Category Archives: Sports

The rise of “Seven Nation Army” to sports folk song

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Deadspin has the story of how the song “Seven Nation Army” became ubiquitous at sporting events around the world. Here are a few of the important steps in the rise of the song:

The march toward musical empire began on Oct. 22, 2003, in a bar in Milan, Italy, 4,300 miles away from Detroit. Fans of Club Brugge K.V., in town for their team’s group-stage UEFA Champions League clash against European giant A.C. Milan, gathered to knock back some pre-match beers. Over a stereo blared seven notes: Da…da-DA-da da DAAH DAAH, the signature riff of a minor American hit song…

But in Milan, at the beginning, it was purely spontaneous and local. Kickoff was coming. The visiting Belgians moved out into the city center, still singing. They kept chanting it in the stands of the San Siro—Oh…oh-OH-oh oh OHH OHH—as Peruvian striker Andres Mendoza stunned Milan with a goal in the 33rd minute and Brugge made it hold up for a shocking 1-0 upset. Filing out of the stadium, they continued to belt it out.

The song traveled back to Belgium with them, and the Brugge crowd began singing it at home games. The club itself eventually started blasting “Seven Nation Army” through the stadium speakers after goals.

Then, on Feb. 15, 2006, Club Brugge hosted A.S. Roma in a UEFA Cup match. The visitors won, 2-1, and the Roma supporters apparently picked up the song from their hosts…

“Seven Nation Army” made a beachhead in American sports in State College, Penn. According to a 2006 story in the Harrisburg Patriot-News, Penn State spokesperson Guido D’Elia—who is still the director of communications and branding for the embattled football program—was inspired by hearing a Public Radio International story about A.S. Roma’s use of the song. D’Elia, who also introduced the now unavoidable German techno track “Kernkraft 400” to Nittany Lions fans, had found something new…

By the middle of the 2006 season, “Seven Nation Army” was a Beaver Stadium staple. (This year, as Penn State students gathered on Nov. 8 outside the university administration building, they began singing Joe Paterno’s first name over the riff.)

Is this what globalization looks like? The song was recorded by Americans, found its way into bars and soccer stadiums in Belgium and Italy, and then back to the United States as a marching band piece. Along the way, the song crossed national and language boundaries as well as musical instruments.

I bet there could be some interesting musical analysis regarding why this song has become so popular. It doesn’t require words to be sung, particularly helpful for large crowds of (rowdy?) people at sporting events. It only includes seven notes. It has a particular minor edge to it, described in this story as a sound of “doom” which is no doubt helpful in celebrations as the scoring team’s fans want to celebrate as well as taunt the other side.

I would be interested to know how much in royalties Jack White is getting from all of these plays…

The Chicago Fire and Bridgeview: another case when building a sports stadium is not a good investment

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Residents of the southwest Chicago suburb of Bridgeview are not happy about reports that Toyota Park, built to be the home of the Chicago Fire, has created a lot of debt for the community:

The exchange came Wednesday night at Bridgeview’s first Village Board meeting since the Tribune published a report detailing the small southwest suburb’s financial woes tied to its biggest bet, the 20,000-seat Toyota Park.

The taxpayer-owned home of the Chicago Fire has come up millions of dollars short of making its debt payments since opening in 2006. Meanwhile, the town has nearly tripled property taxes in less than a decade, even as the town offset some of the financial sting by taking out more loans to help make payments.

In all, the blue-collar suburb is now more than $200 million in debt.

In comparing towns’ debt to property values, the Tribune found Bridgeview had the highest debt rate in the Chicago area. Much of the debt is tied to a stadium deal in which the newspaper found insiders landed contracts and town officials enriched their political funds with stadium vendor donations.

The stadium might have helped put Bridgeview on the map (leading to higher status/prestige) as it is the only suburban facility in the Chicago area that is home to a major sports team (despite arguments in the past from the Bears and White Sox that they might move to the suburbs). But this level of debt seems insurmountable for a village of 16,500 people who have a median household income of $42,073, below the national average.

