Final Reflection

Before taking this class, I viewed United States sports culture very similarly, I think, to the ways a majority of people see it: Entertaining, lively, sometimes heartbreaking, and definitely operative as a business above all else. Throughout the semester, my perceptions of sporting culture changed in the sense that I am now much more comfortable with recognizing and identifying the inequalities that permeate our "merit based" sporting landscape. For example, I never really sat down and thought about the ways that being a white, middle class male operate as a factor for success in sports due to an increase in opportunities (especially because, as it stands, the major sports in the US are so blatantly racialized).
The discussion of violence in sports really stood out to me. It's obvious that hegemonic masculinity is an ideal within the confines of American society, but it was very interesting-- and a little bit alarming-- to see just how far some people are willing to go to assert their strength and dominance.
Asking more questions about cultural constructions seems to be a common outcome of classes that are based in sociology or the social sciences, and this class is no exception. It's hard to keep living life the way you were before having your eyes opened-- ignorance is bliss, is it not?
As an athlete, I would certainly recommend this class to my friends and teammates-- it made me not only conscious of the way that sports influence society (and vice versa), but also made me very aware of the ways that my behaviors in a team context (over adhering to the sports ethic, etc) impact the rest of the women that I row with. It would be interesting to see how athletics and the sporting world would be reformed if all athletes and coaches were exposed to a class like this.

The University of Colorado Women's Crew Team (Spring 2014) after a great day of racing
(I'm in the obnoxious blue shoes)

Why the 'Mans Mans' Game is an Insult to Men

Michael Sam is probably not what you picture
when you picture a gay man-- why not? 

The film Training Rules follows the story of Rene Portland, former women's basketball head coach at Penn State, who instated a series of "training rules" for her team. This in and of itself is not the problem, most teams have some sort of set of rules in place to ensure that not only are athletes performing to their highest potential, but they're also aware of the standards to which they are being held. However, among the common "no drinking, no drugs" rules that most teams tend to enforce in some capacity, Portland had her own addition: No lesbians. This blatant form of discrimination was virtually disregarded, glossed over in Portland's triumphant 25 seasons at Penn State. Though her rules seem despicable to the outside observer (and, don't get me wrong, they are actually genuinely horrible), Portland was able to use her "anti-gay clause" as a selling point for playing women's basketball at Penn State as opposed to virtually any other NCAA DI school-- by painting lesbians as the ultimate corrupt individuals, Portland created an atmosphere that was fundamentally unsafe for gay athletes.

Rene Portland isn't the only person in the sports world promoting a homophobic agenda-- far from it. Though assertions of a progressive society are all over the place in United States culture, the fact of the matter is that our national societal ideals are still largely rooted in religious traditions that were especially widely accepted as normative in the 19th century. What I mean by that is that our culture, at its most basic level, is fundamentally still very conservative. This is manifest most obviously in sports, wherein it is certainly non-normative (and potentially dangerous, even) to be a homosexual and exist in that world. Many sports are loaded with homosexual stigma: women's softball and basketball are written off immediately as being loaded with lesbians. Men's sports don't really carry the same stigma: in a culture that bases people's inherent value on heteronormative ideals, men being strong and competitive and athletic is normal, for women, it counts as a form of deviance (unless, you know, you play a pretty girl sport, like volleyball).

For the sports culture here to become more inclusive, people as a whole need to make a paradigm shift-- sports is an exaggerated stage for the demonstration of cultural ideals, and until our culture focuses significantly less time and energy on tearing people down for their sexual orientations (or even caring about other people's significant other preferences), sports will continue to shine a light on the shortcomings in our social constructions.

Darwin's Athletes: Problematizing Race in Sports

Last week, the College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational (yes, competitive poetry) was hosted at CU Boulder: Students from all around the country came to represent their schools by throwing down some absolutely gut-wrenchingly beautiful works of art. A majority of the students represented were African American, and one of my teammates on our (all white) team exclaimed, "I don't think there has ever been so much non-athletic racial diversity on CU's campus." While this is perhaps not the most articulate sentiment, it certainly holds some ground. People often joke that when they see an African American student on campus, the first things they wonder is what sport said student plays. Especially in Boulder, there's a certain assumption surrounding the African American population and their participation in sports.
As evidenced in the movie Hoop Dreams, many African American youths view a career in professional athletics as their main path to social mobility, though it's very likely that the actual number of African American students who view sports as their proverbial "passport from the projects" is hugely skewed by US media and the stories that sell.

