Sociology of Sport Final Exam
What were the objectives of organized youth sport during this period? From which social classes were children targeted?
Objective: get kids off street. At first working class. School youth sports and school related associations
What three historical factors brought about this transformation?
Olympic games as propaganda (especially in cold war), increase of commercial and media interests, scientific rationality.
What type of households are more likely to be involved with organized, competitive youth sport (especially soccer)? What does this say about who benefits most from "competitive kid capital"? What does this say about which segments of society are more likely to get a boost to socioeconomic mobility?
Upper middle class families. They benefit most from competitive kid capital and likely get boost in socioeconomic mobility.
What does mens sana in corpore sano mean?
sound mind in a sound body
Where are intercollegiate esport programs located on college campus? Are they generally organized the same way, or is there considerable variation at this time?
No universally accepted place on campus. Operate at the club level. Considerable variation
You will not be required to memorize any figures, about the NCAA overall or of Cal specifically. However, you should be able to answer: is it likely that a significant percentage of NCAA schools are Prong 1 compliant in terms of participation? Why or why not?
No, because there is an overrepresentation of men
What distinguishes elite ("grandmaster") chess players from complete novices? What distinguishes grandmaster chess player from merely very good players?
Novices can't calculate ahead. Good players can't reconstruct or see as many chunks of the board
What are fantasy sports? What is the difference between season-long fantasy and daily fantasy sports?
Playing the general manager and assembling virtual teams to compete based on real player's results. Daily fantasy has shorter contests, hinge on immediate outcomes
How does their theory help us explain what role "powder puff football", as described in the Foley piece, plays in explaining the absence of women playing football in the U.S.?
Powder puff is actually a ritual inversion and reinforces gender roles, so it is an example of the women's game not being taken seriously in a hegemonic sports culture
What obstacles did women encounter playing soccer in England and in Germany in the 20thcentury?
Prohibited from using facilities, sex discrimination act of 1975, germany institutionalized inferiority of games with shorter periods, youth balls, regular fitness exams, no championship for women
What is the racial breakdown of players who play the quarterback and center positions, vs. the running back and wide receiver positions? Putting aside for the moment the extreme over-representation of Blacks in the NFL, what would we expect the racial breakdown of players at those positions to be—if race played no role in determining an NFL player's development?
QB/Center: mostly white, running back/wide receiver: mostly black... if race played no role, we should see 67% black players in each position
How have MLB teams decided what types of people should be the general managers (GMs; or, the senior baseball operations officers whether they carry the exact title "General Manager" or not) between the 1970s and today? What has been the significance of having played professional baseball (at either the minor or major league level) or having graduated from college? What about having specifically attended a very selective college, or even more specifically an Ivy League college?
Reached Minor/Major League Level % continues to decrease. Has a college degree/Ivy league school attendance % continues to increase. Teams want executives who've received a higher educa
Consider the examples given from media-based sports spectators in class (from The Daily Cal and The Washington Post). What are their objections to analytics?
Relying too heavily on analytics instead of trusting traditional baseball thinking.
How does this explain why cricket spread to the masses in India but not in the U.S. or Canada?
Rich sport - social elites excluded the population - people don't want it to spread- social status
How does the 1984 decision figure into Branch's explanation of why the NCAA is so keen to promote the amateurism model today? What about the Kent Waldrep case in the 1970s?
NCAA = vulnerable Challenging universities responsibility to athlete
Based upon Leifer's story, where are NFL spectators more likely to fall on Giulianotti grid of sports spectator identities, compared to say MLB spectators? Why?
NFL = lower half Globalized - territory matters less MLB = top half of the grid still stuck with the local team
What does it mean that sports are "created", for Grindstaff & West?
No formal definition for sports, unspoken definition that shape and create sports, competitors orient their performances toward them
What role does skin color play in who has the ACTN3 gene? What factors do at least partially determine whether one has the ACTN3 gene or not?
