongo, who rode into town on a huge brahman (marked with "yes" and "no" passing signals), knocked out a horse with one punch, and famously responded to a question from Sheriff Bart with, "Don't know..." (looking straight into the camera) "...Mongo only pawn in game of life." That same year, he was quickly brought in by ABC to replace Fred Williamson as a commentator for the network's Monday Night Football.

Pierre de Coubertin

was a French educator and historian, and founder of the International Olympic Committee. He is considered the father of the modern Olympic Games.

Paul Brown

Brown was both the co-founder and first coach of the Cleveland Browns, a team named after him, and later played a role in founding the Cincinnati Bengals. His teams won seven league championships in a professional coaching career spanning 25 seasons.

Leni Riefenstahl

Hitler invited Riefenstahl to film the 1936 Summer Olympics scheduled to be held in Berlin, a film which Riefenstahl claimed had been commissioned by the International Olympic Committee.[28] She visited Greece to take footage of the route of the inaugural torch relay and the games' original site at Olympia, where she was aided by Greek photographer Nelly's.[28] This material became Olympia, a hugely successful film which has since been widely noted for its technical and aesthetic achievements.[28] She was one of the first filmmakers to use tracking shots in a documentary,[29] placing a camera on rails to follow the athletes' movement. The film is also noted for its slow motion shots.[29] Riefenstahl played with the idea of slow motion, underwater diving shots, extremely high and low shooting angles, panoramic aerial shots, and tracking system shots for allowing fast action. Many of these shots were relatively unheard of at the time, but Leni's use and augmentation of them set a standard, and is the reason why they are still used to this day.[30] Riefenstahl's work on Olympia has been cited as a major influence in modern sports photography.[28][29] Riefenstahl filmed competitors of all races, including African-American Jesse Owens in what later became famous footage.[31]

Central Red Army

is a Russian ice hockey club that plays in the Kontinental Hockey League. It is referred to in the West as "Central Red Army" or the "Red Army Team" for its past affiliation with the Soviet Army, popularly known as the Red Army. HC CSKA Moscow won more Soviet championships and European cups than any other team in history. It is owned by Russia's largest oil company, Rosneft, which is in turn majority-owned by the Russian government.

Dunkel Rating System

is a college football rating system developed in 1929 by Richard C. "Dick" Dunkel, Sr. (1906-1975), to determine a national champion.[3] Dunkel rated college football teams from 1929 until his death in 1975.[4] His ratings are recognized by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in its Football Bowl Subdivision record book.[4] The NCAA describes Dunkel's methodology as a "power index system."[4] Dunkel described his system an index and claimed that "his difference by scores is scientifically produced."[5]

Paul Hornung

is a former professional American football player, a Hall of Fame running back for the Green Bay Packers of the National Football League (NFL) from 1957 to 1966, winning four NFL titles and the first Super Bowl. He is the first in pro football history to win the Heisman Trophy, be selected as the first overall selection in the NFL Draft, win the NFL most valuable player award, and be inducted into both the professional and college football halls of fame.[

Jack Nicklaus

is a retired American professional golfer. He is widely regarded as the greatest golfer of all time, winning a record 18 career major championships, while producing 19 second-place and 9 third-place finishes, over a span of 25 years.[1] Nicklaus focused on the major championships (Masters Tournament, U.S. Open, Open Championship and PGA Championship), and played a selective schedule of regular PGA Tour events, yet still finished with 73 victories, third on the all-time list behind Sam Snead (82) and Tiger Woods (79).

Katarina Witt

is a retired German figure skater. Witt won two Olympic gold medals for East Germany, first at the 1984 Sarajevo Olympics and the second in 1988 at the Calgary Olympics. She is a four-time World champion (1984, 1985, 1987, 1988) and twice World silver medalist (1982, 1986). A feat only equalled by Sonja Henie among female skaters, Witt won six consecutive European Championships (1983-1988). Her competitive record makes her one of the most successful figure skaters of all time.

