Category Archives: Sports

Study from sociologist helps prompt creation of espnW

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ESPN’s coverage of sports is dominated by male sports. But a study released this summer, co-authored by a sociologist at USC, has prompted ESPN to start moving toward a new sports channel devoted to women’s sports:

In June, Messner co-authored a study for the Center for Feminist Research at USC that revealed how media giants, especially ESPN, were starving women’s sports coverage. As a result, ESPN is launching a brand-new channel, called espnW, that is marketed specifically toward women. The channel will launch online this fall, with the possibility of becoming a television channel in the spring.

Messner’s study found that ESPN’s flagship program SportsCenter devoted only 1.4 percent of its coverage to women’s sports last year, as opposed to 2.1 percent in 2004. It also found 96.3 percent of the lead stories on SportsCenter and on KNBC’s, KCBS’ and KABC’s sports news segments came from men’s sports.

Messner is not necessarily thrilled with this outcome as she thinks that it might mean that ESPN will never cover women’s sports on its main networks.

What kind of ratings would a channel like this receive? Even though women make a good percentage of fans for the major sports (“44 perfect for the NFL fans, 36 percent for the NBA and 45 percent for the MLB”), women’s sports have had difficulty drawing substantial television ratings. The article suggests the channel is intended to cultivate a broader female sports audience for the future.

Comparing greatness of players past and present an enjoyable part of sports fandom

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As the NBA season approaches, discussion this week has centered on the relative status of several players: Kobe Bryant, Kevin Durant, LeBron James, and Michael Jordan. While the first three players in this list were involved in a question about who is the best current player and potential MVP, Jordan also has been inserted in the discussion due to his starring role in NBA2K11 and comments he made about the number of points he could score if he played today when more fouls are called.

Several quick thoughts come to mind:

1. The new era of statistics in sports offers more opportunities to make comparisons of players across different eras, particularly if you can control for certain features of the game at each time period (like the average pace in basketball).

2. I wonder how much current players think about issues like these. Fans seems to like these discussions. It allows the average guy sitting on the couch to say, “my guy, whoever that may be, can match up or beat your guy.”

3. Jordan, like some other old players, still likes to be part of these discussions.

4. All of these discussions are magnified by the non-stop media attention for sports these days. I can hear it on local sports talk radio which all sound like the CNN of the radio airwaves; stories are repeated all day long with slightly different interpretations.

Like Cubs fans wanted the reminder: seventh anniversay of Bartman incident

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Seven years ago today, the lives of Steve Bartman and the Chicago Cubs became inextricably linked. It was a sad night, one I remember vividly – in a span of mere minutes, the Cubs went from World Series hopefuls to unlovable losers.

But beyond the emotions (which apparently are still running high), it is interesting to see how this has entered the collective memory of Cubs fans and other sports fans. The media is playing a role:

But fair or not, Bartman’s legacy remains intact, perpetuated by the national media. Fox Sports aired a promo for the 2010 NLCS that featured a freeze-frame shot of Bartman going for the ball. ESPN had scheduled Academy Award winning filmmaker Alex Gibney’s documentary on Bartman for their “30-30” series to coincide with the start of the World Series.

But the film, entitled “Catching Hell,” was recently pushed back from Oct. 26 to some time in 2011 at the request of Gibney. No air date has been scheduled, an ESPN spokesman said.

In the narrative of Cubs fandom, Bartman has become an interesting figure, an innocent fan who became a scapegoat for the futility of a popular franchise. Why exactly do Cubs fans need or want a scapegoat? Why is Cubs management (the Ricketts) still even talking about the curse and wanting a manager who understand all of this backstory?

The narrative of sports is almost more important than the events or outcomes themselves.One important event can lead to a long-standing narrative of triumph or defeat. Particularly during the long baseball season, fans are consistently engaged with historical moments and what-ifs. To be a true fan means one truly has the ability to know the narrative and to fully buy into it as a story worth telling and retelling. And narratives between teams can be similar (though never exactly the same – the pain of Cleveland vs. the pain of Chicago Cubs fan is interesting to think about): Gibney is a Red Sox fan who became interested in the Bartman story because he saw similarities with what happened to Bill Buckner.

