Final Reflection

After taking his class, I now realize there is more to sport than what meets the eye. Prior to this course, my perception of sport was of high interest, but I lacked critical analysis of the hidden, controversial factors. I have always participated in sports and I consider myself fortunate to still compete today. While sports have always been a major asset in my life, I never saw them as anything but entertainment. After taking this class, I now understand that sport in America is much more complex than just entertainment. I learned that sport in the US is so highly valued that athletes every day are striving to compete and sacrifice everything they have to reach the top. 

I found the LGBT discussion interesting because I never considered the complications and struggle that gay athletes have to endure. I also liked watching Murderball. The film gave me a different perception of how people with disabilities or impairments can still compete at maximum levels of sport. I think that in my next few years of playing football, I will take a lot of the information we learned and apply it to my career. I would recommend this class to anyone with an interest in sport.

"Darwin's Athletes": Sports & Ethnicity

The movie Hoop Dreams, along with several other movies listed are good examples of how Hollywood portrays athletic success as the ultimate and often only path of success for young African American males coming out of inner cities. Movies like Hoop Dreams and the Blind Side often point to athletic scholarships as the only plausible vehicle that African American males are able to utilize to find success. There is a scene in Any Given Sunday when Willie Beamen makes a rap video that is good example of the picture of success portrayed by Hollywood.  In the scene, Willie is partying at his mansion poolside, and is seen with nice cars and beautiful woman. This is often projected as what young African American males are expected to aspire to and that athletics is the way to attain that lifestyle.

                The pursuit of this luxurious lifestyle and the fact that sports is an avenue to attain it, is a good example of why sports are important in African American culture. This is especially true for those who come from inner city, lower income areas, and sports seem to be the only realistic way to escape that lifestyle.

         I do not believe that Sport is damaging Black Americans. It is possible that the stereotypes associated with sports and black Americans is damaging to the respective culture. It does somewhat perpetuate the myth of race because the stereotype enforces the negative idea that black American’s can only truly be successful through sports or music.

Interrogating inequalities in Sports Media: Examining gender/race representation in ESPN website

I will examine the weekly news feed on the ESPN website to get an idea of how race is represented in their most recent articles. There are not really any noticeable over representations of any particular race. Much of the Winter Olympics covers feature stories on white athletes, but the sports featured in the winter Olympics have also been historically more populated by white athletes. The other sports, specifically the big 3, feature a fairly balanced representation of black, white, and Hispanic race members. I did find it interesting the amount of media coverage Missouri's Michael Sam has been getting since he came out that he was gay. As far as the representation of male athletes vs. female athletes goes, it was overwhelmingly focused on Male Athletes. In fact, there was not even a tab at the top of the website to direct you to any female sports even if you wanted to view stories on them. If you were not from this country and had to base your idea about sports in American culture solely based on this website, you wouldn't even think that women played sports, besides the coverage of them in the Winter Olympics right now. This does back up the general attitude towards gender in sports within American Culture. There has been far more interest for Men's sports than there has been towards Female sports. As far as race goes, the stories simply focused on who happened to be the biggest story at the time, race did not seem to be a determining factor on who the majority of the stories were about. I also think this is a fair representation of how America views race in sports. They do not care if you are black, white, brown, red, or orange, as long as you can get wins, that is all the American public cares about.

Sociogenisis of Football

American Football as we know it today was derived from a combination of the two sports rugby and soccer. A man named Walter Camp who attended Yale was the main contributor in forming the rules of Football. Before Camp, a man named Ebb Ellis is credited with taking the first step in transforming soccer into American football when he picked up the ball with his hands and started running with it. From there, camp was able to establish a line of scrimmage, create teams with 11 players each, and create rules that stated one team would keep possession of the ball into they failed to score due to their own accord.

The game slowly advanced leagues were starting to form that pitted teams against each other. On November 12, 1982 (exactly 100 years before my birthday if any one is wondering) the first man was paid $500 to play in a game. While it was not known at the time, this event marked the start of Professional Football. Other teams followed the lead and started paying players to play for their respective teams. The game was picked up by various club teams in States across the east coast and these clubs eventually formed into the national football league we see today.