No role. The ACTN3 is linked to genetic diversity and outliers, not race.
What is the theoretical threat (never realized) of being found not in compliance with Title IX?
No state funding
Why are 29 of the NFL's 32 teams listed in Forbes magazine's list of the 50 most financially valuable sports teams in the world?
Teams in NFL - Small cities valuable, a lot of money
Overall: Leifer describes three distinct types of cultural/historical logics associated with professional team sports in the U.S.: the traveling, local, and national publics. What is the significance of territory in the connection of spectators to sports in each?
Territory matters less and less
Why did the cultural logic of these representative leagues diverge? How and why did television impact the two teams in different ways?
The NFL: instead of settling for the local team we search for a team (on national television) Football = national All NFL teams owners to give up television rights Baseball - television = product of football game on television Baseball = not doing much, in football embraced television Regional
equity Whose rule is Title IX?
education amendments of 1972 - no exclusion due to sex
How do the historical circumstances of baseball in the U.S. compare to those of cricket in the U.S.? What happened to the subsequent trajectories of the two sports within the U.S.? How do Kaufman & Patterson explain this discrepancy?
"Institutional entrepreneur" (not in cricket), not afraid to get dirty
What is meant by a supply-side as opposed to a demand-side conception of a sport's popularity?
-Supply = how much we have Without supply, no demand -Demand = what we want Social demand for sports, from social conditions
The NCAA is not the only intercollegiate athletic sanctioning body in the U.S. Approximately what percentage of all schools with intercollegiate athletic programs are NCAA schools? Approximately what percentage of all varsity athletes compete for an NCAA school?
% intercollegiate athletic programs are ncaa schools = 71.53%
Reform What are the two major positions on how to reform college sports? Generally speaking, what do they see as the problem to be solved? Which side is Branch on? What key concerns did UC Berkeley's Chancellor's Task Force on Academics & Athletics (TFAA) raise regarding Intercollegiate Athletics at Cal? What types of policies did it recommend? Which of the two major positions above does the TFAA seem to hold and why?
-Generally speaking, what do they see as the problem to be solved? Which side is Branch on? -lack of support, Lack of integration with narps Scheduling issue -re-integrate athletes into campus life -re-integrate student athletes
Two models of sports globalization on the participation side:
-Globalization of leagues. -Globalization of team rosters.
Ice hockey is as popular in Canada as football/basketball/baseball are in the United States. The highest-level professional ice hockey league in North America is the National Hockey League (NHL), whose teams play in both Canada and the U.S. What routes do Canadians take to get to the United States? How many aspiring Canadian hockey players play collegiately in the United States? How many aspiring Canadian hockey players play collegiately in Canada? How does this illustrate why the popularity of college sports in the U.S. can't simply be explained by the popularity of sports, in general, in the U.S.?
-NCAA (college), Canadian hockey league, or CIS -A decent amount -Hardly any -Because if pop of college sports was simply explained by pop of sports in general, then this would apply to canada, and canadian hockey players would play hockey at the college level in canada, not in the US
NCAA v Board of Regents of University of Oklahoma, 1984 What was the University of Oklahoma's complaint? How did the courts rule? Who controlled TV rights after the decision?
-NCAAs hold over college football -televised college football is a consumer product subject to laws governing fair market competition -equity to market logic college football associations
Lifschitz/Sauder/Stevens: the early status system in U.S. higher education. When U.S. colleges & universities compared themselves to their peers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, how wide a geographic territory did they cover? What was the chief status criterion for colleges & universities during this period? How did the geographic scope of the status system in higher education change in the 20th century? What role did intercollegiate athletics play during this transition? What does this imply about how visible intercollegiate athletics was prior to this? (For, intercollegiate athletics had been around since the late 1800s!)