The Blind Side poster art

In Hollywood, it's easy to guess the premise of a sports film as soon as your eyes land on the poster art: a brooding, handsome AThe Blind Side, the true story of Michael Oher, a homeless African American boy who is adopted into the loving, middle class caucasian arms of Sandra Bullock's character, the proverbial white person as savior. It's interesting to see how problematized the role of race is in Hollywood with regards to film in general: When casting directors are looking for someone to play their down-and-out African American protagonist, they often go with newcomers to the film scene and juxtapose their character with a big ticket celebrity (In the case of The Blind Side, Sandra Bullock and Lily Collins).
frican American man is often superimposed over the horizon, and the expression in his eyes illustrates immediately that he is poised for status as legend. The most obvious contemporary example of this overt racialized sports film is

Stories like The Blind Side get copious amounts of attention because everyone loves an underdog narrative, and really, who's more of an underdog than an impoverished African American with inexplicably fine-tuned athletic abilities. Of course, this is also a problem, because it propagates the idea of racial superiority when it comes to certain races and their participation in certain sports. Stereotypes about race (including but certainly not limited to participation in certain athletics) only serve to maintain the already obvious cycle of preconceived notions. The impacts of these notions shouldn't be written off as quickly as they are: After all, Hollywood is raking in cash based on cultural assumptions and appreciations about racialized sporting narratives.

Sports, (Wo)Men, and the Gender Order

The Women's Tennis Association (WTA) recently released an advertising campaign declaring that "Strong is Beautiful," which sounds like a progressive movement at first-- after all, it's a campaign devoted to recognizing that the women who compete in tennis at a professional level (as well as women in athletics in general-- strong women) are beautiful in a way that is rooted in their trained strength. But somehow, instead of encouraging women to get active and competitive regardless of, for example, how they look, these ads are further problematizing the role of female athletes.

"Strong is Beautiful" is a great sentiment, but the fact of the matter is that as long as the term "beautiful" is being used in advertising for women's athletics, no real progress is being made. Instead of focusing on the athletic abilities of these women, it's focusing on their physicality, as though this advertisement is making it okay for a woman to be multifaceted, like before this ad revolutionized women's athletics, strong and beautiful existed in binary opposition and it was impossible for a woman to be both. 

Model Athlete? Or Model, Athlete?
(Tyra Banks would be so proud of that smize)

Then there's the ad itself: Petra Kvlotva is swinging a tennis racquet, but in a pose that looks more like a ballerina than a professional tennis player. Her hair is curled to perfection, down and flowing, her face is perhaps more pallid and serene than the Virgin Mary, and that dress. Petra Kvlotva is pictured-- strength and beauty personified-- in a flowing red high-low number that belongs in an episode of America's Next Top Model over an advertisement that teaches girls and women that they can be pretty and athletic. The background of the ad fades from purple to orange, bathing Kvlotva in a flattering sunsetty glow. She is the very picture of beauty, looking more like a Greek Goddess awkwardly holding a tennis racquet than an athlete awkwardly forced to take a swing in an outfit that's even impractical by tennis standards. 

Add caption

In stark juxtaposition to this photo, the ATP World Tour advertisement shows three tennis greats, all men, swinging their racquets, muscles tensed, faces barred into expressions of concentration and intensity. The caption on their photo isn't an encouraging sentiment about how being strong can also be pretty, it's two words, pure and simple, all caps: BEAT THIS. The advertisement exudes athleticism--

look at their muscles, look at their workout clothes, look at the action lines superimposed over the picture so the viewer can see exactly where their swing came from, the full range of motion. They don't have to justify themselves in sport by being pretty, because they're not supposed to.

Men in sports are intense, focused, determined. Women are all of those things, too, it's just covered up by lip gloss and curled hair, plastered to sunsetty backgrounds of ads that oversexualize athleticism. The contrast between these two blatantly gendered advertisements not only propagates gendered stereotypes  within the sporting realm, but also in general. Women are culturally expected to be delicate, fragile, graceful and beautiful, whereas hegemonic masculinity mandates that men be strong and rugged and determined. If these ads don't epitomize gender in sports, I don't know what does.

Interrogating inequalities in Sports Media: Examining gender (and race?) representation in Sports Illustrated

According to Sports Illustrated, 2013 was a great year for sports. Or at least that's the image projected: nearly every cover of the magazine last year depicts a sports hero in action, sliding into home, narrowly avoiding a tackle, gearing up to throw a pass that will inevitably reach its target. These magazine covers make it look like 2013 was The Year of the Sports Hero. So when is the year of the woman? Obviously not 2013.

Peyton Manning's 2013
Sportsman of the Year  cover:
Rugged, intense, oozing
masculinity, and absolutely no
cleavage in sight.

Of the sixty issues of Sports Illustrated printed last year, only two of them featured women on the covers. That's only 3.3% of the covers; 96.7% of Sports Illustrated covers in 2013 were male athletes. You may say, "Emily, I get it, and it's cute that you did some math, but shouldn't women just be happy that female athletes are represented on two of the Sports Illustrated covers?" Oh, Dear Reader, I wish that two female athletes were represented on the covers. But please notice that I never said the glossy women on the glossy covers of these glossy sports pages were athletes, though one of them is in uniform. 