This should be a reminder for many communities, small suburbs or big cities: sports stadiums are not the deals they may be made out to be. Yes, it could bring or keep a major sports team. But, the public debt may take decades to repay, can lead to higher tax burdens for residents who are likely not all attending the games, doesn’t necessarily mean that a host of entertainment businesses will open up nearby to serve stadium patrons, and the primary people who benefit are the sports teams (who get new stadiums for which they don’t have to pay the whole bill) and a small number of local leaders and businesses. It may be nice to mentioned on TV every once in a while (if you can find the more minor channels the Fire tend to be relegated to) and be the politician who helped bring the major team to town but it often isn’t a great deal for the whole community.

Why promote education and reading with stars who make lots of money?

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As a kid, I remember seeing posters of Michael Jordan (see here) and other star athletes promoting reading. While watching NBA playoff games currently, you can see plenty of NBA Cares advertisements with NBA stars talking about the importance of school. But, amidst seeing several stories that 13-year NBA player Shareef Abdur-Rahim went back to UC-Berkeley to finish his undergraduate degree in sociology, why do these campaigns feature athletic stars and not feature athletes who thought they had a chance to be a star but then realized they needed their academic degree for the rest of their lives? For example, such campaigns could feature a college star who tried to make it in the pros but had a short career, didn’t make much money or got injured early on, and then realized that he needed his academic degree to work the rest of his adult life. Or going further, perhaps non-athletes with decent adult lives could promote the value of a degree. Or athletes could talk about or promote the valuable contributions to society made by people with high school and college degrees. Either way, the star who makes a lot of money, a dream a lot of kids hold but few can attain, doesn’t end up as the primary spokesperson for education.

(I assume that these reading and education campaigns have some data or studies that show using celebrities is the best way to reach children. However, perhaps this strategy of using celebrities doesn’t work, just as using celebrities to promote organ donations isn’t the only factor that increases donation rates. See the book Last Book Gifts.)

 

Needed in discussion of NFL draft picks: how well they make “sociological adjustments”?

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A columnist suggests a new piece to consider when projecting the career of someone selected in the NFL draft:

Nobody knows how these players will pan out because there are too many variables: Injuries, character, sociological adjustments, growth mentally and physically, determination, etc.

The talk leading up to and during the NFL draft is fairly consistent. There are several things to hash over for weeks: physical measureables (which consists of fawning over those with higher ratings with a few suggestions that these may not matter that much), productivity in college (always fun to compare relative successes across games, conferences, and years), and what need a draftee can fill for a NFL team.

But how might the analysts incorporate the “sociological adjustments” a player needs to make? Perhaps we need something far beyond the Wonderlic test which supposedly measures something; we need some measure of how players adapt to new cities, teammates, coaches, locker rooms, and the better gameplay on the NFL field. There could be several ways to do this: have NFL teams hire sociologists who can assess the social skills and adaptability of players. There could be a sort of Survivor type competition for potential draftees before the draft that would allow observers to see how they adjust to changing situations, their social abilities, and how they can perform in mental competition. Don’t you think the NFL Network would love to have some reality TV involving known players?

My guess is that we are a long way from such scenarios yet some of this surfaces when teams and analysts talk about “character.” What they really mean is something more like whether the player can stop himself from getting into trouble long enough to focus solely on football. Wouldn’t teams like to unlock some sort of formula or predictive ability that would help them know which players can avoid these situations better than others? Or perhaps they would want to quantify or measure the idea of “glue guys” or “positive locker room guys” that would help their teams win?

“Being a sports fan can be good for your emotional, psychological and social health”

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Perhaps I simply like the idea that watching more sports could be a good thing but research suggests there are positive health benefits to being a sports fan:

Indeed, the stereotype that sports fans are overweight, beer-drinking couch potatoes is inaccurate, said Daniel L. Wann, a psychology professor at Murray State University in Kentucky and the author of “Sports Fans: The Psychology and Social Impact of Spectators.”

“Sports fans are quite active physically, politically and socially,” he said…

Fans who identify with a local team have higher self-esteem, are less lonely and are no more aggressive as a group than nonsports fans, according to Wann.

“Pretty much any way you look at it, the more you identify with a local team, the more psychologically healthy you tend to be,” said Wann, who has studied sports fans for 25 years. “You have a built-in connection to others in your environment. If you live in San Francisco and you are a Giants fan, it’s pretty easy to be connected to others.”…

Wann said fandom unites people at a sociological level.