-Not a wide territory, competed with schools in their area for attention and money -prestige/selectivity of admissions -It widened, local to national -IA became part of the status criteria. Implies the IA was not as visible prior
What "problem" does Leifer propose that organizers of this original form of competition confronted? What was the solution to this problem? What was the ensuing culture of spectatorship?
-Original form of competition, problems confronted by independent teams Their audience was only temporarily since independent teams had no home Dominant independent teams made games lack drama A cultural skepticism towards professional sports -Local teams were established -Supporters
The rise of the NCAA What was the context of the original formation of the NCAA, in the first decade of the 1900s? How does Taylor Branch describe the NCAA's status as a regulatory power in the first half of the 20th century? During this time, what was the NCAA's position on college sports as an amateur vs. commercialized activity? What circumstances led to the NCAA's rise to prominence in the 1950s? Who was Walter Byers? How did he frame the problem of college athletics in the 1950s?
-amateurism -no legitimacy Inefficient enforcer -amateur - colleges need to shape up -William and May scandal, conspiracy —> threat of corruption - hence colleges would need protection -made up the scandal Frame: need protection from corruption
How was televised college football regulated between the 1950s and 1984? Who controlled the rights to televised college sports football? Who decided which schools got to appear on television and by what logic were TV appearances dictated? In what sense was televised college football not a business during this period? If you were a popular college football program during this period, did the rules of televised college football favor you or not?
-conference/local, 5 tv appearances each year per team -athletic conference -NCAA, 5 per year -not showed or controlled by popularity -did not favor
Financial crisis ' What is the source of Cal Athletics' operating deficit? About how much per year does it cost to service this debt, between Intercollegiate Athletics (IA) and the central campus?
-football stadium Project revenue never came through -9,5mil, 54% from debt
Student-athlete experience What is the #1 priority for the Intercollegiate Athletics (IA) department, as identified by personnel across the University? Does IA staffing reflect this priority? Why or why not?
-holistically educate and develop student athlete -not - understaffed - help from interns
What are three dimensions of Title IX compliance? Which of the three dimensions drove the Cal Field Hockey program's complaint in 2016?
-participation -Athletic Financial assistance -Treatment
What is Malcolm Gladwell's "10,000 hour rule" and its implications for the role of genetics in athletic excellence? Would Epstein agree with Gladwell or not? Why?
10,000 of deliberate practice are need to become world class. Implications: success is nurtured, not from genetics. agree - genes have little to do with race Athletes are not like others in their race No correlation to race
Between 1988 and 2018, when was the average number of amateur scouts in MLB teams highest? When was it lowest? What was it like at the time of the Moneyball story in 2002?
1990, 1994 (Average Mean: 24) 2004, 2007 (Average Mean: 20) 2002 (Average Mean: slightly over 20)
Approximately what percentage of players in the National Football League (NFL) are Black? What percentage are White?
70% Black 30% White
Approximately what percentage of genetic information is identical between all humans?
99.5%
What, in summary, is "the shame of college sports", according to Branch?
= college sports has gone part of the way to look like a business but not the whole way
What does Leifer mean when he says the "opening" for a league functioning according to a logic of modern publics is a television network without a sports contract as opposed to a large city without a sports team?
A city left without a franchise was less of a nucleus for the formation of a rival league than a television network without a league contract The NFL's success in preventing or fending off challenges since the 1960s had come from its ability to contract with the three major networks
What is a "ritual inversion"? Why is powder puff football an example of a ritual inversion? What function does the ritual inversion serve?
A ritual so absurd that it has the latent function of enforce the opposite of what is happening. Example because women became players (but flag football, other rules changed), men become cheerleaders (perform in an exaggerated way that emphasizes the reality of their heteronormativity)
What organizations played a central role in youth sport during this era?
AAU displaced from olympics in 1978 -> intensified competition and professionalization w new centralized national organizing
What is Cohen's theory about why the rules about politics in sport began to transition from partisan politics to celebratory nationalism? When did this happen?
