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Enhancing Youth Leadership Through Sport and Physical Education
This article explores the role of sport leaders in promoting youth leadership and emphasizes the importance of mental health awareness and support in the development of young athletes.
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Exploring the Perceived Barriers of Effective Communication Within the Coach–Athlete Relationship: A Sample of Scandinavian Coaches and Athletes
Coaching is a process that guides development and is shaped by sound relationships between athletes and coaches. Interpersonal communication represents a mechanism for developing functional relationships. However, not all interactions between coaches and athletes are optimal, and limited research has attempted to understand the factors that impede the ability to engage in effective communication. This […]
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A Deconstruction of Coaching Philosophy
In a recent study examining coaching philosophy within English football academies, researchers uncovered intriguing insights into how coaches perceive and utilize this concept. The findings shed light on the complex interplay between symbolic identity, practical coaching approaches, and institutional norms. Let’s delve into the key takeaways from this research, offering practical insights for coaches looking […]
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A machine learning approach for the classification of sports based on a coaches’ perspective of environmental, individual and task requirements: A sports profile analysis.
Exploring the nuances of various sports is essential for talent programs seeking to identify, develop, and transfer athletes effectively. A recent study analyzed 1247 coaches across 34 sports, employing sophisticated techniques to distinguish unique characteristics per sport. Their findings not only uncovered sport-specific profiles but also provided practical insights crucial for talent programs, coaches, and athletes seeking optimal pathways in talent identification, development, and transfer.
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Pay attention! The influence of coach-, content-, and player-related factors on focus of attention statements during tennis training.
This study on youth tennis players delved into the pivotal role of coach communication in shaping the attentional focus of athletes during training sessions across diverse sports. A detailed analysis encompassing 10 coaches engaged with youth athletes was conducted to understand the prevalence and influencers of attentional focus induced by coach communication. While prior research advocates for an external focus (EF) in enhancing performance, this study aimed to explore how coach-, content-, and player-related factors influence the attentional focus induced during sports training sessions. The findings shed light on the prevalent induction of EF in coaching across various sports, emphasizing the need for adaptable communication strategies aligned with athletes’ skill levels for optimized training outcomes.
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Building Bridges Instead of Putting Up Walls: Connecting the “Teams” to Improve Soccer Players’ Support.
In today’s competitive sports landscape, the evolution of player support structures has become increasingly complex. A recent article highlights the shifting dynamics within elite sports, shedding light on the growing trend of athletes employing specialized personal staff. This practice reflects a desire for tailored support systems aimed at optimizing performance, health, and career longevity. The article delves into the motivations behind this shift, emphasizing the critical role of effective communication and collaboration between club-centered professionals and personal staff. Amidst these changes, practical takeaways emerge to navigate this evolving terrain, emphasizing the importance of unified approaches and informed decision-making for player well-being and peak performance.
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Winning Matters, but Youth Coaches Shouldn’t Let It Consume Them. Here are Some Tips.
Mark Uyl has been watching, coaching or refereeing Michigan high school sports for three decades. The hundreds of games he has seen, especially when they are played indoors where the spectators are close and the sound is magnified, have revealed at least one “absolute truth,” he says.
“That coach who is ranting and raving up and down the sideline, gesturing and emotionally reacting to calls and non- calls,” Uyl, the executive director of the Michigan High School Athletic Association, tells USA TODAY Sports, “I can tell you 100 percent of the time, that tends to inflame that school’s fan base. “The way that coaches act,” he says, “has a direct correlation for how their spectators act.”
Uyl’s observation reflects two other truths as well:
One: We live in a sports world consumed with winning. It’s one in which college and professional teams feel the need to cheat to get an advantage and, even at kids games, parents are apt to rage over anything they feel could alter that outcome.
Two: Being a coach gives you more control of this world than you think.
