Sociology of Sports

How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization

The global power of soccer might be a little hard for Americans, living in a country that views the game with the same skepticism used for the metric system and the threat of killer bees, to grasp fully. But in Europe, South America, and elsewhere, soccer is not merely a pastime but often an expression of the social, economic, political, and racial composition of the communities that host both the teams and their throngs of enthusiastic fans. New Republic editor Franklin Foer, a lifelong devotee of soccer dating from his own inept youth playing days to an adulthood of obsessive fandom, examines soccer's role in various cultures as a means of examining the reach of globalization. Foer's approach is long on soccer reportage, providing extensive history and fascinating interviews on the Rangers-Celtic rivalry and the inner workings of AC Milan, and light on direct discussion of issues like world trade and the exportation of Western culture. But by creating such a compelling narrative of soccer around the planet, Foer draws the reader into these sport-mad societies, and subtly provides the explanations he promises in chapters with titles like "How Soccer Explains the New Oligarchs", "How Soccer Explains Islam's Hope", and "How Soccer Explains the Sentimental Hooligan." Foer's own passion for the game gives his book an infectious energy but still pales in comparison to the religious fervor of his subjects. His portraits of legendary hooligans in Serbia and Britain, in particular, make the most die-hard roughneck New York Yankees fan look like a choirboy in comparison. Beyond the thugs, Foer also profiles Nigerian players living in the Ukraine, Iranian women struggling against strict edicts to attend matches, and the parallel worlds of Brazilian soccer and politics from which Pele emerged and returned. Foer posits that globalization has eliminated neither local cultural identities nor violent hatred among fans of rival teams, and it has not washed out local businesses in a sea of corporate wealth nor has it quelled rampant local corruption. Readers with an interest in international economics are sure to like How Soccer Explains the World, but soccer fans will love it. --John Moe

Soccer is much more than a game, or even a way of life. It is a perfect window into the cross–currents of today's world, with all its joys and its sorrows. In this remarkably insightful, wide–ranging work of reportage, Franklin Foer takes us on a surprising tour through the world of soccer, shining a spotlight on the clash of civilizations, the international economy, and just about everything in between. How Soccer Explains the World is an utterly original book that makes sense of our troubled times.

Principles And Practice Of Sport Management

Updated and expanded, Principles and Practice of Sport Management, Third Edition offers a comprehensive introduction to the sport management industry. From the basic knowledge and skill sets of a sport manager to the current trends and issues of the sport management industry, this best-selling text provides the foundation for students as they study and prepare for a variety of sport management careers. The authors, all well-known sport industry professionals, show students how to apply their new knowledge and skills to any segment in the sport industry from high school to the international arena. Students gain a solid understanding of sport management structures and learn to apply principles such as sport ethics to the many segments and support systems of the industry.

Game On: The All-American Race to Make Champions of Our Children

A first-of-its-kind investigative book on the least examined and most important topic in sports today.

Youth sports isn't just orange slices and all-star trophies anymore. It's 14-year-olds who enter high school with a decade of football experience, 9-year-olds competing for national baseball championships, 5-year-old golfers who shoot par, and toddlers made from sperm donated (for a fee) by elite college athletes. It's a year-round "travel team" in every community--and parents who fear that not making the cut in grade school will cost their kid the chance to play in high school. In short, a landscape in which performance often matters more than participation, all the way down to peewee basketball.

Much as Fast Food Nation challenged our eating habits and Silent Spring rewired how we think about the environment, Tom Farrey's Game On will forever change the way we look at this desperate culture besotted by the example of Tiger Woods. An Emmy award-winning reporter, Farrey examines the lives of child athletes and the consequences of sorting the strong from the weak at ever earlier ages: fewer active kids, testier sidelines, rising obesity rates, and U.S. national teams that rarely win world titles.

He dives into the world of these games that are played by more than 30 million boys and girls, and along the way uncovers some surprising truths. When the very best athletes enter organized play. The best approach to coaching them. And the powerful influence of wealth and genetics. Farrey has written a surprising, alarming, thoughtful, and ultimately empowering book for anyone who wants the best for the newest generation of Americans, as athletes and citizens.

One Helluva Ride: How NASCAR Swept the Nation

From its raw beginnings on Southern dirt tracks, NASCAR smacked of a slightly depraved spectacle, as if nothing but trouble could come from the unbridled locomotion of a V8 engine. By the time NASCAR roared into the twenty-first century, it had grown into a billion-dollar sports and marketing colossus, its races attended by hundreds of thousands of fans on any given weekend from mid-February through mid-November, watched on television by the second-largest viewing audience in sports, and bankrolled by the marketing largesse of the Fortune 500’s elite.

