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.