Sigmund Freud would have something to say
about this cover (Sports Illustrated, 10/07/2013)

"Please, Emily," You may say, "Stop with the facetiousness and just get on with it." Well, if you insist. The woman in uniform is not an athlete. She is not muscular or sweaty or depicted in a position of power or glory. No. The woman in uniform is none other than America's lingerie-clad Sweetheart, Kate Upton. She's wearing a fitted version of an Atlanta Braves uniform and is casually perched on the shoulders of two African-American Braves players. So what does it say, then, that in this circumstance, sex is absolutely being used to sell magazines? Still not sold on this idea? There is a hot white woman, blonde hair and blue eyes, the epitome of Aryan ideologies, posed suggestively on the broad shoulders of two African American men. Upton is wearing her signature "come-hither" expression, and the men are both grinning and leaning towards her. Problematic? Absolutely. By positioning Upton above the two African-American athletes, not only is this cover propagating the idea of a sexualized image of women in sports, it's also presenting a very interesting and fundamentally important race dichotomy. Placing Upton physically above the men illustrates the race/gender binary that is to this day at odds in American society-- she is superior to them, an insinuation that is implicit in her physical positioning, but also in her pigmentation. Though I feel uncomfortable treading into slavery territory, there's a status that Upton, as an attractive white female, has acquired that these male athletes have not. 

Another interesting way that sex is being utilized in this cover is the positioning of the men's baseball bats. Freud would absolutely love the phallocentric nature of this magazine cover. I mean for goodness sakes, both of the men are holding their big, hard, wooden (yeah, I went there) baseball bats between their legs. Sports Illustrated is an excellent manifestation of Freud's theory of the phallus as it appears in American Culture. When addressed in his texts, Freud addresses the phallus as an obsession, something that permeates the subconscious of every individual, so to have something so blatant as two men with literal rods between their legs isn't subtle, or particularly clever, but seems to be an effective marketing tool. The crotch-bats (of these two African American men, no less) and a hot blonde  propagates basically every stereotypical American male wet dream ever, and very clearly illustrate the hyper-sexualization of US sporting culture.

Kate Upton's 2013 SI Swimsuit Cover

"Whoa, Emily." You're probably thinking, blushing, "You are really making a lot of really bold assertions. I'm sure Sports Illustrated isn't intentionally objectifying women." You're right. You are totally right. I'm sure that it's an accident, then, that the other Sports Illustrated cover that features a woman is the infamous Swimsuit Issue. And it's totally a coincidence that we have the return of the Prodigal Model. Yes, that's right, it's Kate Upton again. Still hot, still blonde, still portraying unrealistic American standards of beauty to everyone who looks at the cover. You know, all in a day's work. 

I'm not attacking Upton for her chosen career, or the fact that she's blonde and has boobs. That's all great. More power to her. But the way those things are portrayed by the sporting industry is in need of a major makeover. Female athletes will never get the respect that they work for as long as magazines like Sports Illustrated keep presenting women as nothing but a pretty face and their nice assets (pun intended; not only is Upton well endowed, she's also got quite a financial endowment due to her father… word play is the best). But for that to happen, there needs to be a shift in consumer culture, as well. Magazines keep printing pictures of men being rugged and chiseled and women being sexy and naked because people keep buying it. Though our culture has made great strides towards gender equality, magazines like Sports Illustrated are perfect examples of how far we still have to go. Where was Becky Hammon's Sports Illustrated cover? Where are the photos of Eli Manning in body paint smoldering at the camera? I'm not saying boycott all magazines and go live in a hole until people are miraculously equal. In fact, if buying the Swimsuit Issue makes you happy, Dear Reader, then by all means, do it. Just be aware of the inequalities in your consumption.

Sources:

http://cnnsi.com/vault/cover/select/2013-01-01/2013-12-31/dd/1/index.htm

http://www.cla.purdue.edu/english/theory/psychoanalysis/freud.html

Reflecting on the Shame of College Sports: Should NCAA Div 1 Basketball and Football players get paid?

According to Taylor Branch's article in The Atlantic, "The Shame of College Sports," the United States is the only country that competes internationally in big name sports at the collegiate level, which immediately presents a bias inherent to the argument of whether or not collegiate athletes should be paid to play-- those Americans and their sporting culture have some backwards priorities. On one hand, representatives from the NCAA argue that the "amateur status" of the athletes operates in direct correlation to the proverbial "sanctity" of the sport in which they participate, and paying the athletes would alter the game, that "commercialism was hurting college sports, and that higher education's historical balance between academics and athletics had been distorted by all the money sloshing around" (Branch). 

The flip side of this argument is presented flawlessly by a New York Times article that explores the sports economy in the United States, specifically the impact of money on college football. The assertion of this article is made blatantly clear within the first paragraph of the piece: "big money has taken over everything else in sports." Poignant? Certainly. Upsetting? Only in its truth. Uniforms, pre and post workout energy drinks, and even stadiums are being stamped with the name of the highest bidder: Duke and Louisville played their Elite Eight game during March Madness 2013 in Lucas Oil Stadium, for goodness sakes. Anyone who argues for the sanctity of sport has obviously not been paying attention to the growing logos on the jerseys of their favorite team or that they all wear the same brand of shoes.

Highest paid public employees by state: Most are college
coaches-- do athletes deserve to benefit from a trickle down effect?