After the Civil War, as African American stars and fans were granted the same rights as same rights as white men, white men worry about how black athletes might channel their popularity into politics. Once African Americans and other minority groups became political forces, sporting environments felt the need to dissuade minority groups from politicizing sports. As a result, in the 1910's, national pride and order replaced political division.
What association was there between sporting and partisan politics in the late 1700s and early 1800s, according to Cohen? What expectations were there that candidates for elected office would incorporate sporting into their campaigns?
As early as the 1750s, candidates used the popularity of sporting contests to mobilize voters. Candidates for elected office are expected to engage the electorate through sports (idea of incorporating competition to solicit voters, make politics exciting)
What does Epstein mean when he says that elite athletes can "predict the future"?
Athletes have a very large mental database of information that allows them to understand what will happen and how they should react
What are the key organizations that have driven the commercialization of college sports?
Athletic conference Sports media competition Sports equipment suppliers
Why could the elite (in 2004) baseball player Albert Pujols not hit softball player Jennie Finch's pitches?
Because he was facing a softball instead of a baseball pitcher, so his mental database was gone
Why does the widespread popularity of softball in the U.S. make it unlikely that women will play baseball?
Because it is institutionally ingrained, so if you are good as a young girl at a ball and bat sport you are institutionally driven to play softball, few organized opportunities to play baseball
Why is there more genetic variation among peoples from the African continent than in the entire rest of the world? What implications does this have for the notion, based on the observation that some of the most athletically genetically gifted people in the world appear to be African or of African descent, that Africans are genetically superior athletes? Would Epstein agree with this or not?
Because it is theorized that all humans first migrated from africa, and migrated in groups with similar DNA, so Africa would have the most diverse DNA because it at one point held all the groups. Implications: Africans can be most genetically gifted, and worst genetically gifted, a wider bell curve than other races
Why might Title IX be a reason that esport does not become a varsity sport at the intercollegiate level, despite its growing popularity? (Think in particular of the pressures already imposed upon Cal Athletics in light of Chancellor Christ's directive to move to Prong 1 compliance by 2021.)
Because this would mean adding girls to e sports, adding more women sports, or cutting more mens sports... either way it shift the balance a school might already have in their gender compliance requirement for title IX
Who was Bill James? How were his ideas accepted by the baseball establishment? To the extent that the current analytics paradigm that has been attributed to him is "correct", what does this say about the notion that organized, competitive sport is necessarily driven by merit?
Bill James proposed an analytical, statistical way of looking at baseball. The baseball establishment ignored him.
What is "celebratory nationalism" in sport? How does it differ from partisan politicking? When did celebratory nationalism first begin to appear in sporting, in the U.S.?
Celebratory Nationalism - when national unity became the political goal of sports. First began to appear in the U.S around the time of the Civil War.
Why did Beane and DePodesta prefer to draft college players over high school players?
College players have more information and numbers to their name, easier to evaluate against good competition.
What is the culture of (professional) esport with respect to commercialized self-promotion? Why might this represent an obstacle to esport achieving varsity sport status?
Commercialized self promotion is accepted, this would be an obstacle to varsity sport status because college athletes aren't supposed to negotiate contracts, accept money, etc because they are considered amateurs
What is "compensatory hypermasculinity" and which athletes, in which sports, are we likely to observe it?
Compensating in masculinity in order to present a sport as heteronormative. Male athletes in sports deemed less heteronormative are likely to do this
What role did compulsory schooling during the Progressive Era in the U.S. (1890s-1920s) play in bringing about organized youth sport in America? What does Levey Friedman mean by compulsory schooling "creating leisure time" for children?
Compulsory schooling created leisure hours, organized youth sport got kids off the street. Friedman means that it distinguished certain hour for school and different hours for free time.
How does the example of Cal's Beach Volleyball program, founded in 2014, represent the theoretical financial risks of Prong 3 compliance?