Sources: http://www.profootballhof.com/history/general/birth.aspx
http://www.inventhelp.com/walter-camp-innovator-of-modern-football.asp

Sport in the Ancient World

Sports played a considerable role in Ancient Greek and Roman society. The Olympics which started in Greece featured several sporting events which included many that are still featured in the track and field area of todays Olympics. The entire spectacle, both audience and athletes, consisted entirely of male athletes who were citizens. Women were not permitted in the games it would be considered rather absurd if a women tried to spectate the games. The athletes competed in the nude because the body of the athlete was celebrated and seen as a spectacle to the onlookers. Violence was much more prevalent in the games in both of these Mediterranean empires. Physical force was sometimes used to enforce the rules and regulations.  The sports were played to honor the Gods. Instead of playing for an athletes personal glory as in todays society, gaining favor with the Gods was the ultimate goal. Athletes who competed poorly were considered to have brought shame to themselves in the eyes of the Gods.

The primary sport spectacle in the Roman empire was the Gladiator battles. Participants of the battles were slaves or prisoners of war and were forced to fight to the death. The battles were also seen as a tribute to the Gods, but were also greatly integrated in the Politics of roman society. Gladiators had owners who would try to gain favor in politics by assembling the best gladiators.

Sport Society & Me

From the first time I was able to walk I was interested in playing sports. Baseball, Basketball, and Football consumed my life from day one. I have always been extremely interested in sports and have been fortunate enough to still be furthering my Football career here at CU. While I started out playing soccer, my interest in baseball and basketball escalated quickly. However, people noticed tendencies in the way I played those and continuously told my parents that they needed to get me in football because I posessed the qualities that would make me a natural. My parents nagged me, and i fought back just as persistently. I told them that I'm not a football player and never would be. I couldn't have been more wrong. From the time I started football in 6th grade, it has been my passion and still to this day consumes a good portion of my time and thoughts. I have gotten to experience the commitment that playing a sport at a division 1 level takes and that there are truly countless sacrifices associated with  participation at this level.

For me, the lessons learned through sports have been far more valuable than anything I have learned thus far. While I am very grateful for the opportunity to get an education, you cannot learn about teamwork, dedication, commitment, sacrifice, time management, and hard work in a classroom the same way you can in sports. While there are still some negative outcomes that can come through sports as  a result of the sports ethic, the vast majority of its virtues are very valuable. 

If monetary value is a true sign of the values Americans hold dear, than high profile sports like Baseball, Football, and basketball are at the top of that value. The celebrity status of the athletes who partake in these sports shows the standard the American people hold them to. Athletes are seem as an equivalent to Gods by some, and are truly held as the pinnacle of American society. Whether or not all athletes should be viewed as the role models we make them out to be is a topic for another discussion. I have noticed an interesting shift of values in American sports that has taken the value we place on winning at the professional level, and slowly shifted it down to younger and younger groups. An interesting new show recently appeared on the Esquire Network called "Friday Night Tykes". The show is a documentary on youth football in texas, the mecca of the football world, and it expresses the coaches obsession with winning at all costs and throwing out the past methods of giving all kids at young ages an equal shot to play and have fun.

Sports Ethic

Coakley & Hughes refer to the "Sport Ethic" as the driving inclination for athletes to push the limits in an effort to be the best. Specifically on page 307 of Positive Deviance Among Athletes, the authors describe it as the need to sacrifice for the game, seek distinction, take risks and push the limits. While the sport ethic is seen as a positive influence at it's core, some see it as corrupting factor in the lives of many athletes. This has been particularly evident in modern sports with the emergence of P.E.D's (performance enhancing drugs). In the MLB players who have been caught using P.E.D's, cite their reasoning for using the drug as a necessity rather than cheating. They often claim that they only used out of a need to compete with the rest of the league. As a result, the steroid era was born in baseball. The sport ethic drove players to use P.E.D's out of a desire to climb to the top of the MLB totem pole. Players whom did not want to fall behind and lose the fame and the fortune were forced to use as well. The sport ethic need to be on top therefore tarnished an entire era of a professional sport. While this phenomenon has been most evident in baseball, it is a certainty that similar scenarios have unfolded in countless other sports.

The sport ethics negative effect on an athlete is shown through more than just use of P.E.D's. Nate Jackson, a former player for the Denver Broncos wrote a book titled "My Injury File: How I shot, Smoked, and Screwed my way through the NFL." The book is a recollection of Jackson's career and his compilation of injuries that his body had to endure in order to stay competitive at the highest level of football. Jackson states that he can barely walk today because of his long list of injuries. The driving factor in jackson's career marked with injury was the sports ethic. His risk taking in order to remain on top has left him nearly crippled for the rest of his life.

The victims of the negative effects of the sports ethic does not end there, just ask lance armstrong.