I've thought a lot about whether or not NCAA athletes should get paid for their work, and though it would be nice to get a check every once and a while for entertaining hoards of adoring fans and being a major draw to a specific university, most athletes are getting paid via tuition to attend specific schools. Scholarships are, in a sense, means of getting paid, are they not? Many athletes also receive stipends from their given schools for housing, food and books-- that's another acknowledgement of the efforts being put into the school. But on the other hand, in most states, the highest paid public employees are football coaches (exceptions in North Carolina and Kentucky are basketball coaches), so why wouldn't their players, the ones who execute the actual work, get to reap any of the benefits? I think largely, my stance on the payment of NCAA athletes is centered around the phrase "student athlete." It implies a level of priority, that being a student should come above the sport that said student plays. If they're getting paid for a sport, then suddenly the priority shifts, since the sport, and not the academics, would present a major source of income. Programs all over the nation are already pushing unprepared collegiate athletes through the school for selfish fiscal gain (See also: the University of North Carolina "African Studies" Major that turned out to be a fake department, giving football and basketball players A's in classes that didn't even exist on campus, ever); if athletes were suddenly getting paid for their sport, there would be even more motivation for coaches and athletes to counterfeit their way through education. 

Also, paying college athletes would just cause the current sports paradigm to shift downwards: then high school players would be the new college players, unpaid, full of potential and ready to turn it into a career. And with college athletes being treated like pros, what would that make the professional athletes? Demi gods? 

High School Sport

In the early 1900's, the United States became one of the only nations in the world that funds inter-school athletic programs. According to Coakley, the "idealized" purpose of high school sport is to propagate learning experiences and social identities, as well as educate youth about participating in a team dynamic-- working with a group of people towards a shared common goal is a fundamental skill not only on the basketball court, but also in the workplace, in academic settings, and even interpersonal relationships. Of course, these fundaments of high school sport aren't necessarily objectives that are being met. Instead of simply encouraging students to be more well rounded individuals and team players, high school students are being forced to prioritize between their academics and their athletics, and in this unintentional binary, it's often the education that suffers. 

Demetrius Walker, former child prodigy

Though the intentions of high school sports in an ideal world are fairly pure and simple, sports have become such a large-scale national pastime that the sporting identity becomes one that's difficult to escape from, so students aren't just students, but "student athletes" (and there's a reason that the word "student" comes first). The meeting of these expectations is what's causing issue in American high school sports: instead of just encouraging students to get out, get active, and be part of a team, the obsession with sports in our culture is motivating students to push themselves to absolute limits starting at a very early age. 

As evidenced in the article about Demetrius Walker, an immense amount of pressure is being put on young athletes-- if they don't live up to their projected potential, there's a vast arena for disappointment. 

The main concern with the "student/athlete" identity is the blatant imbalance of priorities: though remaining academically eligible is important when it comes to not getting benched, often student athletes will regard workouts as more important than homework, and their education has the potential to be stunted simply because of their over-adherence to the sporting identity that the United States sports culture seems to want to cultivate from day one. 

Once the Cheering Stops: The Life of a Retired Pro Athlete

Sometimes when people ask me what I want to do after I graduate, I tell them that I'd like nothing more than to do nothing but watch Netflix for the rest of my life, which is absolutely not true. Don't get me wrong-- I love marathoning such quality titles as "That 70's Show" or "One Tree Hill," but there's no way I could ever spend all of my time moping around in sweats, watching Netflix and generally feeling sorry for myself before an inherent feeling of uselessness set in. For many professional athletes, however, post-retirement is alarmingly similar to my theoretical post-grad plans; often after they retire, professional athletes spend a lot of time indoors, perhaps streaming TV shows and movies for hours on end, and ultimately feeling sorry for themselves.
And why wouldn't they? Looking back on life and realizing that your life's "high point" was in your early to mid-twenties doesn't instill a sense of motivation or enthusiasm for the future by any means-- in fact, this exact sentiment is why so many ex-professional athletes cite depression as one of the main things they struggled with after hanging up their jersey for good. After retirement, unless an athlete has been very careful with their finances, there's a good chance that they will run into money troubles-- according to Sports Illustrated, 78% of NFL players are bankrupt within two years of retiring. The lifestyle they lead while playing isn't sustainable in the longterm, which ends up being something that many pro-athletes have had to learn the hard way. Another thing athletes struggle with after they retire is a colossal identity crisis. If a person spends their whole life fine-tuning a set of skills as specific as playing sports, then that's the most established part of their developed "self," so giving up the game is, in fact, giving up a large part of themselves. I am by no means a professional athlete, but when I think about being done with crew after college, I have a tiny freakout, because for the past three years, I've been recognized as Emily Connelly: Rower. I can't imagine if my whole life was focused around the sport and my career had a blatant expiration date like those of professional football or basketball players.
In the ESPN movie "Broke," the idea of professional athletes as competitors in every walk of life was very striking-- the living lavishly wasn't necessarily because all of the athletes get drafted to the NBA, MLB or NFL and then suddenly acquire a thirst for fifty-six thousand square feet and a cherry red Lamborghini, it's because culturally, it's what they're expected to want. In a way, competing with other men (always men-- when was the last time you saw a WNBA player in a Maserati? My guess is never, since in 2012 the average salary for a WNBA player was $72,000 annually… um…) is what US society expects their athletes to do, and in becoming big spenders, professional athletes are playing into cultural blueprints of expectations. In order to be that caliber of athlete, your competitive drive has to be immense, so why wouldn't translate into off-court interactions?
Transitioning from making millions of dollars a year to making virtually no money calls for a fundamental lifestyle alteration, but after participating in an enterprise of excess for however long one's contract (and body) allows, I don't imagine that cutting back comes particularly easily. When I quit my summer job before college, I had a hard time adjusting to my new means, and I worked at a grocery store. I can't even begin to fathom how difficult the fiscal shift is for retiring athletes.
I think the "here today, gone tomorrow" nature of professional athletes careers contributes to their longterm short comings-- when you're on top of the world, there's a feeling of invincibility, untouchableness. Many of the athletes in the movie discussed getting caught up in the spending and spending machine, and losing themselves in the process. The wise scholar Young Jeezy once said, "gotta stay true to who you are and where you came from, 'cause at the top will be the same place you hang from," which is a sentiment that was deeply manifest in Broke. In failing to plan for their futures and getting too caught up in appearances, the fall from grace for many professional athletes has catastrophic and painful repercussions. But as the only woman in the film said, "Nobody feels bad for you when you've squandered away millions of dollars." That's true. Us little people just sit here, think about how stupid they are with their money, and then find solace in the statement, "I would never do that." It's easy to make judgement calls when it's not (and likely never will be) your money.