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A Retrospective Analysis of Leadership Development Through Sport
The purpose of this study was to examine the development of six leader-athletes. In-depth qualitative interviews were used to explore the various activities that leader athletes engaged in from an early age as well as the roles and influences that peers, coaches, and parents played within these activities. Results indicated that leadership development in sport […]
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Deconstructing Caring in the Coach Athlete Relationship: A Gentler Form of Domination
Sport coaching scholars extol the hope that relations of care will bring to sport. Yet, the insidious nature of relations of power and domination have been under-theorised with respect to care theory in sport coaching. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to problematize sport coaches’ perceptions of caring relations and to consider how caring […]
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The Role of Quality Relationships and Communication Strategies for the Fulfillment of Secure and Insecure Athletes’ Basic Psychological Needs
The correlates of coach-athlete relationship quality have been the focus of research for over a decade; however, little is known about the mediating and moderating mechanisms underlying these associations. The present study conducted a moderated mediation analysis to examine (a) the mediating role of communication strategies (via COMPASS) on the association between the quality of […]
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Beyond Solitary Play in Computer Games: The Social Practices of eSports
This article adopts the theory of social practices as a critical lens for understanding computer game consumption as multiple ‘nexuses of doings and sayings’, which represent the elements of and are situated within the broader context of consumer culture. Specifically, we explore an emerging phenomenon of an organised and competitive approach to computer gaming, referred […]
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Beyond the Playing Field: Experiences of Sport Social Capital and Integration Among Somalis in Australia
This paper explores the role of recreational sport as a means and marker of social integration by analysing the lived experiences of Somali people from refugee backgrounds with sport. Drawing on a three-year multi-sided ethnography, the paper examines the extent to and ways in which participation in sport contributes to Somali Australians’ bonding, bridging, and […]
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Bhora Mugedhi Versus Bhora Musango: The Interface Between Football Discourse and Zimbabwean Politics
Football is the most popular sport in Zimbabwe and across the globe. It has been asserted elsewhere that the game is not limited to scoring goals on the pitch but that this also occurs in politics and power struggles. This study explores the interface between football discourse and politics during elections in Zimbabwe in July […]
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Big Football: Corporate Social Responsibility and the Culture and Color of Injury in America’s Most Popular Sport
Although much has been said about football concussions in the media, academic inquiry into the National Football League’s (NFL) strategies for containing critique and shaping public discourse remains limited. I investigate the league’s multi-sided “corporate social responsibility” (CSR) campaign, which involves harm reduction reforms (e.g., improved helmets, tackling techniques) as well as public relations and […]
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Beautiful Losers: The Symbolic Exhibition and Legitimization of Outsider Masculinity
In this paper we examine how practices and logics associated with the cultural ‘outsider’ underpin one particular fusion of contemporary art, alternative sports, and marketing interests which are endemic to post-Fordist economies. We describe a skateboarding-infused art exhibit, Beautiful Losers, to investigate how power dynamics operate relative to post-industrial creative classes. In particular, we illustrate […]
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Becoming Familiar with a World’: a Relational View of Socialization
Ethnographic data have frequently been used to examine socialization, but rarely to ground theories of socialization. This paper is an exception. Interest in indigenous representations emerging in situations involving socialization has led to the building of a relational model of socialization, which contrasts with mainstream developmental models of this phenomenon. Socialization is generally defined in […]
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Behind the Digital Curtain: Ethnography Football Fan Activism and Social Change
Football supporters worldwide organise protests, petitions, campaigns, workshops and congresses and are engaged in political lobbying. These expressions of supporters’ activism are nourished by both discontent with developments in football culture and an effort to change them. The aim of this methodologically driven article is to critically examine the role of digital ethnographies in exploring […]
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Behind the Scenes of Sport for Development: Perspectives of Executives of Multinational Sport Organizations
This article reports findings from a study designed to examine cricket’s role as an international development tool – with a particular focus on how decisions are made at the highest institutional levels to support cricket-related development initiatives. Data for the study are drawn from interviews with executives in the International Cricket Council and the Marylebone […]
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Benefits and Challenges Associated With Sport Participation by Children and Parents From Low-Income Families
The first purpose of this study was to examine low-income parents’ and their children’s perceptions of the benefits associated with participation in youth sport. The second purpose was to examine parents’ perceptions of the challenges associated with providing their children sporting opportunities. Interpretive Description qualitative approach ( Thorne, 2008). Thirty-five individual interviews were conducted with […]
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Between Adoption and Resistance: Globalization and Glocalization in the Development of Israeli Basketball
Sports provide one of the most prominent fields in which one can study the interaction between globalization and glocalization processes. Drawing on recent theoretical developments in globalization theory and on both primary and secondary data, the present article examines the case of Israeli basketball. This case demonstrates the tension between global and glocal processes, also […]
