Tag Archives: football

From NFL player to sociologist

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Occasionally, I highlight unusual paths people take to become sociologists. Here is another example: an 11 year veteran of the NFL who became a sociologist. Here are the broad details of Ken Ruettgers’ path:

After graduating from USC, Ken was drafted in the first-round of the 1985 NFL Draft (7th pick) by Green Bay where he remained throughout his professional career. Ken was the Green Bay Packers’ 1989 offensive MVP. He began the 1996 season on the Physically Unable to Perform List. He was activated after four games, but injuries had taken their toll and he could not finish the season.

Ruettgers has a B.A. in Business Administration from USC’s Marshall School of Business, and an MBA from California State University, Bakersfield. He recently received a Ph.D in sociology from Oxford Graduate School in Dayton, Tennessee in 2007.More recently he has begun teaching Sociology classes part time at Central Oregon Community College.[3] He has also began coaching football at a local high school in Sisters, Oregon.

Here Ruettgers is briefly quoted talking about the recent scandal at Penn State:

Former NFL player and COCC Sociology Professor Ken Ruettgers says the Penn State case and the one at Syracuse are opening people’s eyes. “I do think it’s been somewhat of a watershed moment. Up until this, those with the title of coach weren’t questioned. This has tarnished that image and brought that into questions and maybe that’s a good thing. Don’t give free pass just because you’re a good thing because. While its sad, I think it’s a good thing it’s been exposed.”

I’m sure this was an interesting transition. Do students sit up and pay a little more attention in intro to sociology classes when they learn their professor is a former NFL player? Are there skills from his football days that easily translate into the academic realm?

By the way, the Oxford Graduate School has an unusual Ph.D. program that is titled ” Sociological Integration of Faith and Society.”

The NFL says the “All-22” camera angle is proprietary information

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The NFL is a TV ratings powerhouse and makes billions each year on selling television rights. However, fans don’t see the same action that the league and teams watch because the league claims its “All-22” view is proprietary information:

If you ask the league to see the footage that was taken from on high to show the entire field and what all 22 players did on every play, the response will be emphatic. “NO ONE gets that,” NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy wrote in an email. This footage, added fellow league spokesman Greg Aiello, “is regarded at this point as proprietary NFL coaching information.”

For decades, NFL TV broadcasts have relied most heavily on one view: the shot from a sideline camera that follows the progress of the ball. Anyone who wants to analyze the game, however, prefers to see the pulled-back camera angle known as the “All 22.”

While this shot makes the players look like stick figures, it allows students of the game to see things that are invisible to TV watchers: like what routes the receivers ran, how the defense aligned itself and who made blocks past the line of scrimmage.

By distributing this footage only to NFL teams, and rationing it out carefully to its TV partners and on its web site, the NFL has created a paradox. The most-watched sport in the U.S. is also arguably the least understood. “I don’t think you can get a full understanding without watching the entirety of the game,” says former head coach Bill Parcells. The zoomed-in footage on TV broadcasts, he says, only shows a “fragment” of what happens on the field.

Why does the NFL do this? Here are a few plausible scenarios:

1. It can do it so it will. The NFL won’t be bullied into doing something it doesn’t want to do. As long as the money keeps pouring in for TV rights, there is little pressure the public can put on the league for this footage.

1a. If enough fans and commentators picked up on this, could they force the NFL’s hand? It seems unlikely.

2. The NFL makes billions on TV rights and perhaps wants to package this video in a certain way. A later part of the story suggests the NFL has quietly floated the idea of selling access to this footage.

3. The league is worried about legitimate football competitors. There are not currently any viable threats but this could pop up again.

4. The league thinks this is the core data of the NFL, what actually happens on all plays, and will go to great lengths to protect its “intellectual property.” I find this a little hard to believe: aren’t there plenty of people who could understand and scheme what happens on a football field even if the primary camera angle doesn’t show it? Are teams really that worried about what the public might see or that other teams are missing things in the video?

Has the rise of football harmed male educational attainment?