Author's note: Young Jeezy is not actually a scholarly source. I know.

Sports, Politics, and the Olympics

Jesse Owens, Olympic gold medalist in the 1936 Berlin Games.
Owens won four gold medals, even in the face of adversity (America!)

Mass media and the Olympics seems like a given in society today, but it wasn't always so. In fact, mass media was such a novel platform for spreading ideas that when the German Olympic Committee decided to install closed-circuit television systems in the track and field stadiums, gymnasiums, and other Olympic venues built specifically for the purpose of the 1936 games, Adolf Hitler saw the games as the perfect opportunity to promote his fascist government and the ideas of a superior aryan race; he even went so far as to publish in his party's newspaper that Jews and persons of color shouldn't be allowed to compete. Although Hitler "cleaned up" the games after many nations threatened to boycott the games, removing the anti-semitic propaganda he had condoned throughout Berlin, there was still considerable debate among many nations about whether or not the Nazi Games were a "safe" competition. Turkish athletes refused to be formally introduced to Hitler, the Spanish government opted instead to host its own Olympiad (which was a failure), and even the United States considered requesting a boycott. However, it was determined that "the Olympic Games should not reflect political views, but rather should be a contest of the greatest athletes." Meanwhile, many African-American communities supported participation in the games, and for good reason: in the event of African-American victories, athletes would be undermining aryan supremacy. 

In the case of the Nazi Games, sports were being used as a vehicle for propaganda, one of Sage and Eitzen's 5 political uses of sport. One one hand, Hitler and the rest of Nazi Germany were using the games to promote their political views on a global spectrum. But not all propaganda is negative: countries that didn't boycott the games, such as the United States, aired the Olympics on national television so that everyone could watch US citizens "defeat" the proverbial bad guys. In contrast to Hitler's shameless self-promotion, the US used propaganda to create a sense of national unity.

Asserting that sports are devoid of all political interference is a ballsy claim, and one that holds very little ground when the history of sports are brought into consideration. As evidenced by the 1936 Olympic Games, sometimes sports are the most effective method to spread a message of power-- if that's not political, I don't know what is. 

London Calling: The Globalization of the NFL

Wembley Stadium: Future of the NFL?

In honor of Peyton Manning and his "Omaha!" battle cry in games, flights from anywhere in the country to Omaha are $48 in honor of Super Bowl XLVIII. On the surface level, this seems trivial, and maybe it is, since the entire premise of the airline deal is to increase the number of passengers flying to Nebraska. But at the same time, this deal, and the national excitement spurred by Peyton Manning is the epitome of the football culture in the United States-- in January and February, suddenly everyone is wearing apparel emblazoned with their team's logo, even if their team isn't one of the final two competing for a giant Super Bowl ring. There's a sense of national pride around the Super Bowl that isn't nearly as prevalent with any other sports. There's a camaraderie that spreads across the United States like wildfire when it comes to football, and it very much has become a source of national identity. This is why when the NFL discusses plans for expanding the enterprise "across the Pond," it's certainly a source of controversy.

When it comes to capital, it's not hard to see why the NFL is looking to globalize: if the international expansion works well, from a business standpoint, it's brilliant. At the end of the day, the NFL is a billion dollar business, so when they make plans for expansion, it's not about the fans or the nationalism associated with the game, it's all about generating maximum revenue, and evidently, London seems like a place to do that.

London is, theoretically, the perfect city to host an NFL team. It's a big city, easily accessed, and already equip with Wembley Stadium, which is a stadium used for World Cup qualifying matches and rugby matches, but is largely dormant in the fall and winter-- perfect for football season. 