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Between Two Volunteer Cultures: Social Composition and Motivation Among Volunteers at the 2010 Test Event for the FIS Nordic World Ski Championships
This paper argues that a reflexive, late modern volunteer culture coexists with a collectivist, traditional one at major sporting events. Those who regularly volunteer at such events and are affiliated with organized sport tend to be older and male, and have higher incomes. Those who are volunteering for the first time and are unaffiliated with […]
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Beyond Anti-Fandom: Cheerleading, Textual Hate and New Media Ethics
Drawing on a case study involving mediated vitriol targeting cheerleaders, this article identifies two potentially problematic aspects of the media studies concept of anti fandom. First, it critiques the classification of vitriolic texts produced by anti fans as belonging primarily to the field of audiences and reception. It argues that this move risks sidelining the […]
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Beyond Class: The Many Facets of Gramsci’s Theory of Intellectuals
Gramsci’s theory of intellectuals is widely cited but rarely closely studied. This article makes a case for a rereading of this theory. This is both desirable and necessary because, as the article shows, it is a more nuanced and yet also encompassing theory than recognized in current scholarship on the sociology of intellectuals, and it […]
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Beyond Entertainment: Motivations and Outcomes of Video Game Playing by Older Adults and Their Younger Family Members
The percentage of older adults who are active gamers has increased tremendously in recent years. Although research shows that video games enhance physical and cognitive well-being in older adults, the role of video games in enhancing social interactions has been relatively understudied. We examined the habits, preferences, motivations, and outcomes of video gameplay among older […]
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Assessing the Sociology of Sport: On Cultural Sensibilities and the Great Sport Myth
On the 50th anniversary of the ISSA and IRSS, Jay Coakley, a foundational scholar in the development of the sociology of sport, reflects on the lasting power of the Great Sport Myth (GSM) to shape cultural understandings of sport. Situated in an unshakable belief about the inherent purity and goodness of sport, it is argued […]
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Assessing the Trajectory and Challenges of the Sociology of Sport
On the fiftieth anniversary of the International Sociology Of Sport Association and the International Review for the Sociology of Sport, the three guest editors for this special fiftieth anniversary issue of the IRSS, current ISSA president, Elizabeth CJ Pike, the immediate past president, Steven J Jackson, and current IRSS editor, Lawrence A Wenner, introduce the […]
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At Least Nine Ways to Play: Approaching Gamer Mentalities
Do digital games and play mean the same things for different people? This article presents the results of a 3-year study in which we sought for new ways to approach digital games cultures and playing practices. First, the authors present the research process in brief and emphasize the importance of merging different kinds of methods […]
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Athletic Participation and Seatbelt Omission Among U.S. High School Students: A National Study
Although seatbelts save lives, adolescents may be disproportionately likely to omit their use. Using data from the 1997 Youth Risk Behavior Survey, a national survey of more than 16,000 U.S. public and private high school students, the authors employed a series of logistic regression analysis to examine cross-sectional associations between past year athletic participation and […]
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Bad for Business? The Effects of Hooliganism on English Professional Football Clubs
Football hooliganism, defined as episodes of crowd trouble inside and outside football stadiums on match days, is commonly perceived to have adverse effects on the sport. We are especially interested in the effects of football-related fan violence on a club’s potential for generating revenues. In this article, we measure hooliganism by arrests for football-related offenses. […]
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An Own Goal in Sport for Development: Time to Change the Playing Field
Sport for Development and Peace (SDP) refers to the use of sport to promote varied outcomes beyond the playing field and has been defined as ‘the intentional use of sport, physical activity and play to attain specific development objectives in low- and middle-income countries and disadvantaged communities in high-income settings.’1 Stakeholders working in the field […]
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An Unexceptional Exception: Golf Pesticides and Environmental Regulation in Canada
This paper features a critical examination of recent legislation banning cosmetic pesticide applications in the province of Ontario, Canada. It focuses in particular on the exemption of golf courses from the province’s Cosmetic Pesticides Ban Act of 2009. Drawing from a wide range of materials, the authors first contextualize Ontario’s recent law through an overview […]
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An Unpaid Labor of Love: Professional Footballers Family Life and the Problem of Job Relocation
This article presents qualitative findings which cast light on experiences of job-related geographical relocation for professional footballers and their families. Job relocation is an issue for players and partners, as labor market migration is commonplace in this profession. Although cultural expectations often lead to personal sacrifice, initial research findings indicate that many partners are deciding […]
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Anyone but England?: Exploring Anti-English Sentiment as Part of Scottish National Identity in Sport
This article explores the reasons behind the expression of anti-English sentiment by Scots in relation to both sporting and wider social contexts, whilst also considering the impact of migration to England on the attitudes expressed by members of the Scottish diaspora. Drawing upon the conceptual framework of ‘narrative identity’ proposed elsewhere, data was generated through […]
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Anyone for Tennis? Sport, Class and Status in New Zealand