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With data in recent years suggesting that men are falling behind at the college level, Gregg Easterbrook suggests this may be due to football:

Women are taking more of the available slots in college at the same time boys are spending more time playing football. Are these two facts related?

The main force must be that girls as a group are doing very well in high school, making them attractive candidates for college. But perhaps the rising popularity of football is at the same time decreasing boys’ chances of college admission.

Having ever-more boys being bashed on the head in football, while more play full-pads tackle at young ages, may be causing brain trauma that makes boys as a group somewhat less likely to succeed as students. In the highly competitive race for college admissions, even a small overall medical disadvantage for boys could matter. More important, the increasing amount of time high school boys devote to football may be preventing them from having the GPA and extracurriculars that will earn them regular admission to college when recruiters don’t come calling…

Neurology aside, most likely the largest factor in the possible relationship of rising football popularity to declining male college attendance is that teen boys who play the sport spend too much time on football and not enough time on schoolwork. When they don’t get recruited, many may lack the grades, board scores and extracurriculars for regular college admission.

Easterbrook is suggesting a correlation between two pieces of data: the declining performance of men in school compared to women and a rising interest in football. (To really get at whether this is the case, we would need to undertake an analysis where we can control for other factors.)  He suggests two possible ways in which football might be having an impact: neurological damage and time spent playing and practicing the sport. Out of these, the second sounds more plausible to me.

But I wonder if there isn’t a lot more we could say about this second possible explanation. Why would high school and college males want to spend so much time playing football? Why is it such an attractive option? Perhaps this attraction to football suggests that society doesn’t present too many other attractive options to young males. Perhaps younger males lack good role models in their personal lives or in society who do other things, respectable males who would say that getting an education is an important step in order to participate in today’s society. Do we have cool scientists or academics or do we usually highlight celebrities (particularly those who are famous for being famous) and athletes? Perhaps “manliness” is now defined by football: across the positions, it requires speed (running), violence (hitting), decision-making, and competition. Plus, everyone has been playing this on Madden for years so how hard could this be?

I’m guessing it wouldn’t be too difficult to find some data regarding high school students to see who plays football and perhaps even indicates why they play.

Crime down but today’s parents less likely to let first graders go places alone

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I stumbled upon this 1979 checklist for parents who want their children to attend first grade. Perhaps the most interesting point on the list: “Can he travel alone in the neighborhood (four to eight blocks) to store, school, playground, or to a friend’s home?” As you might expect, this drew some commentary:

It’s amazing what a difference 30 years have made. Academically, that 1979 first grader (who also needed to be “six years, six months” old and “have two to five permanent or second teeth”) would have been considered right on target to start preschool. In terms of life skills, she’s heading for middle school, riding her two-wheeled bike and finding her own way home. It’s not surprising that I came to this link via Lenore Skenazy’s Free-Range Kids blog. What is surprising is just how shocking a jolt it is to realize how stark the difference is between then and now.

I’d probably be considered a free-range parent by today’s standards; I’ve allowed a 7-year-old to walk to a friend’s house unaccompanied and left a 9-year-old in charge of siblings. But the idea of a kindergartener walking “four to eight blocks” alone? Crossing streets? Turning corners? Even though I suspect I did it myself, I can’t get my head around it. I have two kindergarteners this year (and one will be 6 in just a few weeks), and I check on them if I let them walk solo to the bookstore’s bathroom. Yesterday, I watched one of them get lost in the grocery store, trying to go two aisles over to the freezer section, where she’d been not 30 seconds before. Two to four blocks?

But there it is, in the middle of the list, as though the ability to find your way around your world at 6 years old was quite ordinary. The country isn’t different (Skenazy points out that crime rates are actually lower overall than they were in 1979). We’re different, and not just as parents. A commenter to the post points out that her children’s school doesn’t allow students to walk home alone (even with an older sibling) until fifth grade. And it’s a difference most parents are aware of already. But to see it laid out so clearly is to remember that it wasn’t just my own mother who expected more from me than I expect from my own kids, but all the mothers. I’m not suggesting we loose our kindergarteners on our neighborhoods, and I don’t plan to send mine romping any further than the yard. But I will try to broaden my ideas of what else they’re capable of—besides math and reading—this year.