But like most large corporate decisions, the idea of an NFL team in London is not without a dark side. Globalization is a funny term, because the cross-continental migration of American Football is not a global phenomenon, but rather the Americanization of European countries. I imagine that if the English National Rugby Association were to plant one of their teams in the United States, because it's not culturally relevant, it wouldn't generate the anticipated capital, and this is absolutely mirrored in the UK NFL. Football culture is an American phenomenon; it's just not relevant enough in the UK to generate enough capital to be worth all of the risks. 

It's not unnecessary to point out that NFL stands for National Football League-- if it moves across the pond, will the most familiar brand in sports marketing have to change its entire identity?

Sociogenesis of Rowing

When I tell people in Colorado that I'm on the crew team, I'm more often than not greeted with blank stares. So I say, "You know… rowing?" I demonstrate a little arms away stroke in hopes that I can provide some kind of visual. More blank stares. I say, "You know, like in the Olympics!" Most people get it then, some people go on looking at me like I'm speaking in an entirely different language, which half the time, I might as well be. I often end up resorting to the most basic illustration of rowing that I can think of: "Have you seen the movie The Social Network? Yeah, the hot twins." Despite the apparent unpopularity of rowing in a landlocked state like Colorado, the sport has been extremely prevalent historically. 

In ancient Egypt, Rome and Greece, boats were used to transport goods or wage war, which meant that more often than not, the rowers were in fact slaves or prisoners who weren't rowing out of love of the sport, but pure obligation (I like to remind my coach of this when a piece feels particularly difficult). However, the origin of rowing as a sport has its roots firmly planted on the shores of the River Thames. The first rowing race was five miles long and took place on the Thames in 1716 (Academia Remigum), but the first 8+ boat race (the race that defined rowing as a sport) didn't occur until 1829. It was raced between Oxford and Cambridge universities, and remains perhaps the most intense rowing rivalry: there's a reason the annual dual is referred to not as "a boat race" but The Boat Race.

The Boat Race as we know it today was started by Charles Merivale, a student at Cambridge, challenging one of his friends at Oxford to a little race in 1829. By 1836, The Boat Race had become an annual tradition, with the losing team challenging the winner to a rematch each year. Though initially, races were between two (or more) boats who started roughly at the same spot and tried to reach a decided finishing point first, the way regattas are conducted has shifted substantially, likely due to the efficacy of The Boat Race.

Early rowing uniform

CU Women's Crew at Nationals (Modern rowing uniform)

Now, fall races are typically known as head races, where all boats line up according to bow number and start one at a time, with around a 10 second (though sometimes more, sometimes less) staggered start. In races with this structure, each crew is racing against the clock in hopes of being the team with the best time. These are usually longer races, ranging from about 3k to 10k, depending on the course. They follow the course of the river, so the coxswain tries to steer the shortest course possible amid curves and bridges. In the spring, races are much more standardized: 2000 meters, sprint style. All boats line up in stake boats to ensure that everyone's bows are exactly aligned and-much like in track and field- athletes are told to sit at attention, then a gun goes off, and it's a mad dash to the finish line. Courses for 2k races are typically marked with a different color of buoy each 500m, and failure to keep your crew in their respective lane results in penalties of 10 seconds added to your crew's overall time are in order. 

Rowing was typically regarded as a men's sport, but once women were allowed to join, their modern and aerodynamic uniforms consisted of bloomers and puffy sleeves-- it was all about remaining conservative (and stylish, evidently), while the equipment used in the sport was all made of wood, so very heavy and likely not much fun. Now, both men's and women's crew teams wear spandex bottoms, and, depending on the team, either a team tank top (tucked in), or just a full spandex unisuit, or uni (or sausage casing-- nothing is more unflattering than the seams that JL thinks are necessary to stitch horizontally across the butt). Equipment now is made of carbon fiber, since the more lightweight it is, the faster the boat is able to go. 

CU Women's Crew out on the Boulder Res

The Olympic Games have been a huge proponent in the spread of rowing on a global spectrum: the United States, Great Britain, Canada and New Zealand all have very competitive national teams, but countries like Slovenia, Poland and Croatia are also known to show up and compete. Rowing has become a global phenomenon, which is partially due to the fact that it's a genuinely fascinating sport, but also-- speculatively-- due to the colonizing powers of England.

Though the sport is beautiful and popular in places with lots of access to water (the UK, the East and West Coasts of the United States, not Colorado), for land locked locales, a major challenge rowing faces is its accessibility, and with that, the retention rates. If I could be on the water every day, I'm sure I would be a much more driven rower than being on the water for four months and the erg studio for the remaining eight. Another problem with rowing is its inherent exclusivity. A nice boat runs around fifty thousand dollars (and a decent one for racing is at least thirty), so the stigma of rowing as a sport for upper class, white, old money Boston families certainly does hold water (pun intended).