“We as a species have a strong need to belong and a need to identify with something greater than ourselves. Sports is the way some people do that,” he said.

Read on for more details (as well as some possible negative effects).

If there are some benefits to being a fan, we could then ask why negative stereotypes about sports fans exist or are so persistent. Are these ideas perpetuated primarily by non-sports fans – how many Americans would say they are really sports fans? Are they related to ideas about boorish masculinity? Are there too many incidents of sports fans doing stupid things like rioting or acting childish after a star leaves town for another team?

Additionally, this article hints at this but doesn’t fully address the social benefits or consequences of sports fandom (the sociological dimension). For example, what about this question: does having a major sports team improve the collective experience in a major city? Can most or even a majority of a community truly bond and with long-lasting effects over a sports team or a sporting event?

I also wonder if some would argue there is an opportunity cost issue here. If you pay enough attention to sports, you could experience some of these benefits. However, there are other activities you could be doing, say interacting with your family (which is not mutually exclusive from watching sports) or helping others, and that you could miss out on. While I enjoy sports, I am afraid to know how many hours I have spent paying attention to them and then thinking what else I could have done with that time.

Argument: Tebow actually now in more religious yet less Christian city

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Since Tim Tebow was traded from the Denver Broncos to the New York Jets, a number of commentators have suggested that Tebow was headed for the secular or even “heathen” city. However, some statistics suggest that the New York City region is more religious than the national as a whole though it is less conservative Protestant:

While New York has a reputation for godlessness, both city and state actually have higher rates of membership in organized religion than the country as a whole. In 2000, the proportion of state residents who belonged to some religious body was 76 percent — compared with 61 percent in the United States as a whole — according to an analysis by Queens College sociologist Andrew Beveridge. Even higher numbers specifically for the tristate region put it in the top 9 percent of urban areas in terms of religiosity, ahead of Salt Lake City and Little Rock.

Still, those who raised their eyebrows about Tebow’s arrival had a point. While New York is very religious, it isn’t religious in Tebow’s way: conservative Protestant. The state has proportionally far more Jews and Catholics than the rest of the country. The percentage of Muslims is only 2 percent — but that’s double the figure in America at large. In contrast, while the national proportion of conservative Protestants is 28 percent, the state population is 5 percent.

So it may not be Tebow’s being religious that raises eyebrows. Rather, it could be conservative Protestantism’s tendency to involve public proclamation. New Yorkers believe just as much, but they are less likely to talk about it openly.

It will be fascinating to see what happens. While the New York City region may be familiar with religion, it is a different mix of religions compared to other places.

The measure of belonging to a religious body could be telling – is this less about religious beliefs and practices and more about the social activity of being a member of a religious congregation or institution? If so, I wonder if this is tied to education levels. Several recent studies suggest that attending church is more common among those with higher levels of education. Other studies suggest that religion is not uncommon or unknown among professors and scientists.

Sociology experiment: mixing strong academics and athletics at Northwestern

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Chicago Tribune columnist David Haugh suggested yesterday that Northwestern University is facing a sociology experiment by wanting strong academics and athletics:

So continued America’s fascinating sports sociology experiment in Evanston: Can a major-college sports program thrive in an environment in which winning clearly isn’t the No. 1 determinant of success? As Final Four week begins, it would behoove every basketball campus to reconsider its definitions of thrive, winning and success…

So I reached a different conclusion about Carmody but loved the way Phillips defended his. I loved the idea of a Big Ten school espousing ideals more typically found in Division III programs, of an AD taking an unpopular route by taking a stand for something noble. I can applaud a decision I wouldn’t have made because of what it symbolizes.

On one hand, Northwestern shows it recognizes the Big Ten basketball arms race by working on plans for $250 million worth of necessary facility upgrades. On the other, it stayed true to an underlying mission colleges usually ignore by keeping a coach who does things the right way…

Roll your eyes and look up Pollyannaish if you wish. But ultimately Phillips’ decision embodied the mandate for college sports programs Secretary of Education Arne Duncan outlined in a news conference on the eve of the NCAA tournament intended to remind schools of their priorities. Theoretically, Northwestern’s stance also reflected the emphasis more Big Ten and BCS-conference universities must consider in light of the NCAA linking academic progress rate with tournament eligibility beginning in 2013.

