A) Some sports are a safe place for LGBT athletes, others are not. It is difficult to tell which is which, but in the upcoming NFL season we will get to see just how safe the league is for Michael Sam. In the NBA, it is likely much safer; had Jason Collins come out in 2002, when he was a key role player in a New Jersey Nets team that made it to the NBA Finals, it would have been a far more interesting story. The Nets would not have wanted to cut their starting center, and the players would have loudly objected if the organization tried. However, by 2013, Collins was in his mid-30's, and his offensive game, already a weakness in his prime, had deteriorated to near-uselessness. He just wasn't good enough to land a starting role, and has proven to be barely adequate as a third-string center now that he has been signed by the (now Brooklyn) Nets. As Michael Sam is a rookie, it will be extremely fascinating to keep an eye on his progress. As it stands, we still await the first high-profile, active, in-his-prime gay male athlete that the media is truly craving.
B) It's hard to know if modern top-tier pro sports are safe places because of the lack of transparency inherent in the running of these organizations. Locker room drama tends to stay in the locker room and management has gotten extremely adept at keeping crises in house before they spiral out of control. There are notable exceptions, such as in college basketball, which has less money than the pros and thus less power to keep drama out of the headlines. This was a problem that Penn State simply chose to ignore for almost three decades under head women's basketball coach Rene Portland, who set about making her program distinctly unsafe for lesbians. This doesn't happen very often in modern times, especially in women's basketball, where shooing lesbians away from your team will invariably make your team worse than it could be. Sport culture has traditionally been very unsafe for LGBT people, but the world is changing, and many athletes currently active in the pros have expressed solidarity with or support for the LGBT community (http://www.lgbtqnation.com/2012/10/espn-poll-reveals-where-pro-athletes-stand-on-same-sex-marriage).
While sport may not yet be fully safe for LGBT players, it also must be brought up that even if some pro athletes are gay, it probably isn't that many; according to Wikipedia, less than 4 % of Americans in total identify with some aspect of the LGBT acronym. You can reasonably expect that percentage to much lower in athletes, as gay men are less likely to be interested in sports relative to straight men thanks to centuries of homophobia running unchecked in sport.
C) The only effective strategy I've heard of to combat ignorance is education. Eventually, there will be more gay athletes and the homophobes will have to learn to accept their teammates for who they are, if only to make playing football with them easier. In fact, now that Jason Collins has actually been playing for a couple of months, it has become clear that the furor over his being gay in a locker room with a bunch of straight men has been for naught; the Brooklyn locker room has been drama-free, and Collins was able to parlay two ten-day contracts into one that keeps him in Brooklyn until the end of this season (http://www.netsdaily.com/2014/3/15/5511554/brooklyn-nets-officially-sign-jason-collins-for-rest-of-the-season). As far as his teammates are concerned, his love of basketball is all that matters.
Friday, April 11, 2014
Wednesday, March 19, 2014
"Darwin's Athletes": Sports and Ethnicity
To some African-Americans, sport represents much more than just a game; rather, it has come to be viewed as a ticket out of the impoverished neighborhoods in which many African-Americans live. The "ghetto lottery" has proven to be a mostly impossible dream. The main reason for this is that the leagues in question are small and very tough to get into.
The NFL has about 1696 players (32 teams with 53 players per team). Of that total, roughly 66% of players are black, which is a little over 1100 players. 1100 black players may seem like a lot, until you realize that, according to the 2010 Census, there are roughly 39 million African-Americans in the US. It's even harder to make it in the NBA, since the teams are so much smaller. Black players make up almost 80% of the NBA, a league which only has around 450 total players (30 teams with around 15 players per team). So combining rough estimates, we get 1100 black NFL players with 350 black NBA players giving us a rough total of 1450 professional African-American athletes out of 39 million total African-American citizens.This means that roughly 0.000037 % of African-Americans ever actually make it to the NBA or NFL.
In spite of the crushing reality of statistics, many young African-Americans dream of making it into one of those two leagues, starting at the high school level. The struggles of youth athletes are depicted vividly in Hoop Dreams, as well as Denzel Washington classic Remember the Titans. Both films depict young athletes, but obviously in very different styles: Hoop Dreams is a documentary that follows two high school athletes while Remember the Titans is a Hollywood film that often bends the truth to add drama, as any good sport film should. Titans deals with segregation and shows young athletes adapting to changing circumstances and a growing political movement against racism.
Hoop Dreams depicts the hollow aftermath of that movement, with an African-American community weakened by poverty and lingering prejudice encouraging kids to take up extremely improbable dreams as a way out of their homes. Each film depicts the African-American community as being separated from their white "neighbors" and left vulnerable to poverty, although in the Titans universe (America in the early '70's) getting into the pros wasn't quite seen as the ticket out of poverty quite like the NBA in Hoop Dreams. Nevertheless, the two films do a good job showing how sport and racial ideology are linked by showing two sports that are dominated by black players despite their minority status, which serves to prop up the myth of race that African-Americans are better athletes.