Sport in the Ancient World

The methods of sport and its cultural importance has shifted substantially since Ancient Greece or Rome, but yet the expectations have stayed fairly consistent. In both Ancient Greece and Rome, victorious athletes were hailed as objects of envy and desire, which is an idea that (though admittedly toned down) is still fundamentally practiced; successful athletes attain a level of celebrity just because they're really good at what they do.
When the first Olympic Games were played in Greece in 776 BC, value was placed on sprinting; in fact, that was the only event. As the Games evolved, other track and field events, like discus throw and triple jump, began to be used. In Ancient Greece, much like in professional sports today, being an athlete was considered a "lucrative and respectable" position, and the winners of the Olympic Games were hailed as sons of gods. Any freeborn Greek was allowed to participate in the Games, and they were played naked to illustrate the fundamental unimportance of class or affluence in competition. Unlike athletic events today, however, Greek sport was all about underlying religious connotations. The men who participated in the games were viewed as the physical manifestations of "perfect human specimens," i.e.: the gods.
In Ancient Rome, the gladiators were often slaves or prisoners, forced not only to train vigorously, but also to eat a high energy diet so they could keep up their pique physical shape. The demographics of the gladiators as compared to the spectators in the colosseum serves to create a very different atmosphere for Roman sport than Grecian sport; instead of having an equalizing religious theme, Roman sport was almost purely for entertainment purposes. It relied on physical contact, and every time a gladiator stepped into the arena, he had a 1 in 6 chance of dying. The focus of Roman sport was more for spectacle than anything else; athletes were praised for their fighting skills, but aside from that, they held very little significant cultural value.

Sport, Society & Me

I've described myself as an athlete for as long as I can remember, dabbling in everything from running to soccer to basketball, before finally settling on rowing. The way I encountered crew was entirely accidental: before I moved into my dorm freshman year of college, my mother told me that my college experience would be significantly better if I joined a team of some sort, because then I'd have a group of friends with shared common interests from the very get-go. Naturally I, eighteen and headstrong, totally blew off everything she said. At first.

Three days into the semester, I realized that I wasn't meeting people who I actively wanted to spend time with, and rebelling against my parents wasn't nearly as fun once I didn't live with them anymore. On that third day of college, a boy came up to me and introduced himself. He said his name was Matt, and he told me that he was on the University of Colorado Crew Team. Both of my parents rowed in college, so I knew enough about crew to know that when he said the team could always use "girls like me," he meant that the team needed coxswains. I was a varsity athlete in high school, and I had just spent a month backpacking the Colorado Trail-- I was most certainly not coxswain material. And so I attended an informational meeting about joining the rowing team-- with the intention to row-- just to prove to this random boy who didn't even matter that there's no such thing as a "girl like me."

On the first day of water practice, I was terrified. Somehow, in my determination to be a serious rower, I had forgotten that the boat would be unset, that every tiny wake from the coaches launch would give me terrifying visions of me pitching over the side of the boat and into the Boulder Reservoir. Somehow, despite this fear, something clicked that first morning. 

The role that my sport plays in my life is starring one, fundamentally important to why I am the way I am; most of my close friends are the girls that I see at five o' clock every morning, sweaty and miserable but still somehow clinging on to a mutual idea that somewhere deep down, this is a fun thing to be doing. But the role rowing plays in my life isn't exclusively defined by the people with whom I associate; rowing has transformed and defined my college experience. Waking up at 5 am isn't part of a typical college experience, and neither is spending spring break doing two-a-day practices in glamorous locales like Nachitoches, Louisiana. But also the team atmosphere gives me something to wake up for. When I don't have practice, it's really hard for me to wake up for my 9 am classes, but somehow I can get up at 5 am every single day for practice. This comes down to accountability and determination, both of which are values prized in athletes, starting at a very early age and becoming more prominent as the proverbial playing field gets more globalized.

Sport, when in a cooperative environment, plays a very positive role in a person because it instills values that are beneficial in everyday life. Dedication, determination, commitment and problem solving can all be taught through sports, but are also fundamentally important in the workplace or academics. However, the increase in prevalence of sports in US culture is presenting a paradigm shift; instead of valuing occupations in fields like education or health professions, society at large has started investing immense amounts of time and capital into enterprises-- like sports-- that are virtually useless for anything aside from entertainment value. Athletes are put on these pedestals that elevate their status from athlete to celebrity to idol; as expressed in Eitzen's chapter on the duality of sport, the Super Bowl is a physical manifestation of "the highest Sabbath in American religion, the annual consecration of corporate culture…" (Eitzen, 3). Though operating in hyperbole, the intention of this statement is blatantly clear. Society at large invests a lot of stock into the sports culture in America, so much that it becomes barely short of a religious experience. This sentiment, extreme though it may be, serves to illustrate just how elevated the status of not just athletes, but their associates (coaches, team owners, etc) have become in society. Being from North Carolina and obnoxiously aware of ACC basketball, I think Coach K of the Duke Blue Devils is a perfect example of this: he's just a basketball coach. But somewhere along the line, his many successes turned him into an icon, the proverbial symbol of a culture much larger than himself.

The Sport Ethic

At its most basic level, the Sport Ethic according to Hughes and Coakley is the culmination of the rules (both written rules and anticipated norms within the sport) that athletes adhere to in the pursuit of their best possible performance. On page 310, Hughes and Coakley outline the four dimensions of Sports Ethic, or the fundamental underlying expectations that are associated with participating in athletics. The first of these is that being an athlete involves making sacrifices. In order to perform to one's full potential, they are expected to prioritize their sport and performance above petty vices and habits that aren't beneficial towards meeting their goals. 