Cost of sports and sports facilities
What are their findings regarding the principal criteria for determining what counts as sport? What is meant by the notion that sport is competitive?What is meant by the notion that sport is not supportive? What is meant by the notion that sport is not performative? What is meant by the notion that sport is heteronormative?
Criteria: competitive, not supportive, not performative, hegemonically masculine... found that cheerleaders talk about and understand cheerleading in a way that presents it as more aligned with these unspoken norms (especially male cheerleaders) -Need skill and athleticism to compete, pits parties against each other -Does not support other sports -Is not aesthetic or showy, which is often associated with female elements of a sport -Sports participants are heterosexual and don't present elements of queer culture
What is cultural capital? What are the five elements of "competitive kid capital"? When Levey Friedman talks to parents of youth sport participants, what is her point about how parents talk about the types of capital imparted onto their children by playing youth sport?
Cultural capital: knowledge and skills useful for upward mobility. Importance of winning, recover from loss, managing time, performing under stress, feeling comfortable being judged. Point: parents talk about this capital in ways related to class anxiety
What are the different divisions within the NCAA? What is the top level? What is the bottom level?
D1 FBS, D1 FCS, D2, D3
Would Cohen agree or disagree with the widespread objection to Kaepernick's political protests? Why?
Disagree. Cohen would argue that sports have always been a battleground for the activist athlete. AA were not the first to politicize sports
Approximately what is the overall varsity participation rate in NCAA Division I-FBS, which includes Cal? Is the varsity participation rate higher or lower at the NCAA Division III level?
Div1 = 126 Div3 = 243 (much higher)
What effect might Title IX have on gender in esport?
E sport is currently heavily gendered, so making it an NCAA sport would subject it to Title IX, meaning it would have to fit within the school's method of proving gender equality
What are some characteristics of the contemporary "professionalization" of competitive youth sport?
Elite/travel sports instead of "everyone plays", paid coaches, year round season
What were the circumstances of the Amateur Athletic Union turning its attention to organizing youth sports?
Elite/travel sports instead of "everyone plays", paid coaches, year round season
What do the two axes—globalization and commodification—of Richard Giulianotti's schema of fan identities refer to? What does it mean to be on the upper half vs. lower half of the grid, or the left-hand side vs. the right-hand side of the grid? What are the ideal types of identity in each cell of the grid?
Globalization: local territory of less importance in sport (more globalized, lower half) Commodification: consumer goods and the market of more importance in sport (more commodified, right half)
Chancellor Christ wants to move from Prong 3 to Prong 1 compliance by 2021. Right now, men are significantly overrepresented among varsity athletes compared to their proportion in the overall undergraduate student body, so IA is certainly not Prong 1 compliant right now. What are the "good" and "bad" ways that Prong 1 compliance can happen by 2021 and why are they good or bad?
Good = add women and don't cut men, costs to add more women Bad = drop men, no additional cost
What are generalist vs. specialist strategies regarding youth sports participation? Who is more likely to follow one vs. the other? Is there a convergence in strategy once a youth reaches, say, high school age?
Good at many things vs. very good at one thing. Households with at least one parent not from US are more likely to specialize.
What is Harry Edwards' explanation for these disparities? What is the difference between the role of institutional racism vs. of personal racial prejudice? Is Edwards identifying the former or the latter as the chief issue? Why—i.e., what leads people inside football to push people of particular races to particular positions on the football field?
Harry Edwards argues teams employ NFL players not in terms of discrimination, but instead employ based on the pattern that's traditionally proved to be most successful.
What does Bourdieu mean when he proposes to problematize the supply of and demand for sports? What implicit criticism does this carry of how we might typically think about why there are sports, and sports spectators/fans, in society
He means that there is a social demand for sports, which implies that there is an area of production for sports and that somehow the demand for these products is created by social conditions. This is an implicit criticism of the idea that sport naturally occurs via a need to expend muscular energy in a specific way
Why, in countries where there is a "hegemonic culture" for a sport, do women tend to not participate in that sport, according to Markovits & Rensmann?