With all that being said, I find it difficult to believe that sport is damaging the black community, although it could easily be argued to be preserving the myth of race thanks to the national media. The African-American community faces many contemporary issues relating to politics and economics. The most important is that all across the US public schools have experienced budget cuts as schools witness their state funding being cut in an attempt to reduce their short-term debts. These kinds of cuts to education are far, far more damaging to minority communities than any impossible dream. The lack of quality education means that many of these kids dream of sport simply because they have nothing else to go on, through no fault of their own. The bottom line is that in today's society, you have to have some kind of college degree to get most jobs, and by gutting public education our state governments are borrowing against the future to pay off debts that may or may not actually matter.
sources:
-http://www.tidesport.org/RGRC/2013/2013_NFL_RGRC.pdf
-http://www.tidesport.org/RGRC/2013/2013_NBA_RGRC.pdf
-http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=4011
The NFL has about 1696 players (32 teams with 53 players per team). Of that total, roughly 66% of players are black, which is a little over 1100 players. 1100 black players may seem like a lot, until you realize that, according to the 2010 Census, there are roughly 39 million African-Americans in the US. It's even harder to make it in the NBA, since the teams are so much smaller. Black players make up almost 80% of the NBA, a league which only has around 450 total players (30 teams with around 15 players per team). So combining rough estimates, we get 1100 black NFL players with 350 black NBA players giving us a rough total of 1450 professional African-American athletes out of 39 million total African-American citizens.This means that roughly 0.000037 % of African-Americans ever actually make it to the NBA or NFL.
In spite of the crushing reality of statistics, many young African-Americans dream of making it into one of those two leagues, starting at the high school level. The struggles of youth athletes are depicted vividly in Hoop Dreams, as well as Denzel Washington classic Remember the Titans. Both films depict young athletes, but obviously in very different styles: Hoop Dreams is a documentary that follows two high school athletes while Remember the Titans is a Hollywood film that often bends the truth to add drama, as any good sport film should. Titans deals with segregation and shows young athletes adapting to changing circumstances and a growing political movement against racism.
Hoop Dreams depicts the hollow aftermath of that movement, with an African-American community weakened by poverty and lingering prejudice encouraging kids to take up extremely improbable dreams as a way out of their homes. Each film depicts the African-American community as being separated from their white "neighbors" and left vulnerable to poverty, although in the Titans universe (America in the early '70's) getting into the pros wasn't quite seen as the ticket out of poverty quite like the NBA in Hoop Dreams. Nevertheless, the two films do a good job showing how sport and racial ideology are linked by showing two sports that are dominated by black players despite their minority status, which serves to prop up the myth of race that African-Americans are better athletes.
With all that being said, I find it difficult to believe that sport is damaging the black community, although it could easily be argued to be preserving the myth of race thanks to the national media. The African-American community faces many contemporary issues relating to politics and economics. The most important is that all across the US public schools have experienced budget cuts as schools witness their state funding being cut in an attempt to reduce their short-term debts. These kinds of cuts to education are far, far more damaging to minority communities than any impossible dream. The lack of quality education means that many of these kids dream of sport simply because they have nothing else to go on, through no fault of their own. The bottom line is that in today's society, you have to have some kind of college degree to get most jobs, and by gutting public education our state governments are borrowing against the future to pay off debts that may or may not actually matter.
sources:
-http://www.tidesport.org/RGRC/2013/2013_NFL_RGRC.pdf
-http://www.tidesport.org/RGRC/2013/2013_NBA_RGRC.pdf
-http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=4011
Friday, March 14, 2014
SP 12: Gender in Sports Marketing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IOSX-Hdqx0
So while this assignment specifically said to pick one commercial, I decided to bend that rule slightly by picking an entire series of commercials that are all essentially the same ad. Each ad is for a Kia Optima, which is specially equipped for the purposes of this ad to allow NBA star Blake Griffin to travel backwards through time. Each ad has Griffin specifically returning to his own past to give advice to his younger self.
These ads all feature Blake Griffin going back in time and trying to set a sort of example for himself at various points in his youth. He is constantly nonchalant, sounding gruff and emotionless as he attempts to steer his younger self through some of his old dilemmas. The football vs. basketball ad in particular is a relatively common choice posed to present-day jocks, and Griffin is clearly trying to make his own life easier by specializing earlier. This reflects modern attitudes towards certain sports as athletes face increasing pressure to pick and choose earlier in life.
However, in addition to certain comments this makes about sport, it also contains very strong elements of conventional masculinity. Particularly, the second ad (the football ad again), which has Griffin telling his younger self to abandon his denim jean shorts. "Just trust me." What this commercial is implying is that while jean shorts are extremely practical, Griffin does not wear those types clothes anymore now that he is a 'real man.' In the third ad, set in an arcade, the younger Blake is playing a racing simulator video game when the older Blake appears, plugging his real car by mockingly comparing it to the fake arcade car. Now that Griffin is a real man, he can drive a real car. This is the message the Kia is clearly driving home with this series of ads.
So while this assignment specifically said to pick one commercial, I decided to bend that rule slightly by picking an entire series of commercials that are all essentially the same ad. Each ad is for a Kia Optima, which is specially equipped for the purposes of this ad to allow NBA star Blake Griffin to travel backwards through time. Each ad has Griffin specifically returning to his own past to give advice to his younger self.
These ads all feature Blake Griffin going back in time and trying to set a sort of example for himself at various points in his youth. He is constantly nonchalant, sounding gruff and emotionless as he attempts to steer his younger self through some of his old dilemmas. The football vs. basketball ad in particular is a relatively common choice posed to present-day jocks, and Griffin is clearly trying to make his own life easier by specializing earlier. This reflects modern attitudes towards certain sports as athletes face increasing pressure to pick and choose earlier in life.