Hughes and Coakley assert that the second dimension of Sports Ethic is that being an athlete "involves striving for distinction" (310). In a competitive atmosphere, it becomes of the essence for a person to strive to stand out, but this is also where the problem of "overconforming" comes into play. It's the norm for an athlete to go above and beyond to prove themselves, so much that it becomes an expectation. Instead, then, of being praised for their progress, the paradigm shifts to an accusatory tone when the expectation of overconforming isn't being met. Instead of giving positive affirmations to the athletes who make the necessary sacrifices and go the proverbial extra mile, coaches resort to ragging on athletes who are demonstrating a "lack" in any of the four dimensions; lack of hustle becomes lack of effort, which then becomes lack of caring-- a sentiment which can then be boiled down into a fundamental lack of dedication (311).

Being a dedicated athlete is defined by the third and fourth dimensions of Sports Ethic, which are accepting risks and playing through pain, and refusing to accept limits in the pursuit of possibility. Athletes conform to these four beliefs not out of sheer determination, but for an array of external reasons. On page 313, Hughes and Coakley explain that inter-athlete bonds reaffirm a sense of fraternity within the athletes. This is important because it creates a world for the athlete where their identity is congruent with a group identity; they become part of a whole. As expressed on page 312, "As self identification becomes lodged within sport, a person is increasingly susceptible to control that is grounded in the sport and sport groups." Essentially, what that means is that as a person's self-perception transitions into "the self as athlete," there is an internal desire to confirm this self at every given opportunity. 

I'm not a professional athlete, nor will I ever be, but reading this article, I was shocked by how applicable the four dimensions of the Sport Ethic were to my life (and my team). I row on the varsity women's crew team, and every day, we are expected to make sacrifices (five am practices equal sacrificed sleep, erging every day is a sacrifice of comfort, as well as a tiny piece of my soul), be competitive enough to distinguish ourselves as a standout member of the team and deserving of a given seat in the boat. Every morning, I have to refuse to accept limits. Every day. I'm five feet tall, and I decided on the first day of my freshman year that I did not want to be a coxswain (which means that every practice is a battle for me). My size is a huge limitation when it comes to a sport like rowing, but I made the decision to just be "good" without any qualifiers ("good for my size"). And frankly, I don't think Hughes and Coakley's assertion of an athlete "Accepting risks and playing through the pain" (311) will ever be fully understood by anyone who hasn't pulled a 2k.

Sport(s) in the USA

The culture of sports in the United States is hardly comparable to the atmosphere surrounding athletics in any other country; instead of just having one or two sports that we excel at on a national (or international) stage, the US has a knack for professional levels of a variety of sports, though the popularity of one over the other varies greatly from region to region.
"I just don't understand American Football," my family's exchange student told my brother over breakfast one morning, "although when I was in Canada, my host family took me to a CFL game. The Roughriders aren't bad." My brother almost spit out his coffee (he's nothing if not polite…) before blurting out, "The Canadian Football League is where they send American football players who aren't good enough to play in the states." Though this was not necessarily the most articulate introduction to American sports, my brother managed to fairly accurately sum up the sports culture in the United States. Specifically, the attitude held by many dedicated spectators: we are the best. But the "we" that is adored by fans is not generalized to just any athlete participating in just any sport. The United States has a few sports that stand out as the million dollar babies of the American athletic landscape: Football (the American kind, naturally), basketball, baseball and hockey seem to be the most nationally validated sports.
The sports that are popular in the US on a national level all have a few things in common, the most basic of which being the outcome. One team usually comes out on top (though in soccer, ties are also possible), and though not all sports are inherently high scoring (hockey or soccer aren't likely to have scores in the double digits, let alone be even remotely close to say, a hundred point basketball game), they are unified by a competitiveness, a fast pace, and a relatively even playing field. As a spectator, the potential for an upset, a victorious underdog, is enough to keep you on the edge of your seat, biting your nails until the very last minute.
Sports in the United States have become culturally relevant because of their fan bases; game day is nothing short of a battlefield, unifying a group of otherwise (likely) dissimilar people in one common goal-- to be the best (or, since most people are not professional athletes, to see "your guys" go all the way, to watch them be the best). The unity of people towards a common goal seems to be the major draw of sports fandom, thus the basis of the importance of sports in US culture as a whole.
I'm from Durham, North Carolina, where I was raised by two Duke grads, so it's not too much of an exaggeration to say that the first ABC's that I learned were "Anybody But Carolina." Though NCAA basketball doesn't hold as much merit as the NFL on a national scale, I think the Duke/Carolina rivalry, manifest through basketball, is a very clear illustration of how sports function within our culture. On one hand, it's fun to put on your team's gear and watch a game with likeminded people, but in a crowd of fans, it's just as easy to get caught up in the proverbial mob mentality, to cheer against your opponent instead of for your team, to forget that at the most basic level, the only thing separating one team from the other is (in the case of Duke and Carolina) fifteen miles and a shade of blue.