Hegemonic culture implies that a sport is completely occupied by men, so in those countries, women don't participate because the women's game does not have enough space to flourish
All told, what would be Levey Friedman's objection to the observation that youth sport is just about "participation" in society today? Is her objection empirical (because she thinks that youth sport as it exists is about something else), moral (because she thinks youth sport oughtto be something else), or both? Why?
Her objection is empirical, she thinks youth sport is about class anxiety and gaining skills that give a kid cultural capital. She doesn't think youth sport should be this way so her objection is not moral persay.
According to Diketmüller, whose research is cited by Markovits & Rensmann, what is the relationship between the production of high-level men and high-level women soccer players in a country?
In countries that produce high level men in soccer, far fewer high level women are produced, and vice versa
What implication does Markovits & Rensmann's story have for theories that seek to explain lagging women's participation in a given sport in terms of physiology and/or the purely tactical elements of sport?
In countries where a certain sport is popular, less women play it... hegemonic sports stratify society by gender. Women's participation is not low because of physiological or tactical reasons
How did Billy Beane and Paul DePodesta evaluate baseball players?
Instead of comparing players to an idealized image, Beane and DePodesta evaluate based on numbers and stats.
How does the institution of fantasy sports, as described in the McGrath article from The New Yorker, shape fandom along Giulianotti's globalization and commodification axes, and why?
It makes fandom less focused on local territory (just stats), more focused on sports players as commodities (can help them win short term cash prizes)
What motivated de Coubertin's vision of the modern Olympic Games?
It makes fandom less focused on local territory (just stats), more focused on sports players as commodities (can help them win short term cash prizes)
Why is Leifer's story about the trajectory of NFL spectatorship an example of what Giulianotti means by "globalization"? Why do Leifer and Giulianotti come to opposite conclusions about the desirability of globalization processes in sports spectatorship?
Leifer's NFL spectators = Giulianotti's globalization Audience = entire nation Opposite conclusions Leifer = TV is no problem Giulianotti = TV affects community, territory less significant - instead of the cold TV
How was team sports competition originally organized in the United States? What culture of spectatorship was associated with this?
Locally organized, supporter types spectators
What does Leifer mean when he says that the "timeframe of the product" of sports has been extended from individual games to league races?
Longer seasons
How is the relative popularity of college football and college men's basketball in the United States compared to the major professional team sports evident in: ... the spectator capacity of major college football stadiums relative to pro football stadiums? ... television viewership of college football/basketball championship games compared to championship games of professional team sports?
Lots of university stadiums are bigger than NFL stadiums, indicating their popularity Viewership of college football and basketball champs are higher than most other champ games (outside of super bowl)
What is macroscopic vs. microscopic vs. mesoscopic theory? At which level have we primarily operated in this course?
Macroscopic: Entirety. Explains social action in terms of systems/ entire population. Microscopic: Individual agency. Focuses on everyday interaction Mesoscopic: In the middle. No macroscopic logic behind social action, no ordering beyond level of everyday interaction. In 117, we look for middle/meso-level.
Comparison: behavior in European soccer stadiums (BBC|Panorama "Stadiums of Hate") vs. behavior in U.S. sports stadiums.
Main point: we do not see the organized racist expressions in the U.S. that we do in Europe.
What happens in the U.S.? If elites playing cricket are faced with the prospect of the masses intruding on "their" game, what are their alternatives if they want to maintain their status? What problem do they face that their elite counterparts in India do NOT face?
Maintain status = exclude population India = Cricket became popular in India because participation by a wide number of people could be stratified
What are Baumer & Zimbalist's critique of the accuracy of the Moneyball story, specifically as an explanation for why the 2002 A's were so successful?