It reminds me of the story of the New York City mom who let her 9-year old kid ride the subway alone (after proper training and guidance) a few years ago and the controversy that generated.

Somewhat hidden in the explanation of this shift in parenting is an important set of statistics: crime rates are down. Not just down; rates in some big cities, like Chicago, have hit lows not seen for several decades. But, as I have noted, this is not the public perception. Instead, we live in a world where crime always seems to just lurk around the corner (perhaps even in the suburbs!), we hear about all sorts of gruesome outcomes (real outcomes and on shows like CSI), and we hear more and more about child abductions (think Amber Alerts). In these cases, the perceptions about crime are more important than the actual data.

An analogy might also help explain this shift. In books like Scorecasting and elsewhere, some argue that football teams should never punt because they could then score more points. What can hold back teams from going against the norm is that coaches don’t want to be held responsible if their team does go for it on fourth down and doesn’t make it. It is “safer” to punt in most circumstances because one then can’t be blamed for following conventional wisdom. Could parents operate in the same way – which parent wants to play the odds, that their child will be safe when going places alone, and risk being wrong? How would other parents and other members of the community view such parents whose children then do fall into trouble?

h/t Instapundit

“The Sociology of the Offensive Line”?

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ESPN’s Ivan Maisel tries to provide a sociological take on one of the key units on a football team:

Our topic is the Sociology of the Offensive Line. Our guest lecturer is Barrett Jones, the Alabama redshirt junior, a two-time Academic All-American and an All-SEC right guard in 2010. Jones is uniquely qualified to address this topic. In the No. 3 Crimson Tide’s 48-7 victory over Kent State to open the season, Jones started at left tackle and moved to left guard. That’s unusual but not unheard of.

However, Jones then moved to center for several series in the second half. He played all three positions on the offensive line in one game, none of them on the side of the ball he played for the last two seasons. For offensive linemen, this is the equivalent of playing all nine positions on the baseball field, something only four players have done in the history of major league baseball…

And now, as promised, the sociology: Now that Jones has played all three positions, he can explain what each position thinks of the other.

“Tackles just think their position is by far the hardest,” Jones said. “All the other positions are relatively easy. That’s the mindset they have, just because it is very challenging in the passing game, more so than the other two [positions]. The tackles sometimes think they are the most important people on the line. You kind of have to keep an eye on them, keep them humble. I think it all stems from the NFL. The tackles get paid the big bucks. I think that’s where it all comes from.

“Centers think they are definitely the smartest. If you ever question one of their calls, they get a little uptight. They take great pride in their calls. They think they know it better than anybody else.”

A quick translation into sociological-ese: Jones knows what it means to step into multiple social roles. While he was primarily trained to play one position (right guard?), he became a “portfolio lineman,” filling different roles in order to compete in the tough economy of the Alabama offensive line. One wrong step in any of these social roles might mean the end of his working career under the capitalistic Nick Saban, a “weasel coach,” a manager who cares more about money and winning than the flourishing of his proletariat offensive linemen. Along the way, Jones uncovered the status hierarchy of the offensive line: tackles think they are at the top of physical prowess while centers bristle at their low prestige (linked to the pay segregation they experience in the NFL – how many Hollywood movies have they made about centers?) and try to exalt the thinking they have to do. When asked by reporters, Jones is able to thoughtfully describe the social processes at work after extensive participant observation (perhaps even “going native”?). On the whole, being an offensive lineman requires more than just physical skill – one needs social capital in order to participate in a cohesive, effective group that can protect the real status leader of the offense: the quarterback.

College athletes clustering in a few majors, including sociology

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I’ve written before about sociology being considered an “easy major” by athletes. A new report looks at some notable schools and considers how clustered male athletes are within majors:

Since the NCAA invented the APR [Academic Progress Rate] in 2003, critics have worried that it would discourage athletes from choosing difficult majors or from changing course once they started down a given track. Some have anticipated a “clustering” of athletes in certain majors, such as sociology or communication, and others have expressed concern about the creation of broad programs such as general studies with athletes in mind.