However, in addition to certain comments this makes about sport, it also contains very strong elements of conventional masculinity. Particularly, the second ad (the football ad again), which has Griffin telling his younger self to abandon his denim jean shorts. "Just trust me." What this commercial is implying is that while jean shorts are extremely practical, Griffin does not wear those types clothes anymore now that he is a 'real man.' In the third ad, set in an arcade, the younger Blake is playing a racing simulator video game when the older Blake appears, plugging his real car by mockingly comparing it to the fake arcade car. Now that Griffin is a real man, he can drive a real car. This is the message the Kia is clearly driving home with this series of ads.
Friday, February 21, 2014
Interrogating inequalities in Sports Media: Examining race representation in Sports Illustrated
For this
entry, I’ve done a quick racial breakdown of every cover of Sports Illustrated
from the year 2013. This includes all of their multiple-edition covers that
they published for certain events (the MLB season preview, for example). I’ve
tried to focus on the athlete(s) that is (are) the “focus” of the cover shot.
The swimsuit issue has not been included in this calculation.
More than
half of the covers were individual athletes, and there were an even amount of
white and black cover athletes (30). There were four half-white/half-black
cover athletes, which were actually the same two athletes used twice each:
Colin Kaepernick of the San Francisco 49ers as well as Steph Curry of the Golden
State Warriors. Both of the Latino athletes were baseball players (Mariano
Riviera and Alex Rodriguez). Of course, football and basketball were the
dominant sports, with baseball being covered fairly extensively as well. Sports
like tennis, NASCAR, and soccer are not featured on the cover at all, while
hockey gets a few covers around playoff time.
These
findings demonstrate that SI is helping to market certain stereotypes about
sports, namely that the big US sports are dominated by black and white men.
There were nine covers that showed more than one black man and nine that showed
more than one white man. Combining this with the number from earlier, that’s a total
of 78 covers featuring white or black athletes. SI had 102 total covers last
year. If you add the multiracial pictures, all of which had some mix of white
and black athletes (with a handful of Hispanics), this makes over 90 covers
from 102 that feature white or black athletes. This is not at all proportionate
to the general population: Asian and Asian-American athletes are completely
absent, despite making up around 5% of the United States’ general population.
African Americans make up 12%, while whites make up 72%. Yet on SI covers they
are 50/50, which demonstrates that race doesn’t matter in sport nearly as much
as talent. It also demonstrates how sport performance can become tied to racial
identity as black men make the cover of SI and other sports magazines far more
often than they make the cover of TIME or other more "serious" news magazines.
Sports Illustrated covers 2013: a breakdown
Multiple black men: 9
Black man: 30
Multiple white men: 9
White man: 30
Half black/white: 4
Latino: 2
Multiracial: 15
Other: 2
Sources:
Covers can be viewed here: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/magazine/photos/1305/si-covers-2013/1/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States#Race_and_ethnicity
Monday, February 17, 2014
Reflecting on the "Shame of College Sports: Should NCAA Div 1 Basketball and Football players get paid?"
Arguments in favor of paying college athletes:
- College sports, especially football and basketball, are already big-time televised events that generate huge amounts of revenue for schools. Furthermore, the biggest football programs already attract the best talent with coaching talent and various amenities, and paying players would change exactly none of that.
-Forcing players to play without getting paid is a form of labor exploitation, pure and simple. Football and basketball players spend much of the year training and practicing, while also being expected to do schoolwork and, in many cases, hold down a job in order to support their own discretionary spending. Forcing athletes into the "broke student" lifestyle makes them into perfect targets for unscrupulous boosters, who in the past have agreed to sponsor an athlete's lifestyle (buying them cars, shoes, etc.) in exchange for a return on the investment once the player goes pro. Allowing the colleges to pay players would, presumably, eliminate this financial mischief.
Arguments against:
- The NCAA asserts that its members cannot afford to pay their athletes, despite paying millions for their coaching staffs. Furthermore, allowing athletes to be paid as though they were professional would corrupt the "amateur spirit of college athletics."
My opinion:
- My solution to this problem is covered in my last blog entry: adopting the European system of sporting development. Instead of a clunky, corruptible and archaic system that attempts to marry sporting development and higher education (which mix about as well as oil and water), we accept the fact that professional sport is its own trade, and that pro teams should develop their own players without exploiting higher education as their own personal minor leagues. Why should a college president be tasked with running a minor-league pro sports team? Higher education can be a great place to nurture the less popular sports, like rowing, gymnastics, swimming, et al, that wouldn't exist without the support of the college system and that have no lucrative professional leagues, but for the big-time glamorous sports, it just doesn't make sense.
The bottom line is that in this country, playing football or basketball can be a very high-paying job, and the education that prepares one for a career as a professional jock does not need to take place in the same institution where people learn how to be lawyers, businesspeople, doctors, and so on. There is a reason that people have established different trade schools for the culinary arts, learning how to fly planes, engineering, and so forth: because all these arts require very specific fields of expertise and very specialized equipment. So it is with professional athletics. Pro athletes have specialized diet regimens, exercise routines, and access to state of the art equipment and facilities. As it is now, only certain colleges can afford to make similar boasts. This spending distracts colleges from what they should be concerned with: research and education.
Sources:
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-01-02/how-much-should-college-athletes-get-paid#p2
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/10/the-shame-of-college-sports/308643/2/
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/06/magazine/06Soccer-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
- College sports, especially football and basketball, are already big-time televised events that generate huge amounts of revenue for schools. Furthermore, the biggest football programs already attract the best talent with coaching talent and various amenities, and paying players would change exactly none of that.