Moneyball argued that the A's were successful because their analytic insights gave more value to players' ability to draw walks, which had been generally de-valued. -But, (a) player transactions in the season actually reduced the team's overall ability to draw walks; and (b) their two most valuable players by the currently in-vogue Wins Above Replacement (WAR) measure, were not known for their ability to draw walks. Moneyball emphasized the use of analytic insights to improve offensive performance. -But, by common measures, the 2002 A's were at best an average offensive team. They were, however, an exceptional pitching team—but this was de-emphasized in the book. Moneyball emphasized analytics' superior insights about drafting amateurs—specifically, the philosophy of drafting less uncertain college players over more uncertain high school players. -But, the college players the 2002 A's did wind up drafting mostly did not pan out. Meanwhile, several high school players that Beane and DePodesta disdained wound up having solid careers.
How do we see the consequences of these different cultural logics in how teams in different professional sports leagues derive their income?
Monopoly over large cities
What are the key organizations that push for maintaining the amateurism model in college sports?
NCAA Central university administrators Academic institutions
What does Leifer mean when he says that early leagues promoted "sameness" in competition? What are examples of this/how is this achieved? What problem does sameness solve? What does he mean when he says that fans "look for difference" between teams?
Sameness = solidarity and competitive equality Problem solved = more dramatic sports games by making teams more even, for the spectatorship Attaching teams to cities (Leifer does not discuss how it was done) Created permanent fan bases Makes supporting the "home" team a matter of communal obligation rather than of desecration of purity of amateur competition
What do Beamish & Ritchie mean by the role that scientific rationality played in bringing about the "performance orientation"?
Science emerged with industrial capitalism, idea of pushing athletes to scientific limits in order to win
In 2002—the time of the Moneyball story—whose knowledge had authority within Major League Baseball (MLB) teams about how to evaluate amateur (college & high school) baseball players?
Scouts + analytics
How did scouts evaluate baseball players, according to Michael Lewis?
Scouts use "eye test". Scouts have an ideal image of what a professional baseball player looks like. They evaluate potential draftees according to how closely they resemble their idealized image of what a professional MLB player should look like.
Why do Grindstaff & West sound a skeptical note about the desirability of cheerleading becoming seen as a sport? (We might also ask: what might a "real" cheerleading sport look like that Grindstaff & West would approve of?!)
Skeptical because if cheerleading is seen as a sport, it would have to be seen as more masculine, which is anti-feminist
Consider now a sports spectator who embraces analytics, and who evaluates baseball teams as much by the quality of their front-office decision-making as by the quality of on-field play. Where in Giulianotti's spectator typology does this new type of spectator go? Why?
Spectator identity shifts from having connection to sports is as if it were a communal obligation to suggesting our connection to sports has become infiltrated by market logic.
What is Bryant's theory about why the "no protest" rule in popular sports has intensified in recent years?
Sports have been remade in a sense that they embody a means of unity, patriotism, and a feeling of togetherness following the aftermath of 9/11. The commercialization of patriotism influences partisan politics and political protest to be inappropriate in the world of professional sports.
What do you think Pierre de Coubertin (see: Is sport about winning at all cost? above) response to the analytics trend in baseball—arguably, across much of team sports—might be? Why? To the extent that notions of sport as "gentlemanly competition" (sic) persists in sport today, how does this help us understand the backlash against the analytics trend, both inside baseball organizations and among sports fans in general?
Sports should be about spontaneous, gentlemanly competition where we all embrace the possibility of risk and failure, instead of focusing on application of rationality and analytics.
How did Kaufmann & Patterson empirically measure the popularity of a sport?
Supply When structure of the system permits the participation of the masses without jeopardizing elites' status, the sport is en route to becoming popular with the masses
How is Kaufmann & Patterson's story a supply-side rather than a demand-side explanation for a sport's popularity?
Supply side - did not have it spread = means that there is not a lot of demand
What does globalization mean in the context of sports?