Haugh defends Northwestern’s actions in trying to do both: have high academic standards and have competitive sports programs. A few thoughts about this:

1. I’ve heard a lot of this argument at both Notre Dame and Northwestern. The situations are slightly different (Northwestern doesn’t have the past football glory of Notre Dame) but the argument generally go like this: the schools need to lower their academic standards in football and basketball if they really hope to compete for national championships. Perhaps this is right – neither school is the kind of powerhouse that brings athletes in and spits them out. But, as Haugh suggests, the schools have some different priorities.

2. These different priorities are not just tertiary concerns: Northwestern is a serious academic school (as is Notre Dame). According to the US News and World Report rankings, Northwestern is the #12 undergraduate school (Notre Dame is #19), #4 among business graduate schools, and #9 among education graduate schools (among other high rankings). So this isn’t quite a high-ranking Division III school; Northwestern is a strong academic university where there are many things going on besides athletics.

3. In other sports, Northwestern and Notre Dame can do just fine. Let’s be honest here: what is really driving these arguments is football (and maybe a little basketball). Interestingly, both Northwestern and Notre Dame are not bad at these sports but also not great. Northwestern football has been improved since the mid 1990s but they are not going to compete for a national championship. Northwestern basketball just missed the NCAA tournament but they played in perhaps the toughest conference this year and had a number of chances to make their season really memorable.

3a. If you look at the Director’s Cup rankings which account for all sports, some more academic schools do just fine. For example, look at the most recent March 22 rankings: Stanford is #1, Duke is #28, Notre Dame is #34, and Northwestern is #63. Granted, the big public schools seem to do well in these rankings across the sports but it’s not like academic schools can’t compete in other sports. For example, Northwestern has been known in recent years for two other sports: fencing and women’s lacrosse. While these are not high profile, the athletes have proven can be champions as well as high-performing athletes.

3b. I wonder at times if Northwestern isn’t lucky on this front to be located in Chicago. Since Chicago doesn’t care much about college sports, schools like Northwestern and the University of Chicago (who used to be in the Big 10 but now competes at the Division III level) don’t have to go the athletic route.

In the end, I think Northwestern will be just fine. This is a sociology experiment that doesn’t have to happen – not all colleges need to be athletic powerhouses.

“85% of economists agree that local and state governments should not subsidize professional sports”

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The Freakonomics blog has a discussion about whether cities and states should help pay for professional sports arenas and the weight of academic evidence says no:

So we have two perspectives and one question: Do sports generate jobs and economic growth?

This is a question that has been addressed numerous times by economists.  And these studies – summarized by economists Rob Baade and Victor Matheson — tend to reveal two answers.  When the study is completed by paid consultants prior to the public money being spent, the benefits from sports are numerous are large. However, when independent researchers – who are not paid by professional sports teams or leagues – look for these benefits after the fact, evidence of more jobs and economic growth are hard to find…

Given these three effects, the empirical evidence suggests quite strongly that sports do not create many jobs or generate much economic growth.  And such evidence has proven to be quite persuasive.  In fact, a survey of economists by Gregory Mankiw noted that 85% of economists agree that local and state governments should not subsidize professional sports. Mankiw also notes that only five issues have more agreement among economists.

But with all of this evidence, why would the city of Sacramento recently vote to spend money to build a new arena so that the Sacramento Kings would stay in the city?

Such a story clearly suggests that the Kings used the threat of re-location to elicit a substantial subsidy from the people of Sacramento.  Although the Kings do not have much economic impact on Sacramento, the Kings do make basketball fans happy.  And if they departed, those same people would be very unhappy with Kevin Johnson.  Consequently, the Mayor has an incentive to do what he can to keep the Kings in Sacramento (although it not entirely clear if making the non-basketball fans unhappy is good politics).

I think this is correct: no one want to be the politician that allows the popular local sports franchise to leave town. The stakes are even higher in places like Sacramento where the Kings are the only professional franchise so if they left, the city isn’t even on the professional sports map. A politician who let this happen might be punished by opponents and by voters (though they too would then have to go against all of the evidence from studies). I think this is similar logic to what happens in tax breaks debates like the one recently in Illinois: while it is hard to justify giving wealthy corporations a tax break to stay in Illinois, who wants to be the politician who let several thousand good jobs go to another state?