This article explores how sport, frequently seen as the foremost meritocracy in New Zealand, is a site that can produce and reproduce social class-based distinctions. Specifically, we explore how participation in youth sport is connected with the consolidation of social class boundaries, expectations and ‘tastes’ by means of an ethnographic case study of Oakwood Tennis […]
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Appetite for or Resistance to Consumption Relationships? A Trans-European Perspective on the Marketisation of Football Fan Relationships
Although most sport organisations are encouraged to better manage the relationships they maintain with fans, little is still known about the types of relationships that fans want to establish with sport organisations. Also, as most suggested management and marketing practices come from professional sport organisations and European contexts, it is questionable whether they can apply […]
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Are College Students ‘Bowling Alone?’ Examining the Contribution of Team Identification to the Social Capital of College Students
While college sport can impact a campus’ sense of community (Clopton, 2007), no empirical research has established a connection with college sport and social capital, an increasingly researched social phenomenon defined as the sum of trust and reciprocating relationships amongst members of a community (Putnam, 2000). Thus, social activities – such as direct and indirect […]
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Are Sports Betting Markets Prediction Markets? Evidence From a New Test
Researchers commonly use sports betting lines as predictions of the outcome of sporting events. Betting houses set betting lines conditional on bettors ex ante beliefs about game outcomes, which implies that the predictive power of the sports betting market could be an unintended consequence of betting house profit maximization. Using this insight, the authors propose […]
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Arousing a [Post] Enlightenment Active Body Praxis
In this coda, I consider the oncoming and already-present “crises” (see Giardina & Laurendeau, this issue) which threaten to unsettle the Enlightenment (and its hermeneutic legacies) substrata scholars of sport and the active body rest their work upon. In so doing, I aim to take up a number of the questions posited by the guest […]
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As British as Fish and Chips: British Newspaper Representations of Mo Farah During the 2012 London Olympic Games
This article examines British newspaper representations of the ‘Team GB’ athlete Mohamed ‘Mo’ Farah during the 2012 London Olympic Games. In particular, attention is given to examining how representations of Farah were related to discourses on British multiculturalism. A brief discussion of recent rejections of multiculturalism is provided, with specific reference given to political and […]
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Assessing the Relationship Between Youth Sport Participation Settings and Creativity in Adulthood
This article presents an assessment of the relative influences of time spent participating in organized sports and informal sports during childhood with respect to the development of general creativity. In this study, 99 upper-division undergraduate and graduate students completed a comprehensive childhood leisure activities questionnaire and the Abbreviated Torrance Test for Adults. According to the […]
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Alcohol Consumption in Sportspeople: The Role of Social Cohesion, Identity and Happiness
Research indicates that those participating in sport consume alcohol more frequently and at higher quantities than their non-sporting peers. The highest levels of alcohol consumption have been found in university student sportspeople; however, the reasons for such elevated alcohol use are unclear and there has been little research in this area outside US institutions. Moreover, […]
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Alcohol-Related Player Behavioral Transgressions: Incidences Fan Media Responses and a Harm-Reduction Alternative
This article examines fan social media responses to media-reported, alcohol-related player behavioral transgressions that occurred in Australia’s two largest professional sporting leagues, the National Rugby League (NRL) and the Australian Football League (AFL), over a 33-month period. Using netnography and content analysis, the study aimed to better understand the ways in which sport fans employed […]
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Allez Wiggo: A Case Study on the Reactions of the British Print Media to Bradley Wiggins’s Victory in the Tour de France
On July 22, 2012, Bradley Wiggins became the first-ever British cyclist to win the Tour de France. This article examines how the events surrounding Wiggins’s win were reported in the British (London-based) print media the day after his victory. Thematic coding revealed 2 specific themes: “Arise Sir Bradley Le Gentleman” and “Wiggo the Mod.”
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Amputees and Sports: A Systematic Review
Amputation of a limb may have a negative impact on the psychological and physical well-being, mobility and social life of individuals with limb amputations. Participation in sports and/or regular physical activity has a positive effect on the above mentioned areas in able-bodied individuals. Data concerning participation in sports or regular physical activity together with its […]
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Amusing Ourselves to Life: Fitness Consumerism and the Birth of Bio-Games
Against the common perception that media consumption engenders inactivity, in recent years the technology sector has developed an extensive catalogue of games for bodily and cognitive exercise. Despite their popularity, however, and despite their potential ability to affect perceptions and experiences of health and fitness, there remains a shortage of academic research on video games […]
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An Olympic Legacy For All? The Non-Infrastructural Outcomes of the Olympic Games for Socially Excluded Groups (Atlanta 1996-Beijing 2008)
The use of mega sporting events to achieve social goals for socially excluded groups is heavily contested. Comparative evidence regarding the effects of the Olympic Games for these groups is scarce, and there is an even greater dearth of studies focusing on non-infrastructural programmes (such as sport participation initiatives, volunteering opportunities, training and employment schemes). […]
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Academic Research and Reform: A History of the Empirical Basis for NCAA Academic Policy
The purpose of this article is to provide an historical overview of the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s (NCAA) academic reform, with a particular focus on the empirical basis for the decisions made. The authors outline four eras of academic reform, examine the types of information the NCAA has collected and used to make decisions about […]