Even this Chicago Tribune article becomes part of the ritual: we must reconsider what Bartman means.

An agent tells his story of paying college football players

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Former agent Josh Luchs talks to Sports Illustrated about paying college football players in the hopes that they would select him as their agent.

How many other stories like this are out there to be told? Are Division 1 college football and basketball, with all their various scandals (Reggie Bush being the latest major example), just a complete cesspool? And then the next question: how much do college and universities know about this and try to seriously deal with it?

American sports leagues eye $155 million income for sponsorships on uniforms

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It was recently reported that English Premier League teams earn about $155 million a year from the sponsorships on their uniforms. How much longer before American sports leagues follow suit and try to benefit from such a ready-made revenue stream?

LeBron James, “the decision,” and race

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Comments made by LeBron James several days ago are drawing attention. James suggested in an interview with CNN that race played a role in people’s reaction to his choice to play with the Miami Heat. A commentator at Salon suggests that James is just stating the obvious:

Now, the Aggrieved White Guy funnels rage to the comment boards, as LeBron is shredded for this latest transgression of truth. While many pundits white and black want to pretend that ego alone stoked this bubbling hate cauldron, Henry Abbott, who presides over ESPN’s network of NBA blogs, noticed a unique phenomenon:

“It is literally the strangest thing I have ever seen NBA fans do. If you look at most NBA stories online, there will be some comments on each that are either racist, coded racism, or in line with racist thinking. On the night of LeBron’s decision, those kinds of hateful comments — whether hateful or not — became the dominant narrative, which blew my mind.”

Fans were uniquely angry at James for showing up a mostly white NBA power structure. His race played a role, how could it not? And if you’re still mad at LeBron, if you’re screaming at him for pointing this out, I don’t think his “ego” is what irks you.

It will be interesting to see how this continues to play out. The Q ratings demonstrated that blacks and whites have different opinions about James.

Several things to note about this argument in Salon: it is partly based on evidence from Internet message boards (where people seem willing to say all sorts of things they wouldn’t say in-person) and it provides a typical defense of “the Aggrieved White Guy” who claims he didn’t bring up race at all. On the whole, such discussions need to acknowledge the larger issue: we live in a racialized society where both overt and covert racism take place and have large social consequences.

Two strange examples of “rights”

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As I was driving to work the other day, I had a thought about two “rights” that I had recently heard people defend. The first came in a radio discussion about sexist comments made regarding a female sports reporter from Mexico by New York Jets. In the defense of this female reporter, another female reporter said on the air that fans had a “right” to hear comments from players right after the game rather than having to wait for post-game comments in some media area.

The second example comes from the yearly discussions about whether burning leaves is appropriate and the “right” of an individual homeowner. As far as I understand, our community has decided that burning leaves can be done as long as certain guidelines are followed.

Thinking quickly about these two examples, they both strike me as quite American: the right to sports news and the right to remove leaves by burning. But perhaps using the language of “rights” in instances like these makes the conversation about real rights we value in America, typically considered the ones written in the Bill of Rights (and its subsequent amendments), more difficult.

How national sports broadcasts contribute to the collective understanding of their sports

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I’ve watched many sporting events in my lifetime. National broadcasts of the major four sports are somewhat different than local broadcasts: because they are for a wider audience and because they are more neutral, they emphasize broader plot lines. I believe these national broadcasters try to cast themselves as keepers of the collective understanding of their particular sports. There are three primary components to retelling and producing this collective memory: an emphasis on history, overcoming hardship, and continuity across networks.

The most obvious way this happens is through the historical overview. The common plot line: “this is not just a single game. This is another match-up in a long and engrossing history. You the viewer should pay more attention because you could be seeing history tonight.” There are often flashbacks to games or championships decades ago like Joe Namath guaranteeing a win in Super Bowl III. This history can be fun, particularly if considering how modern stars would fit in an older era or vice versa or reliving some emotional or breathtaking moments. Of course, these historical overviews and comparisons may have nothing to do with the current team but they imbue the current game with a sense of meaning. This can quickly turn into unnecessary sentimentalizing.