A 2008 analysis by USA Today found that clustering happens at most institutions, and of the three sports programs Shalala compares, Miami football is most questionable, with 62.5 percent of the team studying one of two majors. While clustering on a small scale isn’t necessarily unusual, researchers who study the phenomenon say the 25-percent mark is where things start getting fishy.

A full 37.5 percent of Miami’s junior and senior football players were majoring in liberal arts in 2008, and 25 percent in sports administration. The same 37.5 percent of Stanford’s junior and senior softball players were in one major — but it was human biology — and 36.8 percent of baseball players majored in sociology. Notre Dame athletes didn’t cluster at all, according to USA Today’s analysis.

While this report by Donna Shalala, president of Miami, seems tied to troubles their football program has with violating NCAA regulations, the USA Today 2008 analysis offers more insights. While sociology is lumped within the social sciences, you can mouse over the graphics and while the most clustering seems to happen in the social sciences, the sociology clusters are numerous.

Alas, this collected data is still limited:

Assisted by sports information and other school offices, USA TODAY obtained the majors for about 85% of the athletes in the study. For most of the rest, no major was listed. Primary or first-listed majors were used in the cases of students with multiple majors.

Initially, part of the intent was to compare the percentages of athletes in a major with those of the student body as a whole. That is, if 30% of baseball players are in sociology, is 30% of the entire student body enrolled in sociology? However, short of getting athletes’ private records and the federal reporting code of each athlete’s major, large-scale comparisons are unreliable because some schools have multiple versions of some majors.

The NCAA collects similar information, but does not release it and has no current plans to study it.

Hmmm…I wonder why the NCAA has no interest in analyzing this data.

Author explains writing “If Michael Vick were white”

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An ESPN piece (and picture) that considered what might have happened if Michael Vick was white has received a lot of attention. The author explains his thought process here:

Tonight somewhere in America two men will be arrested for DUI. Many people get arrested for this every day. Surely some will be black and some will be white. Does the fact that people of both races will be arrested for this prove that it’s not a racial situation? No. Does the ratio of those arrests as compared to the population perhaps prove that it is in fact a racial situation? Sure, but almost every situation is racialized.

One black driver may be arrested because the police who notice him are hypersensitive to black drivers in BMWs, so he’s the victim of Driving While Black even though it turns out that he also had a little too much to drink. Meanwhile maybe another black driver is swerving and it’s obvious he’s a problem before the officers can clearly see his face. The point is race is too nuanced to be looked at in a simplistic way. And this “switch test” should be discredited and thrown out…

Am I saying that we’re in a post-racial society and race no longer matters? Absolutely not. “Post-racial” is a meaningless term that people who have a sophisticated understanding of race do not use without an ironic smirk. I hate that dumb term and am dismayed at the number of people who think it’s indicative of modern America. It is not. Race still matters. But I think nowadays it often matters, or comes into play, in ways that are more subtle or nuanced than we care to admit.

The key points here:

1. Race still matters.

2. Race is complicated.

Both of these points should be remembered when talking about this article or about other matters that involve race.

This reminds of one reason that I am a sociologist: we don’t rely on singular situations like this. Thinking about Michael Vick can be a helpful exercise but ultimately, it is just one case. Had a number of factors been different, Vick’s skin color, background, football performance, etc., the outcome would likely be very different. But if we look at the more complete picture, whether it is all NFL players or all of American society, we can see how race still matters. Take NFL players: there has been some interesting research about the quarterback position and how race plays into conceptions of who is able to take on that role. Take American society: there is plenty of evidence that the criminal justice system heavily penalizes certain kinds of crimes more than others, certain groups have much higher incarceration rates, and certain groups are treated differently by the authorities.

Another question we could ask: how does the Michael Vick situation illustrate different approaches of justice? I’ve suggested before that it seems like some will never be happy that Vick has tasted success again and this raises questions about whether Americans should pursue retribution or rehabilitation through the criminal justice system.

How technology may lessen a team’s chemistry

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Technology receives a lot of attention but I haven’t seen this brought up before: technology may be making it more difficult to athletic teams to bond.