The nation-state as "historical project": -19th century Europe: sport connoted social class, not nation-state. -Early 20th century: sport becomes more identified with nation-state, but even then, only as a matter of residence, not identity. -World War I: sport takes on the modern, strong meaning associated with nation-state. -Creating/sustaining the importance of nation-state throughout the 20th/21st centuries: understand FIFA's role in this project.
What is the difference between the Universal Cheerleading Association, National Cheerleading Association, and United Spirit Association? What do Grindstaff & West mean by hegemonic vs. subordinated masculinities?
UCA: most gender conservative NCA: more performative, but men perform in more "masculine" ways USA: most performative in "feminine" ways
The cultural logic of modern publics vs. local publics What is the difference in cultural logic of modern vs. local publics? What does "settling" vs. "searching" mean?
What is the difference in cultural logic of modern vs. local publics? What does "settling" vs. "searching" mean? Settling with a home team Searching for a new team - on national TV
Taken as a whole, where does Leifer say the institution of the "home team" comes from?
When confronting the independent teams
What is the "performance orientation" in contemporary sport? How does it differ from de Coubertin's philosophy?
When governments coordinate athletics, athletes compete for money, sportsmen not willing to take risks and lose. Differs in its capitalistic nature, emphasizes winning
What is Kaufmann & Patterson's basic argument for whether a sport is likely to become popular or not? What role do status systems play? What is the key characteristic of a country's status system in their story?
When the structure of the system is such that participation of the masses would compromise elites' status, elites tend to exclude anyone else from participating, and the sport never becomes popular
Did de Coubertin care about athletes competing to the best of their abilities? Did he care about competitiveness or winning?
Yes. Competitiveness
What role does television play in Leifer's historical story?
You don't have to go to the games, but still stick with the home team
How likely is it that a person with the "fast twitch" ACTN3 gene will be a world-class sprinter? Why? How likely is it that a person without the ACTN3 gene will be a world-class sprinter?
actn3 = more likely Without actn3 = aerobic, no metabolsk efficiency a. Note: I'm not sure if the more accurate way to put this is that some people have the ACTN3 gene coded a certain way vs. another, as opposed to "having" the gene or not.
What was ex-University of North Carolina (UNC) chancellor Holden Thorp's reaction to the "no-show" classes scandal at UNC? How does this illustrate the growing separation between major college athletics programs and the administrations that putatively oversee them?
athletics = business
Why does Epstein subtitle Chapter 1 "the gene-free model of expertise"?
sports performance is more than genes, but expertise through practice
Markovits & Rensmann—explaining U.S. exceptionalism in terms of: Ecological factors size/isolation of U.S. vs. Europe *You should understand what all the above mean in the context of explaining differences in racist behavior in sports in the U.S. vs. Europe.
fans don't follow the home team on the road as much; intense local rivalries in pro team sports mitigated by territorial exclusivity enforced by leagues. Multiple hegemonic sports cultures vs. European sports monoculture. Civil Rights Movement in the U.S. Little national dimension to hegemonic sports cultures in the U.S.
How is Title IX enforced? What happens when a complaint is raised? Is enforcement negotiated or unilateral?
negotiated Driven by compliance
What was/is "GamerGate"? What does it say about the role that gender plays in esport?
online movement, sexism
What are Prongs 1 and 3, by which the participation dimension can be complied with?
proportionality Effectively accommodating interests and abilities
What are the "picayune rules" Branch refers to? Whose rules are they and what purpose do they serve?
rules for amateurism Line between commercialism By ncaa
What does Leifer mean by "traveling public" vs. "local public"?
traveling public = original teams, cranks, no home arena Local public's = team settled in cities
What is the relevance to sports of "signal tests" administered to air traffic controllers?
understand what is going on
What was the O'Bannon v NCAA (2014) case about?
video game of player, without the athlete being paid or asked The ncaaa can't use players likelenesses without paying them