-Forcing players to play without getting paid is a form of labor exploitation, pure and simple. Football and basketball players spend much of the year training and practicing, while also being expected to do schoolwork and, in many cases, hold down a job in order to support their own discretionary spending. Forcing athletes into the "broke student" lifestyle makes them into perfect targets for unscrupulous boosters, who in the past have agreed to sponsor an athlete's lifestyle (buying them cars, shoes, etc.) in exchange for a return on the investment once the player goes pro. Allowing the colleges to pay players would, presumably, eliminate this financial mischief.
Arguments against:
- The NCAA asserts that its members cannot afford to pay their athletes, despite paying millions for their coaching staffs. Furthermore, allowing athletes to be paid as though they were professional would corrupt the "amateur spirit of college athletics."
My opinion:
- My solution to this problem is covered in my last blog entry: adopting the European system of sporting development. Instead of a clunky, corruptible and archaic system that attempts to marry sporting development and higher education (which mix about as well as oil and water), we accept the fact that professional sport is its own trade, and that pro teams should develop their own players without exploiting higher education as their own personal minor leagues. Why should a college president be tasked with running a minor-league pro sports team? Higher education can be a great place to nurture the less popular sports, like rowing, gymnastics, swimming, et al, that wouldn't exist without the support of the college system and that have no lucrative professional leagues, but for the big-time glamorous sports, it just doesn't make sense.
The bottom line is that in this country, playing football or basketball can be a very high-paying job, and the education that prepares one for a career as a professional jock does not need to take place in the same institution where people learn how to be lawyers, businesspeople, doctors, and so on. There is a reason that people have established different trade schools for the culinary arts, learning how to fly planes, engineering, and so forth: because all these arts require very specific fields of expertise and very specialized equipment. So it is with professional athletics. Pro athletes have specialized diet regimens, exercise routines, and access to state of the art equipment and facilities. As it is now, only certain colleges can afford to make similar boasts. This spending distracts colleges from what they should be concerned with: research and education.
Sources:
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-01-02/how-much-should-college-athletes-get-paid#p2
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/10/the-shame-of-college-sports/308643/2/
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/06/magazine/06Soccer-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Friday, February 14, 2014
High School Sport
1) What were the social conditions in which high school sport emerged?
-High school sport emerged shortly after college sports were created in the late 1800's/early 1900's (depending on the sport). They were sanctioned for the same reason as the college game: to build teamwork amongst young people and prepare them to work together on factory floors.
2) What are the objectives of high school sport? How successfully are they being met?
-Officially: to promote academic and athletic performance amongst student athletes. In reality: to prepare high school students for the college game, which will then prepare them for the professional game. How successfully these goals are being met depends largely on the school itself, and how much money they have at their disposal. Certain programs are run more like pro football teams with a school attached, while the rest need a greater emphasis on the student side of the student-athlete equation as most NCAA athletes don't usually go on to pro sports.
3) What is the status of interscholastic sport in America?
-It's in a weird grey area. For the above average or better athletes, the system works pretty well, fast-tracking capable athletes to the pro game with few bumps along the way. For everyone else, it's a mixed bag. The education value of athletics is pretty dubious; then again, so is the education value of America's public school system in general.
4) What are some of the problems associated with interscholastic sport?
-It can create over-conformity to the sport ethic in athletes who take it very seriously; the big focus on sport also alienates students who have no interest in sport.
5) Provide one solution to one of these problems.
-Athletes need to be able to live their lives before they get to the pros. If a professional athlete spends 12 months per year training, that's totally fine. They get compensated in actual money for what they do, as opposed to, say, college scholarship money, which does cover major expenses but is far more restrictive. For this reason it's a bit murkier in college, and for high school, that sort of year-long training regiment can actually be harmful (Coakley pg. 497).
My proposed solution: switching to the European system of sporting development. In Europe, collegiate and high school sports are not anywhere near as omnipresent as they are on this side of the pond. This is because athlete prospects are actually contracted to youth divisions of actual pro teams. Each team has their own under-21 team, and under-19, under-17, and so on all the way down to under-11. These young players are given access to quality education, food, housing, financial training, and the potential to play in the pros as soon as they are able without having to wait to reach a certain age or complete a certain number of years of school. Also, they compete against other pro-level youth teams in U-21/U-19/U-17/etc. leagues, giving fans an early look at the future of their favorite teams.
By adopting this model, I am also suggesting that the US would radically overhaul its education system to get our public education on par with the rest of the "First World." This would necessarily involve either getting rid of or greatly reducing the role college athletics play in our society while also giving athletes a more direct path to the pros (while also making it easier for the rest of us to afford college, presumably). These intercollegiate athletic contests are lots of fun to watch, but they have dubious academic value at best, and as evidenced by the huge majority of former NFL and NBA players going broke post-retirement, they are clearly not teaching these athletes skills they can use for their whole lives. An education that stops being useful after age 35 is no education at all.
Sources:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/06/magazine/06Soccer-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
-overview of Ajax (Dutch soccer team) youth development
http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/12/american-schools-vs-the-world-expensive-unequal-bad-at-math/281983/
-article about the US and its public education system
[edited for spelling and grammar]
-High school sport emerged shortly after college sports were created in the late 1800's/early 1900's (depending on the sport). They were sanctioned for the same reason as the college game: to build teamwork amongst young people and prepare them to work together on factory floors.
2) What are the objectives of high school sport? How successfully are they being met?