Ask many coaches, general managers and older players and you’ll hear a common gripe: chemistry on teams has been altered because of modern technology, and not for the better. The rise of smartphones, with all their instant-communication and entertainment options, have created insular worlds into which distracted players too often retreat instead of bonding with teammates.

Coaches and managers are particularly frustrated at the paradox of players fraternizing less with their own teammates, and more with the “enemy.” Players from opposing teams, they say, too often get each other’s cellphone numbers and start calling or texting back and forth, often griping about playing time and occassionally giving up little secrets about their teams…

Major League Baseball is one sport where the chemistry effects of smartphones, iPads, iPods and other handheld devices might be thought to be minimal, because of the longer workdays and more enclosed environs (dugouts, bullpens, clubhouses). Not necessarily so, according to Colorado Rockies manager Jim Tracy. When the game is over, he says, players quickly rejoin their private, smartphone worlds…

Some NFL teams are said to be contemplating outright bans on smartphones during any “team time” activities, and some coaches have spoken with exasperation at competing with phones for players’ attention. Redskins defensive coordinator Jim Haslett, for instance, told ESPN 101 radio in St. Louis the difficulties of dealing with phone-obsessed players such as former Washington tackle Albert Haynesworth.

I’m tempted to argue that this is simply the outcome of having multiple generations in the clubhouse or locker room: an older generation, particularly coaches and managers, had a particular experience in the past and younger players have a different way of going about things. Perhaps it would be more interesting to talk to younger coaches who are more into technology themselves and ask how they try to build team chemistry. Of course, the topic of team chemistry is open for debate. To me, it seems like it is only really an issue when a team is losing and people are looking for reasons why.

The article does suggest that at least a few veteran athletes have adopted informal/player-directed guidelines for technology use in the clubhouse. I wonder if they have encountered some resistance or whether the spirit of such actions, to “help the team,” is reason enough for other players to comply.

Two other quick thoughts:

1. This could also be interpreted as an indicator of the professionalization of athletes. While athletes in the past might have enjoyed the camaraderie of interacting before and after games, today’s athletes have more personal leeway as most work all-year round and make big money. What matters most (or at all) is their performance on the field/court/ice.

2. The article also hints at how technology has changed how players prepare for games. It is now easy and common for athletes to be able to watch lots of video on their own, theoretically giving them some advantages.

Seeing sociology in the US men’s national soccer team coaching change

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A number of articles have noted the new approach of the new coach of the US men’s national soccer team, Jurgen Klinsman. But this is the first one I’ve seen that suggests Klinsman’s outlook is sociological in nature:

What Klinsmann’s hiring is really about is the big picture, about where soccer is going in the United States, how it will be played and by whom?

It is a grand experiment that is as much about sociology and psychology as it is soccer, and one that promises to be — even to Klinsmann — at least as interesting as whatever happens on the field.

“I deeply believe that soccer, in a certain way, reflects the culture of a country,” Klinsmann, who since 1988 has lived in Huntington Beach, Calif., said at his introductory news conference. “You have such a melting pot in this country with so many different opinions and ideas floating around there. One of my challenges will be to find a way to define how a U.S. team should represent its country. What should be the style of play? It is important over the next three years, especially in the beginning, that I have a lot of conversations with people engulfed in the game here to find a way to define style. What suits us best?”

The question of style posed by Klinsmann — one of the few people with the gravitas and wherewithal to carry such a debate from his perch — isn’t simply about aesthetics. It is about empowerment.

Some Americans might think that having a “national soccer style” might seem odd (is there a “national football style”?) but other countries have such approaches. How exactly cultural values match up with soccer play would be interesting to look at in more depth. Are the explanations that the team fits the values simply post-hoc explanations? (A similar argument: the Chicago Bears and Pittsburgh Steelers play a particular style of football – tough, good defense, hard running, etc. – because of the industrial cities in which they started.) I suspect a “national style” works because it is meaningful and traditional (and perhaps successful), rather than necessarily more true than other possible styles.

