Behind Ugly Locker-room Talk Divisions of Class and Race
There’s a joke here about “the great Amherst chain of being.” The phrase evokes an invisible continuum, binding Amherst College students to their alma mater from graduation to grave. It is the strength of this chain that brings alumni back each year on the weekend after commencement, allowing them to soak in once again a […]
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Benching the Title IX Changes
In April, the Obama administration gave itself a victory lap, thinking it had just scored the winning goal by rolling back a 2005 Bush administration Title IX policy clarification. In his announcement, Vice President Biden called the rollback a “no brainer” — that is to say, it required little thought. And indeed, the Obama administration […]
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The Astronomical Cost of Kids’ Sports
In TIME’s cover story this week, senior writer Sean Gregory explores the growing business of kids’ sports — a $15.3 billion industry that has nearly doubled in the last 10 years. Between league fees, camps, equipment, training and travel, families are spending as much as 10% of their income on sports, according to survey research […]
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The Price of Football That Even Non-fans Pay
Fans of the New York Jets would have liked nothing better than to be spending money to cheer on their team at Sunday’s Super Bowl in Dallas. Unfortunately, their team was defeated by the Pittsburgh Steelers in the AFC Championship game. But in an odd twist of league economics and political gamesmanship, even those New […]
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The Price of Poverty in Big Time College Sports
Since the mid-1950s, the NCAA has promoted a mythology that college athletes on “full” scholarship receive a “free ride” in terms of their college education. As has repeatedly come to light, athletes in the revenue-producing sports of football and men’s college basketball are less likely to receive their diplomas than any other group of athlete […]
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The Youth Sports Megacomplex Comes to Town, Hoping Teams will Follow
Just past the Hampton Inn and the Chick-fil-A, beyond the climbing wall but not as far as the water park, is your field of dreams. Actually, there are eight of them: all major league-sized, synthetic-turfed and LED-lit, and wedged in next to the three soccer pitches. The Champions Center is ahead on your left, where […]
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What the NFL Won’t Show You
This NFL season a new controversy has emerged among pro football fans: a growing resentment over the content the NFL and the networks won’t share with the television audience. Call it the great All 22 Controversy of 2011. Media as varied as the Wall Street Journal, major sports blogs like Deadspin, even social commentary sites […]
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‘My Under-10 Matches Are the Worst’: No End in Sight to Youth Referee Abuse
While many acknowledge that the abuse and assault of referees is endemic in American sports culture, few people seem willing to do anything about it.
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Book Review: Sport in Latin America: Policy, Organization, Management
Language barriers and limited formal connections between professional academic associations in Latin American and the rest of the world have hampered knowledge production and distribution on sports as social phenomena in Central and South America and the Caribbean. This fact brought together the editors of this collection in an effort to present research on the […]
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For Bettors, Masters is A Major Event, Too
Golf and gambling have been linked forever. Countless weekend foursomes begin their rounds with the familiar first-tee question: “So, what are we playing for today?” Lee Trevino even said that “real pressure is playing for $10 a hole when you don’t have a dime in your pocket.” Yet, while many (if not most) golfers think […]
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High School Powers That Offer Solutions to Public, Private Problem
In recent seasons, powerful private schools Valor Christian, Mullen and Regis Jesuit seem to be winning state football, state soccer, state everything.
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Is There Life After Football? Surviving the NFL
2016 Best Book Award, North American Society for the Sociology of Sport A human face on the realities of professional football, from the challenges players face after leaving the NFL to the factors that can enable them to continue to find success Is There Life After Football? draws upon the experiences of hundreds of former […]
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Looking Upstream in Doping Cases
The case against Lance Armstrong by antidoping officials detailed how Armstrong, as the leader of his professional cycling team, used performance-enhancing drugs over many years to fuel his run as a seven-time Tour de France champion. It detailed the lengths that many teammates, trainers, doctors and other associates went to enable him to pull off […]
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Putin’s Run for Gold
At $50 billion and counting, the 2014 Winter Olympics, in Sochi, will be the most expensive Olympic Games ever. Intended to showcase the power of Vladimir Putin’s Russia, they may instead highlight its problems: organized crime, state corruption, and the terrorist threat within its borders.
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Rap Sheets, Recruits, and Repercussions
A six-month investigation by SPORTS ILLUSTRATED and CBS News reveals that an alarming number of the players at top college football programs have criminal records. A comprehensive look at where the problem begins, how it has been ignored and what can be done to rectify it—for the good of both the athletes and the schools
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Seeing Old Age as a Never-ending Adventure
Ilse Telesmanich, 90, sprained her ankle hiking in South Africa last August. She tried to keep going on the three-week trip, she said, hobbled as she was. “I got very good at hopping on one foot the last time I sprained it,” she said. But the guides had unfortunately failed to bring along any crutches […]
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Ultra Violence: How Egypt’s Soccer Mobs Are Threatening the Revolution
Wednesday’s lethal soccer riots in the Suez Canal town of Port Said, which left more than 73 spectators and security personnel dead, marks a watershed moment in Egypt after the ouster of former president Hosni Mubarak. This tragedy is not simply a story of a match gone horribly awry: It will have important and wide-ranging […]
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‘Lest Ye Be Judged’
Every day is Judgment Day for an umpire. In the early days of organized baseball, team owners actually encouraged fans to harass umps who made questionable, or just unpopular, calls — throw beer bottles at them, or even the occasional brick. The sadism of Orioles fans was especially well-known, according to the 2008 book Death […]
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“Dear Colleague” Letter
The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) in the United States Department of Education (Department) is responsible for enforcing Federal civil rights laws that prohibit discrimination based on race, color, national origin, sex, disability, or age by recipients of Federal financial assistance (recipient(s)) from the Department.1 Although a significant portion of the complaints filed with OCR […]
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“Hey, Data Data –Swing!” The Hidden Demographics of Youth Sports
Competitive Youth Sports may be as American as apple pie, but we know a lot less about youth sports than we do about apple pie. The problem is that while the FDA takes responsibility for knowing everything about our food (as the EPA does with the environment and a group called ARDA does with religious […]
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