I also think that while this can be studied in economic terms, i.e., does helping to build a stadium lead to economic benefits for the city, or in political terms, this misses some of the point: having a sports team is also about status. It makes a city feel like a major league city. While perhaps we could argue that Sacramento has enough going on being the state capital of the country’s largest state, the average citizen might connect more to the sports team. When national TV crews come to televise a game, fans feel like they are being recognized (see this post as an example of this). With a sports teams, politicians and business people can take big wigs to games, signalling that their city is really part of the big time, even if the economic data doesn’t necessarily bear this out. While I am skeptical of arguments that people in Cleveland are worse off because their sports teams haven’t won, having a big sports team can mask other issues or at least help people ignore them. This is more difficult to measure than economic benefits but this cultural dimension still matters when these decisions are made.

(This post was prompted by part of a TrueHoop post from yesterday.)

With March Madness approaching, should we really be talking about “the civil rights movement for our times”?

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Many Americans are about to enjoy the beginning of the NCAA Division I basketball tournament, but according to one sociologist, perhaps fans and viewers should pay more attention to the exploitation of the athletes:

In our perennial rite of spring, we are being bombarded with bracketology, Final Four predictions and the general hoops hysteria otherwise known as “March Madness.” There are invariably articles on the business page about the billions of dollars at play from television contracts to online betting to lost productivity as workers spend hours obsessing over their brackets. Yet there is precious little discussion about the teenagers, branded with corporate logos, generating this tidal wave of revenue. This is why Dr. Edwards believes the set-up is in desperate need of a shake-up. In a recent lecture at Cal-Berkeley, he directly tied the relationship between the NCAA and its “student athletes” to the injustices that spurred the Occupy Wall Street movement.

It’s not just a comparison, it’s a connection.… The college athletes are clearly the 99 percent who create the wealth in college sports. The question is, where is the individual from the ranks who is going to frame and focus and project that political reality? Who is going to provide the spark that mobilizes the athletes? A lot depends on the extent to which the 99-Percenter movement now confronting Wall Street can encompass the movement on campus around tuition increases and these outrageous compensation packages for administrators. Someone is going to have to focus and frame that…

But the efforts of the NCPA and the struggle for basic fairness for college athletes would be raised dramatically by seeing just a couple of players, under March’s blazing spotlight, willing to risk the wrath of those in thrall to the “Madness.” The next Smith/Carlos moment is there for any “jock for justice” willing to grasp it. This would require them walking to mid-court before the Final Four, ripping off the assorted brands and logos attached to their bodies, and stating in no uncertain terms that unless they get a piece of the pie, they are walking off the court. The fans would rage. The announcers would sneer. The coaches would fume. But history would be kind, and nothing else, as I can see, would finally put a stake in the heart of sham-amateurism once and for all. It’s a risk worth taking, but don’t take my word for it. As John Carlos said to me, “I have no regrets about what I did in 1968. The people with regrets are the ones who were there with us, and did nothing.”

This article also cites an article from Taylor Branch in The Atlantic that I commented on last September.

It is interesting to consider how people would react if college basketball players did protest during the games. I don’t know how much the “amateur” status of college athletes matters to the average fan. Some people talk about the “purity” of college sports compared to the professional ranks as there are some college players who still appear to take advantage of the educational opportunities as well as revere their schools. Ultimately, I would guess that most fans want to be entertained by their college sports and would be willing to at least small protections for athletes (a little pay, longer-term scholarships, etc.).

This discussion reminds me of the story that NBA players initially refused to play right before the 1964 All-Star Game. Perhaps this story would give some college players hope:

The game was notable for the threat of a strike by the players, who refused to play just before the game unless the owners agreed to recognize the players’ union. The owners agreed primarily because it was the first All-Star Game to be televised and if it were not played due to strike it would have been embarrassing at a time when the NBA was still attempting to gain national exposure. This led directly to many rights and freedoms not previously extended to professional basketball players.

After gaining room to negotiate, now NBA players and other pro athletes would face major issues if they refused to play:

By signing the National Basketball Association’s Uniform Player Contract, a player agrees to “give his best services, as well as his loyalty, to the Team,” to “conduct himself on and off the court according to the highest standards of honesty, citizenship, and sportsmanship,” and “not to do anything that is materially detrimental” to the team or the league. Refusing to play in a game against a coach’s orders could therefore be considered a breach of contract. The team could justifiably withhold payment, terminate his contract, or sue him for monetary damages. (Nearly every professional sport requires players to sign a similar contract.)