Part of the issue raised by Klinsman (and hinted at in this article) is the culture of US soccer that seems to privilege a particular path related to race and social class: going to expensive sports academies as teenagers and then going to college. Few, if any, other countries follow this route. This is a structural issue: how could the path to playing for the USMNT be altered to open it up to more players, particularly those who can’t afford or don’t want to pursue the “typical” route? As Malcolm Gladwell suggests in Outliers, these certain structural advantages help some and not others.

A lot is being asked of Klinsman and cultural changes are difficult to make. But it sounds like Klinsman has some ideas about what to do and US soccer seems to be at a point where people realize it needs to take “the next step.” It will be interesting to watch how the Klinsman sociological experiment goes.

Friday Night Lights (TV version) missed chances to deeply explore issues of race and social class

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The TV series Friday Night Lights recently came to a close after five seasons. I have read the original book, seen the movie, and watched all the episodes of the TV show. While the book was one that gained some popularity as an Intro to Sociology text, I think the TV series missed opportunities to tackle two subjects rarely tackled in mainstream movies and TV: race and social class.

Even as critics lauded the show for more honest portrayals of family life and teenage relationships (and football faded into the background), the show only hinted at these two issues. There are clearly some people who were more wealthy than others: some of the main characters, like Matt Saracen, Tim Riggins, and Becky Sproles come from humble and/or troubled backgrounds while others, like Jason Street, Lyla Garrity, and JD McCoy have more privileged backgrounds. But these issues, which surely would have affected interpersonal relationships, were usually downplayed in favor of football issues. Take JD McCoy for example: he lives in a big house and his dad has lots of money. But it’s not their relative wealth that matters much but rather their arrogance and interest in taking over the Dillon football program that makes them the villain. We do see characters struggling to work and get ahead: Billy Riggin’s wife works in a strip club, Smash Williams sees a football scholarship as the way out of his family’s circumstances, and Jess Merriweather has to work hard at her father’s restaurant and as the football manager. Race wasn’t addressed directly though it simmered under the surface, particularly after the split into the East and West Dillion football programs. The East Dillon Lions were clearly on the wrong side of the tracks because of race and relative wealth. Particularly as Coach Taylor moved away from the relatively opulence of the Panthers program to East Dillon, the us vs. them mentality was developed but it was a package deal revolving around beating the other side of town in football.

One key feature missing out of the book is the Latino population. Odessa, the town in which the original book was based, was 48% Latino in the 2000 Census. The TV show made Dillon out to be split between blacks and whites with little to no Latino characters. Perhaps this was because it is easier to work on the contrasts between two groups but the book’s depth was enhanced by these relationships. I would have enjoyed seeing the show tackle this as many areas of the country, such as Texas, are now adjusting to a growing Latino population.

A second issue involves the future lives of these high school students. A number of the main characters are portrayed as being fairly successful, particularly Jason Street who quickly transforms into an agent or Tyra Collette who goes to UT-Austin, while the less successful characters simply fade away. Perhaps this is a good illustration of what happens after life in high school football: the students who were once stars often fade into the sunset. But, on the other hand, the show could have found a way to follow these characters through the ups and downs after football. Tim Riggins is the main character we get to follow as he drops out of college and his football scholarship, ends up in jail, and then hopes to start a new life. We could have seen more of this and how one’s background in high school and before affected one’s life chances in the adult world in and out of Dillon. This is yet another show that suggests high school life is a peak and life afterwards is of lesser interest.

A third issue: how much interaction was there between the players and their families outside of school? We see gatherings for football but little else. Were there other institutions in the community, such as churches, that either bridged some of these divides or reinforced gaps between groups? In the end, should we think that high school football was the one and only institution in the community that was able to bring people together?

Perhaps the show should be applauded for even hinting at these issues but at the same time, it could have really explored these important concerns and how they affect high school, football, and community life. Instead, the show settled into more comfortable high school drama territory with a revolving set of relationships with a background of winning football teams. Like most shows, the series was about the lives of the individual characters, not about the town of Dillon or the impact of high school football in the community. I still the enjoyed the show but it could have taken some clues from the book and been that rare TV show that is able to entertain and address difficult social issues.