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Access Agenda Building and Information Subsidies: Media Relations in Professional Sport
While much research has examined the composition of sport media and those charged with constructing it, namely sport journalists and editors, far less has explored an essential set of actors in the construction of news: sources. This study aimed to explore the construction of the sport media agenda from arguably the most important sport news […]
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Accounting for Legacy: Monitoring and Evaluation in Sport in Development Relationships
Recent years have seen the extension of the Olympic legacy concept to include the use of sport in international development. As in the wider policy area of international development, the external partners that fund sport programmes require in-country accountability for the use of their investment and this has led to monitoring and evaluation (M+E) programmes […]
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Action Sport NGOs in a Neo-Liberal Context: The Cases of Skateistan and Surf Aid International
Sport nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have flourished in the contemporary moment, particularly situated within neoliberal global politics. In this article we focus on the relatively recent proliferation of action sport-based social justice advocacy groups. Drawing on extant materials from our ongoing research on two action sport-related social justice movements—Skateistan and SurfAid International (SAI)—we illustrate some of […]
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Actively Closing the Gap? Social Class Organized Activities and Academic Achievement in High School
Participation in Organized Activities (OA) is associated with positive behavioral and developmental outcomes in children. However, less is known about how particular aspects of participation affect the academic achievement of high school students from different social class positions. Using the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002, this study examines the math achievement gains from organized activity […]
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Adolescent Sport Participation and Alcohol Use: The Importance of Sport Organization and the Wider Social Context
This paper investigates the relationship between adolescent sport participation and alcohol use, focusing on differences in sport contexts. We also include the wider social context, the role of peers and parents as key variables in our analysis. Our sample consists of a nationally representative sample of 10,992 Icelandic adolescents. The findings indicate that adolescents that […]
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Adolescent Well-Being: An Emerging Agenda for Schools
The well-being of young people is of considerable concern with many initiatives targeting the health behaviors of this population. Educators are among the professional groups being challenged to understand, evidence, and enhance childhood well-being. Working with a case study U.K. school adolescent subjective well-being (SWB) was examined through the administering of the Personal Wellbeing Index–School […]
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Adopting the Diasporic Son: Jeremy Lin and Taiwan Sport Nationalism
Jeremy Lin and the resulting “Linsanity” has caused an unprecedented media and marketing frenzy worldwide. This essay examines its implication through reviewing media narratives in Taiwan, Lin’s ancestral homeland. Japanese colonizers first brought modern sports to the Taiwanese as a symbol of “civilization” and “modernity.” Although “athleticism” confronts Confucian tradition, sports began to play a […]
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Alcohol and Community Football in Australia
This paper focuses on spectators’ alcohol use at a regional community football(Australian Rules) club in Victoria, Australia, in the context of a season-long trial to sell only mid-strength (and not full-strength) beer at the ground during home games. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected on spectators’ alcohol choices and preferences together with experiences and […]
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A Fumbled Opportunity? A Case Study of Twitter’s Role in Concussion Awareness Opportunities During the Super Bowl
Doctors, journalists, and other advocates are attempting to draw attention to the dangers of head trauma in football, and the popularity of social media has given them a new outlet to perform advocacy. This case study explores how advocates for concussion awareness in football used Twitter to help spread their message during the 2013 Super […]
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A Genuinely Emotional Week: Learning Disability, Sport and Television – Notes on the Special Olympics GB National Summer Games 2009
In July 2009, the Special Olympics Great Britain National Summer Games for athletes with learning disabilities were held in Leicester. Uniquely the Games achieved considerable television news coverage. This article offers a preliminary analysis of television representations of the Games. National TV coverage of the Paralympics is now established, but Special Olympics – and sport […]
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A Level Playing ‘Field’? A Bourdieusian Analysis of the Career Aspirations of Further Education Students on Sports Courses
There is currently a distinct dearth of research into how sports students’ career aspirations are formed during their post-compulsory education. This article, based on an ethnographic study of sport students in tertiary education, draws on data collected from two first-year cohorts (n = 34) on two different courses at a further education college in England. […]
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A Match Made in Heaven?! Sport, Television, and New Media in the Beginning of the Third Millennia
Over the last five decades, the symbiotic relationship between sport and the media in general, and television in particular, has been described as a “match made in heaven.” This essay is a conceptual introduction to the special issue in Television & New Media on sport, television, and new media at the beginning of the third […]
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A Perfect Script? Manchester United’s Class of ’92
The Class of ’92 is a documentary film featuring six Manchester United F.C. players who recount their time during a pivotal period for the club, English football and English society. The documentary claims to offer a commentary on Britain in the 1990s, but appears, without acknowledging the fact, to be a promotional vehicle to establish […]