The only circumstance under which a player can refuse to compete—in just about any professional league—is if he’s injured. Normally, it’s up to the team doctor to decide whether an athlete is fit to play. If the player disagrees—or gets a second opinion from an outside doctor—he can file a grievance through the players union, which then negotiates a solution with the team.

It’s rare for players simply to decline to go on the court or field, partly because it’s a PR disaster. Chicago Bulls forward Scottie Pippen famously refused to get off the bench with 1.8 seconds left in a playoff game against the New York Knicks in 1994. He wasn’t punished, but the incident tainted his reputation. It’s somewhat more common for a recently-traded player to not report for games with his new team. After Kenny Anderson was traded to the Toronto Raptors in 1998, for example, he refused to compete with the Canadian team. Occasionally, a pro will ask to play less. Starting Carolina Panthers quarterback Kerry Collins, battling alcoholism and accusations of racism, asked to be taken out of the starting lineup. The team obliged him. Sometimes NFL players will receive criticism for failing to show up to off-season workouts, but such workouts are voluntary according to the league’s collective bargaining agreement.

But, of course, professional athletes in the major sports are represented by unions, some of which, like the baseball player’s union, are known as being quite powerful and effective. College athletes don’t have the same protections.

How long can this situation last? While the money is still good for the biggest schools (and most of the money is football money anyway), would college college basketball players really band together to protest?

Sociological roundup for Super Bowl XLVI

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Here are a few stories that highlight sociological takes on the Super Bowl:

1. The Super Bowl as unofficial holiday:

Because it has evolved into so much more than a game, the Super Bowl and all of the pomp and circumstance has become a star-spangled spectacle that may not live up to two weeks of hype or warrant six hours of pre-game coverage, but continues to be must-see TV for the masses…

Dr. Tim Delaney, chairman of the Department of Sociology at SUNY Oswego, said the Super Bowl has become much more than just the NFL’s championship game.

“It’s not only a social event, it’s really an unofficial holiday,” said Delaney, who co-authored “The Sociology of Sports: An Introduction and Sports: Why People Love Them!”

“People are going to watch the Super Bowl, no matter what. It’s part of American culture. It’s tradition. It’s a social phenomenon.”

2. Headline: “Super Bowl non-fans will replace the big game with shopping, sewing, sex.”

Wachs said that football has become so popular that it is like a “secular religion” in America. “It fulfills many of the exact same functions as religion,” said Wachs, an associate professor of sociology at California State Polytechnic University. “It separates the sacred and profane — the rest of the week is profane and on Sunday it is the special time. There are rituals associated with it. There is special clothing and special food associated with it. It really has all the elements of a religious ritual.”

But this fanatical attention to a single game has created another subculture in American society — people who are united against the Super Bowl, the rebels who refuse to watch because they don’t like football or don’t like the hype or don’t like to be told they have to watch something just to fit in.

Wachs said these people “feel resentful, feel put upon and, I would argue, feel persecuted by the importance of something that they just don’t get.”

3. The urban myth of “sewer sociology”:

Maybe you’ve heard the urban legend: An overwhelming number of Super Bowl fans take a potty break during halftime, straining the local sewage system and causing a spike in flows to treatment plants…

While sewage treatment workers do notice a change in “activity” during holidays and the Super Bowl, it doesn’t impact waste treatment facilities, said Kevin Enfinger, a senior project engineer with ADS Environmental Services in Huntsville, Ala…

Enfinger refers to the change in bathroom behavior as “sewer sociology.”

4. UCLA has experts on call ready to help you understand the “sociological and cultural phenomenon.”

Plenty of sociological material to talk about in regard to the Super Bowl and that is before even getting to what the commercials have to say about our society.

I do think I’ve heard more and more public discussion about the Super Bowl being a public holiday. It makes me wonder why sociologists don’t spend more time studying holidays, official and otherwise. The idea of “secular holidays” is particularly interesting – although once you get beyond the Super Bowl and Black Friday (still closely related to Thanksgiving), it might be more difficult to identify such days.