One Helluva Ride, a full-throttle account of the rise and reign of NASCAR nation, is award-winning motorsports reporter Liz Clarke’s chronicle of how stock car racing exploded from regional obsession to national phenomenon. In covering the sport for more than fifteen years, Clarke has developed a strong rapport with NASCAR’s drivers, team owners, and hard-core fans. Through her reporting and analysis, we get to know the public and private sides of NASCAR’s most iconic figures, including seven-time champion Richard Petty, who set the standard for treating fans with respect, and the late Dale Earnhardt, whose brazen, bullying tactics wreaked havoc on the track, but whose heart was as big as Daytona’s infield.

The sports world stopped in its tracks the day Earnhardt was killed on the last lap of the 2001 Daytona 500. Some feared that NASCAR’s soul would die with him. But it has raced on, steered by visionary promoters, the all-controlling France family (who founded the sport), and, above all, the next generation of drivers to stir fans’ passions: Dale Earnhardt, Jr., son of the NASCAR legend and now, like his father before him, the circuit’s most popular driver; Jeff Gordon, the beloved but oft-maligned outsider, bred from the cradle to be NASCAR’s winningest modern champion; and Kasey Kahne, a reluctant heartthrob whose confidence derives entirely from an accelerator pedal. Clarke also brings us inside NASCAR’s most triumphant and tragic dynasties: the Pettys, the Earnhardts, and the Allisons–and reveals how faith, family, and a deep-seated love of their sport helps them cope with grief and loss.

Clarke shows NASCAR to be at a crossroads. In pursuit of a broader audience, NASCAR has severed its sponsorship ties to Big Tobacco, abandoned racetracks in small markets in favor of speedways near glitzy major cities, and welcomed Japan’s Toyota into a sport traditionally restricted to American-made sedans. As NASCAR races toward mass appeal, some suggest it is leaving its roots behind. To others, it is boldly extending its reach from the Southern workingman to every man, woman, and child in the world.

Whether you’re one of the die-hard NASCAR faithful or just a casual follower, nobody brings you closer to the sport and business of big-time stock car racing than Liz Clarke. This book, like the phenomenon it profiles, really is One Helluva Ride.

Patron Saints: How the Saints Gave New Orleans a Reason to Believe

In August 2005, Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans, devastating not only buildings and homes, but the hope, spirit and faith of its people. The Saints were cast out on the road, not knowing when they would return home, and faltered to a losing 3-13 season amidst the chaos. People wondered whether the city could even sustain an NFL team anymore.

Then, a funny thing happened on the way to economic devastation. The city of New Orleans, its population cut in half and its local industry in tatters, rallied to buy up the first season-ticket sellout in franchise history. Led by coach Sean Payton and quarterback Drew Brees, coming off a near-career-ending shoulder injury, the Saints engineered a worst-to-first season that gave their fans a reason to believe, both in the team and in themselves. Together they inspired each other to do the impossible: put the Saints in the NFC Championship game, and put New Orleans on the road to recovery.

Though the Saints emerged from the NFC Championship with a stinging loss to Chicago, they returned home as true champions. In PATRON SAINTS, Saints reporter Alan Donnes has compiled over 100 interviews with the players, coaches, politicians and colorful locals who made it happen. Together, these powerful voices recount the fractious history of the team and the city, how the horror of Katrina brought them together, and how one winning season has brought hope to a place that hope forgot.

Forty Million Dollar Slaves: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Black Athlete

From Jackie Robinson to Muhammad Ali and Arthur Ashe, African American athletes have been at the center of modern culture, their on-the-field heroics admired and stratospheric earnings envied. But for all their money, fame, and achievement, says New York Times columnist William C. Rhoden, black athletes still find themselves on the periphery of true power in the multibillion-dollar industry their talent built.

Provocative and controversial, Rhoden’s $40 Million Slaves weaves a compelling narrative of black athletes in the United States, from the plantation to their beginnings in nineteenth-century boxing rings and at the first Kentucky Derby to the history-making accomplishments of notable figures such as Jesse Owens, Althea Gibson, and Willie Mays. Rhoden makes the cogent argument that black athletes’ “evolution” has merely been a journey from literal plantations—where sports were introduced as diversions to quell revolutionary stirrings—to today’s figurative ones, in the form of collegiate and professional sports programs. Weaving in his own experiences growing up on Chicago’s South Side, playing college football for an all-black university, and his decades as a sportswriter, Rhoden contends that black athletes’ exercise of true power is as limited today as when masters forced their slaves to race and fight. The primary difference is, today’s shackles are often of their own making.