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A Realm of Mere Representation? “Live” Esports Spectacles and the Crafting of China’s Digital Gaming Image
This article addresses the proliferation of images and appearances in the realm of e-sports culture in urban China. The author’s findings are based upon ethnographic research and participant observation of e-sports audience members, teams, and tournaments, including the 2010 Esports Champion League tournament in Beijing, the 2012 and 2013 World Cyber Games Festivals in Kunshan, […]
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A Response to David Kirk: Personal/Professional Views From US Authors
This paper represents the views of two scholars in the USA with respect to the scholar lecture presented by David Kirk at the 2012 BERA – Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy (PESP) Special Interest Group meeting. We discuss how two unique features of the American universities have an impact on both the corporate nature of […]
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A Smaller Window to the University: The Impact of Athletic De-Escalationon Status and Reputation
Given the changing landscape of Division I athletic competition, determining the most advantageous commitment to athletic programs is an important issue in sport and university policy. With the recent autonomy granted to select Division I Football Bowl Subdivision conferences and pending antitrust litigation vying for college athlete compensation, many universities are considering alternative courses of […]
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A Splendid Effort!’: Print Media Reporting of England’s Women’s Performance in the 2009 Cricket World Cup
The representation of female athletes by the British print media has been an area for close scrutiny since the mid-1990s. This article examines the representation of England’s Women’s performance at the 2009 Cricket World Cup. Using a qualitative content analysis of 29 articles from seven newspapers over the duration of the tournament, results show that […]
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A Summary and Commentary on the Quantitative Results of Current NCAA Academic Reforms
The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the quantitative analysis informing current academic reforms in the National Collegiate Athletic Association. The article serves as an extension of Petr and McArdle’s (2012) previous work. In addition to discussing current reforms in measuring academic success, the author also outlines results from large-scale student-athlete […]
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A Welsh European: Golf, Tourism and the Remaking of National Imaging
The Ryder Cup is a biennial golf match between Europe and the USA that was staged in Wales for the first time in 2010. This article considers the representation of Wales within tourism texts through an analysis of the place of an individual. To date, little scholarship has examined the position of individuals within such […]
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“Woolmergate”: Sport and the Representation of Islam and Muslims in the British Press
This article illustrates how the media represent Islam and Muslims in the post-9/11 context through an examination of British newspaper coverage of the death of Pakistan coach Bob Woolmer at the 2007 Cricket World Cup. The article argues that key elements of the cultural stereotyping of Islam and Muslims identified in Said’s Orientalism—namely, violence, irrationality, […]
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(Dis)Locating Nations in the World Cup: Football Fandom and the Global Geopolitics of Affect
The World Cup, as a tournament that pits national teams against one another, initially seems to be a site where support for sports is tied to nations. However, situating this sporting event at the intersection of discourses of globalization, transnational circulation of capital and populations, and theories of fandom, our examination of diasporic populations found […]
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(Im)Mobile bodies: Contemporary Semi-Professional Dancers’ Experiences with Injuries
The purpose of this research was to examine semi-professional contemporary dancers’ experiences with injuries. Similar to athletes, dancers are often injured. Much of the previous research on dance injuries, however, has focused on ballet where the professional requirements and high technical level create demanding work conditions. Semi-professional contemporary dance differs from this context due to […]
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(Re)Defining the Situation When Football Fans Rush the Field
Drawing on 251 incident reports, this study explores American football fans’ decisions to rush the field to celebrate a victory despite pleas from university officials and the police to abstain. We explore the symbolic interactions through which students defined this situation and acted within it. Our findings characterize this event as series of ongoing interactions […]
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#LOL at Multiculturalism: Reactions to Hockey Night in Canada Punjabi From the Twitterverse
Arguably, two aspects of national identity that Canadians are most recognized for are hockey and multiculturalism; yet, few scholars have examined the implications of Canada’s mythological and nostalgic hockey culture for immigrants from various racial and ethnic backgrounds. This analysis uses Twitter to gain uncensored insight into how Hockey Night in Canada Punjabi (HNIC Punjabi) […]
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`Generation X Games’, Action Sports and the Olympic Movement: Understanding the Cultural Politics of Incorporation
An important and mounting issue for the contemporary Olympic Movement is how to remain relevant to younger generations. Cognizant of the diminishing numbers of youth viewers, and the growing success of the X Games – the ‘Olympics’ of action sport – the International Olympic Committee (IOC) set about adding a selection of youth-oriented action sports […]
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A “Snapshot” of Physical Activity and Food Habits Among Private School Children in India
Concerns about increasing obesity in poorer parts of the world, including India, have often been premised in terms of global shifts in activity levels and caloric consumption. Lifestyle changes have been documented in large cities, but we do not know whether these changes are reaching young people in less urban locations. This study used photo […]
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A Comprehensive Review of Faith-Based Physical Activity Interventions