-Officially: to promote academic and athletic performance amongst student athletes. In reality: to prepare high school students for the college game, which will then prepare them for the professional game. How successfully these goals are being met depends largely on the school itself, and how much money they have at their disposal. Certain programs are run more like pro football teams with a school attached, while the rest need a greater emphasis on the student side of the student-athlete equation as most NCAA athletes don't usually go on to pro sports.
3) What is the status of interscholastic sport in America?
-It's in a weird grey area. For the above average or better athletes, the system works pretty well, fast-tracking capable athletes to the pro game with few bumps along the way. For everyone else, it's a mixed bag. The education value of athletics is pretty dubious; then again, so is the education value of America's public school system in general.
4) What are some of the problems associated with interscholastic sport?
-It can create over-conformity to the sport ethic in athletes who take it very seriously; the big focus on sport also alienates students who have no interest in sport.
5) Provide one solution to one of these problems.
-Athletes need to be able to live their lives before they get to the pros. If a professional athlete spends 12 months per year training, that's totally fine. They get compensated in actual money for what they do, as opposed to, say, college scholarship money, which does cover major expenses but is far more restrictive. For this reason it's a bit murkier in college, and for high school, that sort of year-long training regiment can actually be harmful (Coakley pg. 497).
My proposed solution: switching to the European system of sporting development. In Europe, collegiate and high school sports are not anywhere near as omnipresent as they are on this side of the pond. This is because athlete prospects are actually contracted to youth divisions of actual pro teams. Each team has their own under-21 team, and under-19, under-17, and so on all the way down to under-11. These young players are given access to quality education, food, housing, financial training, and the potential to play in the pros as soon as they are able without having to wait to reach a certain age or complete a certain number of years of school. Also, they compete against other pro-level youth teams in U-21/U-19/U-17/etc. leagues, giving fans an early look at the future of their favorite teams.
By adopting this model, I am also suggesting that the US would radically overhaul its education system to get our public education on par with the rest of the "First World." This would necessarily involve either getting rid of or greatly reducing the role college athletics play in our society while also giving athletes a more direct path to the pros (while also making it easier for the rest of us to afford college, presumably). These intercollegiate athletic contests are lots of fun to watch, but they have dubious academic value at best, and as evidenced by the huge majority of former NFL and NBA players going broke post-retirement, they are clearly not teaching these athletes skills they can use for their whole lives. An education that stops being useful after age 35 is no education at all.
Sources:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/06/magazine/06Soccer-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
-overview of Ajax (Dutch soccer team) youth development
http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/12/american-schools-vs-the-world-expensive-unequal-bad-at-math/281983/
-article about the US and its public education system
[edited for spelling and grammar]
Monday, February 10, 2014
Once the Cheering Stops
Pro athletes have to face many significant issues when they retire. The years of wear and tear on their bodies will typically land them with massive medical bills, and the years of freely-spending on cars, nice restaurants and similar trappings of instant wealth usually leave them with even bigger money problems.
If I decide to hand a check for $500,000 to any random 21-year old college student in the US, the odds are pretty good that the money wouldn't last for more than a year. Why would this be any different with a young, freshly-drafted athlete?
This, in a nutshell, is why pro athletes often go broke post-retirement. Managing a gigantic pile of money is a business, and very few of these athletes have any sort of real business background. For millionaire professional athletes, managing money absolutely is a second job, and many of these young, enthusiastic male athletes lack the maturity and patience to deal with the boring spreadsheets. As a result, they end up living essentially paycheck-to-paycheck, only with much larger paychecks.
If a pro athlete neglects to save money during their career, then the money runs out when the paychecks stop, leaving them in whatever financial situation they were in when their career started, only probably with much more debt.
For athletes like LeBron James, Alex Rodriguez, and other similar megastars, money will likely never become a problem. For "average" players, who make $1-2 million a year (before taxes) while also not playing for as long as the star players, going broke is much, much easier.
The fix seems fairly intuitive: make athletes take more finance classes when they're in school, and encourage them to hire a financial adviser, an accountant, and a lawyer ASAP once they turn pro.
If I decide to hand a check for $500,000 to any random 21-year old college student in the US, the odds are pretty good that the money wouldn't last for more than a year. Why would this be any different with a young, freshly-drafted athlete?
This, in a nutshell, is why pro athletes often go broke post-retirement. Managing a gigantic pile of money is a business, and very few of these athletes have any sort of real business background. For millionaire professional athletes, managing money absolutely is a second job, and many of these young, enthusiastic male athletes lack the maturity and patience to deal with the boring spreadsheets. As a result, they end up living essentially paycheck-to-paycheck, only with much larger paychecks.
If a pro athlete neglects to save money during their career, then the money runs out when the paychecks stop, leaving them in whatever financial situation they were in when their career started, only probably with much more debt.
For athletes like LeBron James, Alex Rodriguez, and other similar megastars, money will likely never become a problem. For "average" players, who make $1-2 million a year (before taxes) while also not playing for as long as the star players, going broke is much, much easier.
The fix seems fairly intuitive: make athletes take more finance classes when they're in school, and encourage them to hire a financial adviser, an accountant, and a lawyer ASAP once they turn pro.