The emphasis is typically on how the teams involved have overcome hardship. These narratives like nothing better than the team that has risen from the pits of the league to be on top. Teams that have received this treatment in recent: the Tampa Bay Rays, the Chicago Blackhawks, the New Orleans Saints, the Boston Celtics. This return to the top is cast in heroic terms as players and coaches successfully battled all the odds. This heroism can be over the top and result in the sportscasters making hyperbolic claims about the power of sports. Returning to the New Orleans Saints: there is no doubt the team overcame difficulties but to suggest the team has been vital in helping to revive the city after Hurricane Katrina is a much more difficult argument to prove.

It is remarkable to see how consistent these messages can be across networks and broadcasters. It is like they have a common storyline vault that they all share and tweak a little bit in each broadcast. If you watch enough national broadcasts, you have heard all the main stories: how remarkable so and so is, how this franchise has survived or has had difficulty winning the big game, how great the hustle of the role player is. Part of the problem with this is it leads to blandness – who has new insights? Why not focus more on the game at hand? They also may be repeating hard to prove stories: is Mariano Rivera really key to the success of the Yankees (even as statistics suggest closers are not as valuable as other position players)

With these tactics, national broadcasts build a collective understanding of each sport. This understanding is difficult to reverse or steer in a new direction.

Assessing the final Cubs home game

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My wife and I were in attendance at the Cubs final home game yesterday, an 8-7 loss at the hands of the St. Louis Cardinals. Some thoughts on watching a fifth place team on a chilly day in late September:

1. It was still fun to be at Wrigley Field. Despite the chilly weather, there was still a good crowd (though nowhere near the 38,000 announced). The baseball game was interesting as the Cubs rallied late to close within one run but the Cardinals escaped.

1a. Even athletic events with bad teams can be entertaining: we saw lots of walks and runs. One thing that keeps me going through a 162-game baseball season is the possibility of seeing something new/extraordinary/odd.

2. And yet there was a wistfulness in the air: another Cubs season has gone by the wayside. The energy of having new owners has worn off. The buzz from the 2007 and 2008 teams making the playoffs has worn off. The rosters for both teams, particularly the Cubs pitching staff, were full of Triple-A players. In contrast to the optimism of Opening Day and April (where it can also be chilly and grey), there was no optimism here.

2a. I admit that I have not kept up with the Cubs in recent months. Part of this is due to being busy at work but it is mostly due to the team being out of contention for a long time. It was good to reconnect for an afternoon and think about what the 2011 Cubs might look like.

2b. If the 2009 season wasn’t enough to convince people that the Cubs are not a consistent contending team (which was the thought after the 2007 and 2008 season), this 2010 should be proof. The 2011 Cubs will be young and they need to start over agin.

3. There were quite a few Cardinals fans in the stands. I think one side effect of websites like StubHub is it means more fans from more places can buy tickets to games rather than having to make a long drive and hope you can get decent tickets. In games that I have been to this year in Atlanta, St. Louis, and Chicago, there has been a decent amount of fans from the opposing team. (This might also be due to the mobility of the American people – there might legitimately be a decent number of Dodgers fans living in Atlanta these days.) Even though there was some back and forth between the fans (like when Albert Pujols was intentionally walked twice or the Cubs were making a comeback), the Cardinals fans weren’t too energetic as well.

Examining the backlash against LeBron James through the prism of race

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After making “The Decision” to join the Miami Heat, LeBron James has suffered a backlash from many fans and pundits. This backlash has led to a lower “Q score,” a rating that compares the public’s favorable versus unfavorable image of a public figure.

However, how much his Q score dropped is dependent on race: overall, whites were moved more to think negatively about LeBron after what happened this summer. Henry Abbott at Truehoop argues that something deeper, fear, might explain why whites reacted as they did. Also at ESPN, Vincent Thomas argues that James’  relatively unchanged Q scores among blacks is the result of “black protectionism.”