All-American Conference

is an American collegiate athletic conference, featuring 11 member universities and three associate member universities that compete in the National Collegiate Athletic Association's (NCAA) Division I, with its football teams competing in the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS). Member universities represent a range of private and public universities of various enrollment sizes located primarily in urban metropolitan areas in the Northeastern, Midwestern, Western, and Southern regions of the United States

Harry Edwards

is an American sociologist and civil rights activist. He completed his Ph.D. at Cornell University and is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. Edwards' career has focused on the experiences of African-American athletes. Edwards' career has focused on the experiences of African-American athletes and he is a strong advocate of black participation in the management of professional sports. He has served as a staff consultant to the San Francisco 49ers football team and to the Golden State Warriors basketball team. He has also been involved in recruiting black talent for front-office positions in major league baseball.

CCNY

is the only team in men's college basketball history to win both the National Invitation Tournament and the NCAA Tournament in the same year, 1950. However, this accomplishment was overshadowed by the CCNY point shaving scandal in which seven CCNY basketball players were arrested, in 1951, for taking money from gamblers to affect the outcome of games. The scandal led to the decline of CCNY from a national powerhouse in Division I basketball to a member of Division III and damaged the national profile of college basketball in general.

pari Mutuel System

its a betting system in which all bets of a particular type are placed together in a pool; taxes and the "house-take" or "vigorish" are removed, and payoff odds are calculated by sharing the pool among all winning bets.

Gillette Friday Night Fights

was a live American professional boxing series that aired on ABC-TV from 1960-1963. After NBC-TV's cancellation of The Gillette Cavalcade of Sports in the spring of 1960, ABC took over the prime time boxing program, although it was renamed Fight of the Week. Legendary boxing commentator Don Dunphy did the blow-by-blow description of the bouts, which took place on Saturday beginning in October 1960 through September 1963

Basketball Association of America

was a professional basketball league in North America, founded in 1946. Following its third season, 1948-49, the BAA and the National Basketball League (NBL) merged to create the National Basketball Association (NBA).[1]

National Basketball League

was a professional men's basketball league in the United States established in 1937. After the 1948-49 season, its twelfth, it merged with the Basketball Association of America (BAA) to create the National Basketball Association (NBA).

Kefauver Committee

was a special committee of the United States Senate which existed from 1950 to 1951 and which investigated organized crime which crossed state borders in the United States. The committee became popularly known as the Kefauver Committee because of its chairman, Senator Estes Kefauver.[1]

William Sloane

was an American Christian clergyman and long-time peace activist. He was ordained in the Presbyterian church and later received ministerial standing in the United Church of Christ. In his younger days he was an athlete, a talented pianist, a CIA agent, and later chaplain of Yale University, where the influence of Reinhold Niebuhr's social philosophy led him to become a leader in the Civil Rights Movement and peace movements of the 1960s and 1970s

Mildred Didrikson

was an American athlete who achieved a great deal of success in golf, basketball, baseball and track and field. She won two gold medals in track and field at the 1932 Summer Olympics, before turning to professional golf and winning 10 LPGA major championships.

Marvin Miller

was an American baseball executive who served as the Executive Director of the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA) from 1966 to 1982. Under Miller's direction, the players' union was transformed into one of the strongest unions in the United States. In 1992, Red Barber said, "Marvin Miller, along with Babe Ruth and Jackie Robinson, is one of the two or three most important men in baseball history.

Carroll Rosenbloom

was an American businessman. He was the owner of two National Football League franchises; he was the first owner of the Baltimore Colts, and later switched teams, taking ownership of the Los Angeles Rams.[1][2]

Larry Doby

was an American professional baseball player in the Negro leagues and Major League Baseball (MLB) who was the second black player to break baseball's color barrier.three months after Jackie Robinson made history with the Brooklyn Dodgers—Doby broke the MLB color barrier in the American League when he signed a contract to play with Bill Veeck's Cleveland Indians. Doby was the first player to go directly to the majors from the Negro leagues.