Wednesday, February 5, 2014
Sport, Politics, and the Olympics: The1984 Communist boycott
In 1980, the US had led 54counties in boycotting the Moscow Summer Olympics on account of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. So when the USSR led 15 nations in a boycott against the Los Angeles Olympiad four years later, naturally most Americans assumed it was about getting revenge. The Soviets claimed it was a response to the “anti-Soviet hysteria being whipped up in the US,” essentially claiming that they pulled out for security reasons. Cuba, Afghanistan, Czechoslovakia, and East Germany were among the Soviet bloc nations who sat out of the 1984 Olympics. President Reagan attempted to convince the Soviets to reverse their boycott, to no avail (http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1122084/). This is a pretty clear example of sport being used for political gain, in addition to (probably) revenge. As far as politics in international sport are concerned, the Olympics boycotts are the tip of the iceberg.
Sport has been used as a tool for political gain for
thousands of years. The statement "sport is pure and devoid of political
interference" is completely absurd and false, impossible to believe for
any American familiar with a recent history of the NFL, NBA, or the MLB, all of
which have been beset by numerous extremely political relocations sagas (such
as the Seattle Sonics moving to Oklahoma, the Cleveland Browns moving to
Baltimore, the entire NFL in Los Angeles saga, to name a few). And that’s just
domestic sports; international sport is a very different animal, albeit with
much of the same (or far worse) corruption.
This is why the soccer-crazed people of Brazil have been
protesting the upcoming World Cup- because FIFA is one of the most ridiculously corrupt organizations on Earth,
and they are allowing shady politicians and shadier contractors to make millions
off this event
while pricing out the general public.
If you want a more detailed look at how political US sports
have become, I would recommend the documentary Sonicsgate to anyone who hasn’t already seen it. It chronicles the
2008 relocation of the Sonics to OKC, which was heavily tied in with the state
politics of Washington (i.e. Olympia’s refusal to pay for a new arena, the
popular movement that rose up against stadium subsidies in Seattle, etc.).
Monday, January 27, 2014
Sociogenesis of Soccer
Soccer, or football as it is known outside of the US, was one of many different variants of "football" that existed in the U.K for over a millenium. Many of these variants allowed the use of hands and forward passing, while others banned both of these actions. Eventually, groups in England came together to come up with a set of rules that everyone could embrace. The Cambridge Rules, created in 1848 and revised in 1863, are often cited as the beginning of modern association football. The 1863 version is often cited as being the first official version of soccer ever played. The use of hands and arms were banned, and they used goal posts instead of nets.
Toward the 1870's, a large group of people split off from this revolution and created their own type of football that allowed the use of hands (but no forward passing), which became known as rugby. Rugby, in turn, was the primary inspiration for American football (which added forward passing). In the meantime, soccer grew and grew within the UK and in the late 1800's the game spread around the world, first through the UK's vast collection of colonies (because being a naval superpower is awesome) and then to the neighbors of those colonies. Eventually, the other countries developed a talent for the sport, and the World Cup was born in 1930 (which was hosted and won by Uruguay).
The uniform was a bit different in the 1800's- the shorts were knee-length, a fact which would change several other times in the sport's history. The button-up shirts were gone by the 20th century. The length of soccer shorts has varied, having been far shorter in the "old days" before getting baggier in the '90's, around the same time that basketball shorts also became far baggier (a trend often credited to hip-hop culture).
One of the main appeals of the game since its inception is its simplicity. All you need to practice is a ball, and all you need for a game is an empty, flat space of land, a ball and a way to improvise goals. It's a sport that literally anyone can pick up and play, which has led to soccer becoming the most popular participation sport in the world. Professional leagues, particularly in Europe, have given chances to the poorest of the poor, allowing street kids from South America, Europe and Africa a chance to make their own way.
Soccer has accumulated a vast wealth of history due to the number of nations that play soccer (basically, every country that has open fields- even the US is starting to come around). Each nation has its own league, and each of the big European leagues (the British Premier League, Spanish La Liga, German Bundesliga, and Italian Serie A are the biggest leagues) has roughly a century of history per team, which has resulted in some very old, bitter rivalries around the continent. The modern game is extremely lucrative thanks to its global popularity, with television contracts running in the billions of Euros.
Unfortunately, the amount of money in the game causes some pretty serious problems. The amount of corruption in FIFA is pretty ridiculous, as the human rights abuses, bribery and leadership issues pile up, which has led to a popular uprising against the World Cup in Brazil, a country that has won more World Cups than any other. Match fixing has been a persistent issue; the 2006 Serie A champions, Juventus, were actually stripped of two titles and relegated (sent to the second division) after revelations of referee tampering (the Calciopoli scandal was a massive scandal throughout Italy, and it all went down right before the 2006 World Cup, which was won by... Italy). All that being said, soccer is still the world's most popular sport, and if FIFA can ever clean up its act, soccer should be in pretty good shape going forward.
Toward the 1870's, a large group of people split off from this revolution and created their own type of football that allowed the use of hands (but no forward passing), which became known as rugby. Rugby, in turn, was the primary inspiration for American football (which added forward passing). In the meantime, soccer grew and grew within the UK and in the late 1800's the game spread around the world, first through the UK's vast collection of colonies (because being a naval superpower is awesome) and then to the neighbors of those colonies. Eventually, the other countries developed a talent for the sport, and the World Cup was born in 1930 (which was hosted and won by Uruguay).
The uniform was a bit different in the 1800's- the shorts were knee-length, a fact which would change several other times in the sport's history. The button-up shirts were gone by the 20th century. The length of soccer shorts has varied, having been far shorter in the "old days" before getting baggier in the '90's, around the same time that basketball shorts also became far baggier (a trend often credited to hip-hop culture).