This review provides a summary of physical activity interventions delivered in faith-based organizations. Electronic databases were searched to identify relevant studies. After screening, a total of n = 27 articles matched our inclusion criteria; 19 were identified as faith-based interventions (some spiritual or Biblical element included in the intervention) and 8 as faith-placed interventions (no […]
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Rimi Bowl and the Quest for Authenticity: Fan Autonomy and Commodification in Norwegian Football
Football in Norway is facing similar challenges as other European leagues regarding dwindling crowds and financial instability, in the wake of the neoliberal boom from the 1990s and well into the new millennium. The years between 1990 and 2008 saw a doubling of average crowds for top-level games. Yet since 2008, there has been a […]
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The Mad Russian: Representations of Alexander Ovechkin and the Creation of Canadian National Identity
The paper argues that the Canadian media’s representations of National Hockey League (NHL) player Alexander Ovechkin work to locate Canadian national identity through its contrasts with the hockey superstar. Even though the press celebrates Ovechkin as a challenge to Cold War understandings of Soviet hockey players as lacking passion and heart as well as physical […]
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The Social Benefits of Informal and Lifestyle Sports: A Research Agenda
Understanding sport through the lens of social benefit has become a mainstay of sport policy analysis. A wealth of research has considered how sport contributes to achieving wider social benefits, including improvements to health and well-being, life satisfaction, crime reduction, community cohesion and activism, environmental stewardship, educational attainment, labour market participation, civic renewal, urban regeneration […]
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The Spanish Fury: A Political Geography of Soccer in Spain
Soccer in Spain functions as a powerful ideological apparatus. Historically, the underperformance of the national selection (“Spanish Fury”) was attributed to a lack of patriotism on part of players from ethno-regional peripheries. The recent successes (2008, 2012 Euro Cup and 2010 World Cup) of Spanish soccer are hailed as proof of a modern country that […]
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There’s a Cultural Pride Through Our Games: Enhancing the Sport Experiences of Indigenous Youth in Canada Through Participation in Traditional Games
The purpose of this community-based participatory research was to better understand how participation in traditional games can enhance the sport experiences of Indigenous youth. Eight Indigenous youth (14-18 years) and 10 adults living in various communities in the Northwest Territories, Canada, participated in either a one-on-one interview or group interview. Data were analyzed using an […]
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They Need to Learn to Take it on the Chin: Exploring the Emotional Labour of Student Volunteers in a Sports-Based Outreach Project in the Northeast of England
This research explores the emotional labour of university students whilst volunteering on the Sport Universities North East England (SUNEE) sports-based outreach project. Using data from semi-structured interviews with students (n = 40) this paper draws on the work of Arlie Hochschild (1983, 2012) to explore the feeling, display and regulation of emotion by this cohort […]
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We Cannot Stand Idly By: A Necessary Call for a Public Sociology of Sport
The aim of what follows is to participate in an ongoing conversation that has taken place within the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport (NASSS), as well as in sociology and the academy writ large, regarding public engagement and what our role is or should be as critical scholars of sports and physical […]
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True Fan = Watch Match?: In Search of the ‘Authentic’ Soccer Fan
Academics have created typologies to divide association football (soccer) fans into categories based upon the ‘authenticity’ of their fandom practices. One of the main requirements of ‘authentic’ fandom has been assumed to be match attendance. The goal of this paper was to critically assess this assumption by considering how fans themselves talk about the significance […]
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Cycles of Change: Slaying the Badger, the Tour de France and Contemporary Documentary Film
From its origins in 1903 as a parochial national cycle race, the Tour de France is today undeniably among the greatest annual sporting spectacles in the world. Since 1954 it has systematically extended its appeal beyond France’s national borders, regularly staging a grand départ from other European cities. The Tour de France also attracts an […]
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Drunk and Proud: From the Streets to the Stands: America Football Club Fans, Aguante and Alcohol Consumption in Mexican Football Fandom
An ethnographic description of a typical match day of Ritual del Kaos barra fans provides elements to discuss the consumption of alcohol as a specific practice of aguante. For the young Mexican-organized supporters of professional football clubs the concept of aguante has become the key concept for their daily practices. America Football Club fans of […]
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Either Everyone was Guilty or Everyone was Innocent: The Italian Power Elite, Neopatrimonialism, and the Importance of Social Relations
Rarely does the Byzantine world of football administration get exposed as clearly as during the 2006 calciopoli scandal. This scandal laid bare the interpersonal relationships of football administrators at the top three Italian men’s football clubs: Juventus, Inter, and AC Milan. This article draws on the media leaks that revealed the inner workings of those […]
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Here’s Hoping We get Pummeled: Anti-Nationalist Trends Among Israeli Sports Fans
This study discusses changes in football fans’ perception of nationalism in recent years. A growing number of athletes, fans, and sports teams have been explicitly prioritizing their own particular individual interests over national ones. National football teams nowadays enjoy far less support from their fans, whose allegiances are often multiple and who, at times, even […]
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The Day the Flame Came to Town: The Olympic Flame, Symbol, Community and Commodification
Debates regarding the Olympic Flame Relay oscillate between questions concerning the symbolic value of the Relay and the commodified nature of the Games more generally. While some argue for the potential intercultural understanding that the Flame Relay fosters, others point to the extent to which Olympism is embedded within the practices of commercial companies. Research […]
