A Raw Export
Pro wrestling is often derided for its fake drama, and pageantry, as well as its violence, lack of subtlety, and over-the-top, macho characters. However, pro wrestling continues its sleeper hold on our...
View ArticleThe Myth of the Over-Scheduled Child
Conventional wisdom suggests the younger generation will suffer long-term social and psychological consequences from too much structured time. But a hard look at national data reveals our children are...
View ArticleHoops and Wheels
Because disability sports are segregated from able-bodied sports, they’re typically relegated to second-class status, as if only “natural” bodies play natural sports and “unnatural” bodies play...
View ArticleGladwell’s Big Kid Bias?
A closer look at Malcolm Gladwell’s “iron law of Canadian Hockey” reveals that birthday cut-offs in pee-wee leagues do not, in fact, predict eventual hockey stardom. The authors find that the...
View ArticlePlaying but Losing: Women’s Sports After Title IX
Girls and women have more opportunities since Title IX, but the playing field is still far from level. Cheryl Cooky and Nicole M. Lavoi explore how major inequities remain, especially in terms of media...
View ArticleCollege Sports’ Corporate Arena
Sociologist D. Randall Smith argues that a segment of big-time college sports has embraced the corporate model and this has led to a steady increase in the revenue gap between the "haves" and "have nots."
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Rage Against The Refs
by Amanda LanzoneWhen people watch football, they tend to focus on their favorite team. But this season the NFL referees’ lockout has shifted attention to the men in stripes. Fans complained that...
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Better Helmets, Worse Injuries
by Sayada RamdialLast May, when former San Diego Chargers linebacker Junior Seau, who had suffered from numerous concussions, committed suicide, fans and pundits called for the improvement of helmets,...
View ArticleJeremy Lin’s Model Minority Problem
In 2012, an Asian American, Ivy-League educated basketball player captured the country's attention: what was it that made Jeremy Lin so exceptional, from his race to his physical and mental prowess to...
View ArticleAtlanta and Other Olympic Losers
Cities launch major campaigns to convince the International Olympic Committee to grace them with a staging of the Summer or Winter Games, and they spare no expense in readying their cities for the...
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Ritual Violence in a Two-Car Garage
KICK ASS AND TAKE NAMES! You were **BORN** for violence my fellow MAN. Take up that stick knowing in your heart of hearts that every fiber of your being has either evolved through fighting and death...
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The Armstrong Effect
When cyclist Lance Armstrong admitted to doping, he joined a growing list of professional athletes with ruined reputations. But public humiliation is not the end of Armstrong’s story. As the public...
View ArticleTiger Girls On The Soccer Field
Scholar Hilary Levey Friedman investigates how parental decisions result in different classed forms of femininity for girls who learn to be either “graceful girls” through dance, “aggressive girls”...
View ArticleCelebrity Drug Scandals, Media Double Standards
Media coverage reflects the conflicted status of drugs in a culture that both valorizes and demonizes their use. Sociologist Rebecca Tiger compares New York Times' coverage of Whitney Houston’s death...
View ArticleDefensive Doping
When asked about using banned substances to maintain his winning record, champion cyclist Lance Armstrong said it was “part of the job”—like having “air in our tires” and “water in our bottles.” In...
View ArticleSurvival of the Fastest?
Borrowing from Herbert Spencer’s phrase “survival of the fittest,” the documentary film Survival of the Fastest aired just before the 2012 Olympic Games. It recycles the outmoded notion that race is an...
View ArticleThe Trouble With Tebowing
Sociologists Grace Yukich, Kimberly Stokes, and Daniela Bellows explore cultural norms around religious displays in sports, and in public life more generally, by examining media coverage of...
View ArticleInside the Extreme Sport of Competitive Eating
Sociologist Priscilla Ferguson considers competitive eating as an expression of identifiably American connections between abundance and country. Overeating both honors country and transgresses social...
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