One of the main appeals of the game since its inception is its simplicity. All you need to practice is a ball, and all you need for a game is an empty, flat space of land, a ball and a way to improvise goals. It's a sport that literally anyone can pick up and play, which has led to soccer becoming the most popular participation sport in the world. Professional leagues, particularly in Europe, have given chances to the poorest of the poor, allowing street kids from South America, Europe and Africa a chance to make their own way.
Soccer has accumulated a vast wealth of history due to the number of nations that play soccer (basically, every country that has open fields- even the US is starting to come around). Each nation has its own league, and each of the big European leagues (the British Premier League, Spanish La Liga, German Bundesliga, and Italian Serie A are the biggest leagues) has roughly a century of history per team, which has resulted in some very old, bitter rivalries around the continent. The modern game is extremely lucrative thanks to its global popularity, with television contracts running in the billions of Euros.
Unfortunately, the amount of money in the game causes some pretty serious problems. The amount of corruption in FIFA is pretty ridiculous, as the human rights abuses, bribery and leadership issues pile up, which has led to a popular uprising against the World Cup in Brazil, a country that has won more World Cups than any other. Match fixing has been a persistent issue; the 2006 Serie A champions, Juventus, were actually stripped of two titles and relegated (sent to the second division) after revelations of referee tampering (the Calciopoli scandal was a massive scandal throughout Italy, and it all went down right before the 2006 World Cup, which was won by... Italy). All that being said, soccer is still the world's most popular sport, and if FIFA can ever clean up its act, soccer should be in pretty good shape going forward.
Friday, January 24, 2014
Sports Pages #4: Ancient Rome and Greece
Ancient Greece:
- Types of sports: Various -The ancient Olympics included various lengths of foot racing, chariot wrestling, boxing, wrestling, and several others.
- Characteristics: The games were a part of a five-day festival (three days for competition, two days for religious ritual). The winner of each event would receive an olive branch, as well as lots of money and olive oil from their home village (comparable to modern-day endorsement deals).
- Role in society: Mostly entertainment, but with political and religious elements as well -politicians would use the games to announce alliances, and ritual sacrifice was used by priests to aid their country’s athletes.
- Participant demographic: free men only
Ancient Rome:
- Types of sports: Various – gladiatorial combat, beast fighting, chariot racing, naval battles, hunting, wrestling
- Characteristics: Many games and sports were a part of the Circus Maximus, which featured a variety of entertainment in the old Coliseum. They would occasionally flood the stadium for actual naval battles called Naumachia, which sounds like an awesome sport. The ancient Romans had a test for pretty much every type of athleticism they could think of.
- Role in society: Mostly entertainment. Many historians have said that the Circus was a major contributor to the downfall of Roman society as the often extremely violent games distracted citizens from Rome’s many growing issues. While this may be an exaggeration, sports were certainly a vital part of Roman society, much as they are in the modern-day.
- Participant demographic: Free men (in the mostly non-lethal events), women (ball sports and swimming), and criminals (all the lethal sports, also handy for public executions in other parts of the Circus)
Wednesday, January 22, 2014
Sport, Society & Me
1. I have always been a fan of American sports since I was young, but recently I have gotten more into soccer, especially the European leagues. While I will always love American sports, the Beautiful Game has become an obsession, and right now, watching soccer plays the vital life role of getting me out of bed on Saturday mornings. I am also well aware that this 'journey' would have been far, far more difficult before the Internet.
2. Sport in US society plays a very complex role. It can be beneficial as a provider of social mobility, and not just for athletes (sports management executives, scouts, analysts and coaches don't exactly work for free). They can be great tools for unifying communities, becoming symbols of the communities themselves. But they can also be very exploitative, which has been the case all too often in recent professional sports as teams desperately try to avoid paying for their own arenas. The 2008 move of the Seattle Supersonics to Oklahoma City is a great example of how pro sports can be used to blackmail a community (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_SuperSonics_relocation_to_Oklahoma_City), as well as several other team relocations in sports history (The Cleveland Browns move to Baltimore is another good example, and there are numerous others). Whether or not a team benefits a community depends heavily on the team and the community.
Pro sports teach us that hard work, co-operation, self-sacrifice and knowledge are essential to success, but a giant pile of money will do the trick as well, if you have one lying around. Sports contain a lot of mixed messages, especially for younger viewers. That said, sport also provides opportunity for a variety of people. So sports are fairly important, on average (more important to fans than to people who don't care about sports); I would say about as important to society as any other similarly valued private enterprise.
Athletes occupy a variety of places on the American socio-economic spectrum; while there are some pro athletes who managed to save and handle their millions wisely, there are many others who merely spent all their paychecks once they got them, ending their careers exactly where they started, only with more debt and health issues. Most people in this country respect pro athletes, understanding that the amount of hard work, talent and discipline it requires to get into a top-tier sports league goes far beyond what the average person is capable of. The fact that NFL/NBA/etc. salaries are multiple-millions on average allows many players to enjoy an upper-class lifestyle, and its many related perks. Some of these players are virtually worshiped by millions, as evidenced by jersey sales, global merchandise revenues, ticket sales, and other figures. This shows that players are usually quite highly valued by many, and that the voices of those who claim that pro athletes get paid too much have been all but drowned out by the free market.