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We Don’t Need No Stinking Smartphones!: Live Stadium Sports Events, Mediatization, and the Non-Use of Mobile Media
The continuing institutional interpenetration of the sports, media, and digital technology industries makes professional sports an unlikely setting for protest against the use of media. Yet, major stadiums and arenas are serving as sites where the deepening reach and influence of media in lived social and cultural experiences are reflected upon and debated. Drawing upon […]
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Who Do ‘‘They” Cheer For?: Cricket, Diaspora, Hybridity and Divided Loyalties Amongst British Asians
This article explores the relationship between British Asians’ sense of nationhood, citizenship, ethnicity and some of their manifestations in relation to sports fandom: specifically in terms of how cricket is used as a means of articulating diasporic British Asian identities. Norman Tebbit’s ‘cricket test’ is at the forefront of this article to tease out the […]
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Wushu Belongs to the World: But the Gold Goes to China…: The International Development of the Chinese Martial Arts
Since the mid-1980s, China has been promoting wushu(also known as kung fu) as an international competitive sport towards Olympic recognition. But despite the efforts of the International Wushu Federation, to date, wushu has not entered the Olympics. Data were collected of countries’ medal-winning performances at the World Wushu Championships since 1991. The findings of this […]
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Baseball is Whack!: Exploring the Lack of African American Baseball Consumption
The purpose of this study is to assess the African American viewpoint on baseball consumption. Utilizing a criterion purposive sample of African Americans, the authors used a qualitative analysis to obtain viewpoints that provide a rich understanding of the motivations to consume (or not consume) baseball. Likewise, the authors investigated the facets of baseball that […]
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Women Play Sport, but not on TV: A Longitudinal Study of Televised News Media
One of the long-standing trends in research on gender in sports media is the lack of coverage of women’s sport and the lack of respectful, serious coverage of women’s sport. In this article, we critically interrogate the assumption that the media simply provide fans with what they “want to see” (i.e., men’s sports). Using quantitative […]
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Young People’s Experiences of Parental Involvement in Youth Sport
Recently parental involvement in youth sport has intensified, challenging the understanding of youth sports as an arena where adolescents can develop their identity and autonomy. On this background, our study explores how adolescents understand and negotiate their parents’ involvement in sport and how they define ideal and undesirable forms of parental involvement. Our empirical setting […]
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Youth Action Sports and Political Agency in the Middle East: Lessons from a Grassroots Parkour Group in Gaza
In this paper we build upon recent scholarship on the globalization of youth culture and sport to examine the growing popularity of action sports in the Middle East. We focus on the development of the urban physical practice of parkour (also known as free running)—the act of running, jumping, leaping through an urban environment as […]
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Youth Athletes, Bodies and Gender: Gender Constructions in Textbooks Used in Coaching Education Programmes in Sweden
This paper is based on analysis of ideas about girls and boys in sports as they are presented in textbooks used in coaching education programmes in Sweden. Specifically, it explores gender in relation to descriptions of girls’ and boys’ bodies and bodily development during puberty. Texts construct gender differences. Masculinity is shaped around being an […]
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Youth Team, League, and Tournament Sports: Market Shares, Strategies, and Forecasts, Worldwide, 2018 to 2024.
Radiant Insights has announced the addition of “Youth Team, League and Tournament Sports: Market Shares, Strategies, and Forecasts, Worldwide, 2018 to 2024” Market Research report to their database. Worldwide $22 billion youth sports markets are poised to achieve significant growth as travel teams become more popular and families learn to enjoy time together during a […]
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Social Inclusion: Through Sports-Based Interventions?
There is international enthusiasm for the idea that sport can contribute to ‘social inclusion’ strategies. Sport now features in various targeted youth initiatives, including ‘Positive Futures’: a ‘sport and activity based social inclusion programme’ currently operating in England and Wales. The processes through which these ‘sports-based interventions’ might promote ‘social inclusion’ require, however, further investigation. […]
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The Datafication of Everything: Toward a Sociology of Sport and Big Data
This paper explores the articulations of sport and ‘Big Data’—an important though to date understudied topic. That we have arrived at an ‘Age of Big Data’ is an increasingly accepted premise: the proliferation of tracking technologies, combined with the desire to record/monitor human activity, has radically amplified the volume and variety of data in circulation, […]
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Who Bets on Sports? Some Further Empirical Evidence Using German Data
Given the rapid expansion of the German sports-betting market and recent changes in market regulations, it is interesting to reexamine the socioeconomic profile of German sports bettors: Who bets on sports? In order to analyse this question, this study used an online survey to collect data on sports-betting behaviour (N=634). It modelled participation in sports […]
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Who Says “No to Modern Football?” Italian Supporters Reflexivity and Neo-liberalism
This study explores the complexities and ambiguities of the recent increase in criticism among football supporters of so-called “modern football.” Drawing on existing elaborations of the concept of reflexivity in sociology, this contribution theoretically extends the hegemony/resistance analytical framework that has commonly been used to portray the criticism of football supporters in strict opposition to […]
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