Jackie Robinson

was an American professional baseball second baseman who became the first African American to play in Major League Baseball (MLB) in the modern era.[1] Robinson broke the baseball color line when the Brooklyn Dodgers started him at first base on April 15, 1947. The Dodgers, by signing Robinson, heralded the end of racial segregation in professional baseball that had relegated black players to the Negro leagues since the 1880s.[2] Robinson was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962.[3]

Cassuis Clay

was an American professional boxer and activist. He is widely regarded as one of the most significant and celebrated sports figures of the 20th century. From early in his career, Ali was known as an inspiring, controversial, and polarizing figure both inside and outside the ring

Arnold Palmer

was an American professional golfer who is generally regarded as one of the greatest players in the sport's history. Dating back to 1955, he won numerous events on both the PGA Tour and the circuit now known as PGA Tour Champions. Nicknamed The King, he was one of golf's most popular stars and its most important trailblazer, the first superstar of the sport's television age, which began in the 1950s.

Roone Arledge

was an American sports and news broadcasting executive who was president of ABC Sports from 1968 until 1986 and ABC News from 1977 until 1998, and a key part of the company's rise to competition with the two other main television networks, NBC and CBS, in the 1960s, '70s, '80s and '90s. He created many programs still airing today, such as Monday Night Football, ABC World News Tonight, Primetime, Nightline and 20/20.

Howard Cosell

was an American sports journalist who was widely known for his blustery, cocksure personality.[1] Cosell said of himself, "Arrogant, pompous, obnoxious, vain, cruel, verbose, a showoff. There's no question that I'm all of those things."[2] In its obituary for Cosell, The New York Times described Cosell's effect on American sports coverage: "He entered sports broadcasting in the mid-1950s, when the predominant style was unabashed adulation, [and] offered a brassy counterpoint that was first ridiculed, then copied until it became the dominant note of sports broadcasting."[3]

Paul Robeson

was an acclaimed 20th-century performer known for productions like 'The Emperor Jones' and 'Othello.' He was also an international activist.

Branch Rickey

was an innovative Major League Baseball (MLB) executive elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1967. He was perhaps best known for breaking Major League Baseball's color barrier by signing African American player Jackie Robinson, for drafting the first Hispanic superstar, Roberto Clemente, for creating the framework for the modern minor league farm system, for encouraging the Major Leagues to add new teams through his involvement in the proposed Continental League, and for introducing the batting helmet.

Spartakiad

was an international sports event that was sponsored by the Soviet Union. Five international Spartakiades were held from 1928 to 1937. Later Spartakiads were organized as national sport events of the Eastern Bloc countries. The games were organised by Red Sport International.

Sports Boardcasting Act (1961)

was passed in response to a court decision which ruled that the NFL's method of negotiating television broadcasting rights violated antitrust laws. The court ruled that the "pooling" of rights by all the teams to conclude an exclusive contract between the league and CBS was illegal. The Act overrules that decision, and permits certain joint broadcasting agreements among the major professional sports. It recognizes the fact that the various franchises in a sports league, while competitors in the sporting sense, are not as much business competitors as they are interdependent partners, whose success as enterprises is intertwined, as a certain level of competitive balance between them must exist for any of them to remain viable enterprises.

Pete Rozelle

was the commissioner of the National Football League for nearly thirty years, from January 1960 to November 1989, when he retired from office. He is credited with making the NFL into one of the most successful sports leagues in the world.

Avery Brundage

was the fifth president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), serving from 1952 to 1972. The only American to attain that position, Brundage is remembered as a zealous advocate of amateurism and for his involvement with the 1936 and 1972 Summer Olympics, both held in Germany.

Robert Douglas

was the founder of the New York Renaissance basketball team. Nicknamed the "Father of Black Professional Basketball", Douglas owned and coached the Rens from 1923 to 1949, guiding them to a 2,318-381 record (.859). He was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame as a contributor in 1972, the first African American enshrined.

Negro Leagues

were United States professional baseball leagues comprising teams predominantly made up of African Americans and, to a lesser extent, Latin Americans. The term may be used broadly to include professional black teams outside the leagues and it may be used narrowly for the seven relatively successful leagues beginning in 1920 that are sometimes termed "Negro Major Leagues."