2. Sport in US society plays a very complex role. It can be beneficial as a provider of social mobility, and not just for athletes (sports management executives, scouts, analysts and coaches don't exactly work for free). They can be great tools for unifying communities, becoming symbols of the communities themselves. But they can also be very exploitative, which has been the case all too often in recent professional sports as teams desperately try to avoid paying for their own arenas. The 2008 move of the Seattle Supersonics to Oklahoma City is a great example of how pro sports can be used to blackmail a community (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_SuperSonics_relocation_to_Oklahoma_City), as well as several other team relocations in sports history (The Cleveland Browns move to Baltimore is another good example, and there are numerous others). Whether or not a team benefits a community depends heavily on the team and the community.
Pro sports teach us that hard work, co-operation, self-sacrifice and knowledge are essential to success, but a giant pile of money will do the trick as well, if you have one lying around. Sports contain a lot of mixed messages, especially for younger viewers. That said, sport also provides opportunity for a variety of people. So sports are fairly important, on average (more important to fans than to people who don't care about sports); I would say about as important to society as any other similarly valued private enterprise.
Athletes occupy a variety of places on the American socio-economic spectrum; while there are some pro athletes who managed to save and handle their millions wisely, there are many others who merely spent all their paychecks once they got them, ending their careers exactly where they started, only with more debt and health issues. Most people in this country respect pro athletes, understanding that the amount of hard work, talent and discipline it requires to get into a top-tier sports league goes far beyond what the average person is capable of. The fact that NFL/NBA/etc. salaries are multiple-millions on average allows many players to enjoy an upper-class lifestyle, and its many related perks. Some of these players are virtually worshiped by millions, as evidenced by jersey sales, global merchandise revenues, ticket sales, and other figures. This shows that players are usually quite highly valued by many, and that the voices of those who claim that pro athletes get paid too much have been all but drowned out by the free market.
Friday, January 17, 2014
The Sport Ethic
- The sport ethic is a sort of unofficial criteria used by athletes to determine who is a "real" athlete. It provides athletes with a greater sense of camaraderie amongst their peers while also leaving them uniquely vulnerable to deviations, like drugs.
- There are 4 dimensions of the sports ethic:
- - Making sacrifices for ‘the game’
- - Striving for distinction
- - Accepting risks and playing through pain
- - Refusing to accept limits in the pursuit of possibilities
- Athletes do this because, in most cases, they are obsessed or nearly obsessed with their ideals and their goals, and this single-minded focus makes them better athletes and teammates. Unfortunately, this "whatever it takes" mentality can lead to some pretty awful places if followed through to its logical conclusion- which is why professional sports leagues in the US have been dealing with various drug issues for many decades, from steroids & amphetamines in baseball to crack cocaine in basketball (although pot is more of a "problem drug" in the NBA these days) and so on.
- My experience to the sport ethic is very limited; I am not an athlete by any stretch of the imagination. Hopefully this doesn't get in the way of my striving for distinction in this class.
Sports in the USA
Hello, Mr. British Guy, and welcome to America.
Basically, the NFL is king here. Gridiron Football is the most watched sport in the states, particularly in the South and Midwest states. Basically, think rugby but with bigger players, forward passing and more head injuries (and also far more money). A typical gameday involves getting to the parking lot of the stadium a couple hours before kickoff to tailgate, a wonderful tradition that involves grilling meat and drinking beers in the middle of winter.
Once you head for the coasts and the bigger cities, basketball starts to take over. Basketball is the most popular participation sport in America, but trails behind the NFL and baseball in terms of top-flight (the pro game) revenue (http://www.plunkettresearch.com/sports-recreation-leisure-market-research/industry-statistics). Basketball isn't quite identical to soccer; it's on a smaller playing surface, and they have to use their hands (in addition to the numerous aesthetic differences). Other than that, the back-and-forth natures of the games are very similar. Gamedays in basketball are more muted, on average, because there are a lot more regular season games (82 games per team per season in the NBA, versus 16 in the NFL).
Baseball and hockey are also very popular in plenty of places in the US. All these games (except baseball) are very physical in nature with an easy-to-follow back-and-forth flow that allows for drastic swings in momentum and, potentially, plenty of tension if the game goes down to the wire. The values reinforced are complex; most often, these games can encourage players to work together as a team, reinforcing humility and hard work. In other cases, players will use the game as a vehicle for their own ego, which promotes consumption.
Basically, the NFL is king here. Gridiron Football is the most watched sport in the states, particularly in the South and Midwest states. Basically, think rugby but with bigger players, forward passing and more head injuries (and also far more money). A typical gameday involves getting to the parking lot of the stadium a couple hours before kickoff to tailgate, a wonderful tradition that involves grilling meat and drinking beers in the middle of winter.
Once you head for the coasts and the bigger cities, basketball starts to take over. Basketball is the most popular participation sport in America, but trails behind the NFL and baseball in terms of top-flight (the pro game) revenue (http://www.plunkettresearch.com/sports-recreation-leisure-market-research/industry-statistics). Basketball isn't quite identical to soccer; it's on a smaller playing surface, and they have to use their hands (in addition to the numerous aesthetic differences). Other than that, the back-and-forth natures of the games are very similar. Gamedays in basketball are more muted, on average, because there are a lot more regular season games (82 games per team per season in the NBA, versus 16 in the NFL).
Baseball and hockey are also very popular in plenty of places in the US. All these games (except baseball) are very physical in nature with an easy-to-follow back-and-forth flow that allows for drastic swings in momentum and, potentially, plenty of tension if the game goes down to the wire. The values reinforced are complex; most often, these games can encourage players to work together as a team, reinforcing humility and hard work. In other cases, players will use the game as a vehicle for their own ego, which promotes consumption.
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