Every advance made by black athletes, Rhoden explains, has been met with a knee-jerk backlash—one example being Major League Baseball’s integration of the sport, which stripped the black-controlled Negro League of its talent and left it to founder. He details the “conveyor belt” that brings kids from inner cities and small towns to big-time programs, where they’re cut off from their roots and exploited by team owners, sports agents, and the media. He also sets his sights on athletes like Michael Jordan, who he says have abdicated their responsibility to the community with an apathy that borders on treason.

Sweeping and meticulously detailed, $40 Million Slaves is an eye-opening exploration of a metaphor we only thought we knew.


From the Hardcover edition.

Faithful to Fenway: Believing in Boston, Baseball, and Americas Most Beloved Ballpark

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Read the Introduction

"Along with his astute social scientific insight, Borer also includes plenty of first-person accounts of the ballpark from Red Sox greats like Carl Yastrzemski and Johnny Pesky and from regular Bostonians and out-of-town baseball fans. This ability to intermingle scholarly research with AmericaÂ’s beloved pastime has allowed Borer to write an astute academic treatise that has the appeal of a consumer sports pub."
—Publishers Weekly

"Borer assesses the attraction of Fenway Park through his own expert lens. The results . . . will prove invaluable not only to Red Sox and more general baseball scholars but also to students of urban life, the organization of limited inner-city space, social psychology and collective memory, how a baseball park can become a cultural shrine, and a cohorts shared values—not to mention Fenway's contributions to our understanding of fandom.
—Library Journal

"Boston's Fenway Park has become as valued as any star player in those cities and as much an attraction as the teams themselves. Borer, a sociologist and lifelong New Englander, explores the history of Fenway and its place in Bostons culture through research and interviews with players, stadium personnel, fans, and team owners...[H]e explains Fenway's place in the culture as an example of identity continuity. Fenway is an emotional anchor for fans in the sense that it encompasses a part of an individuals past and present."
—Booklist

"Borer has captured the magic of Fenway Park. "
—Doris Kearns Goodwin

"Even Yankee fans will have much to consider from this book, published so soon after the Red Sox curse has ended. This is an important work of the sociology of sport and of urban sociology."
—Gary Alan Fine, author of With the Boys: Little League Baseball and Pre-adolescent Culture

Even if you don't already love the Red Sox, you'll love this account of the stories people tell about why Fenway matters.
—Nancy T. Ammerman, author of Everyday Religion: Observing Modern Religious Lives

"[Faithful to Fenway is] a must-have item for the Red Sox fans who champion their old stadium despite its uncomfortable seats."
—Portland Press Herald

The Green Monster. Pesky's Pole. The Lone Red Seat. Yawkey Way. To baseball fans this list of bizarre phrases evokes only one place: Fenway Park, home of the Boston Red Sox. Built in 1912, Fenway Park is Americas oldest major league ballpark still in use. In Faithful to Fenway, Michael Ian Borer takes us out to Fenway where we sit in cramped wooden seats (often with obstructed views of the playing field), where there is a hand-operated scoreboard and an average attendance of 20,000 less fans than most stadiums, and where every game has been sold out since May of 2003. There is no Hard Rock Caf (like Torontos Skydome), no swimming pool (like Arizonas' Chase Field), and definitely no sushi (which has become a fan favorite from Baltimore to Seattle). As Borer tells us in this captivating book, Fenway is short on comfort but long on character.

Faithful to Fenway investigates the mystique of the ballpark. Borer, who lived in Boston before and after the Red Sox historic 2004 World Series win, draws on interviews with Red Sox players, including Jason Varitek and Carl Yastrzemski, management, including Larry Lucchino and John Henry, groundskeepers, vendors, and scores of fans to uncover what the park means for Boston and the people who revere it. Borer argues that Fenway is nothing less than a national icon, more than worthy of the banner outside the stadium that proclaims, Americas Most Beloved Ballpark. Certainly as one of New Englands greatest landmarks, Fenway captures the hearts and imaginations of a deferential and devoted public. There are T-shirts, bumper stickers, banners, and snow globes that honor the ballpark. Fenway shows up in popular films, novels, television commercials, and in replicated form in peoples backyards—and coming in 2008 to Quincy, Massachusetts, is Mini-Fenway Park, a replica stadium built especially for kids.

Full of legendary stories, amusing anecdotes, and the shared triumph and tragedy of the Red Sox and their fans, Faithful to Fenway offers a fresh and insightful perspective, offering readers an unforgettable pilgrimage to the Mecca of baseball.

God Save the Fan: How Preening Sportscasters, Athletes Who Speak in the Third Person, and the Occasional Convicted Quarterback Have Taken the Fun Out of Sports (And How We Can Get It Back)

ESPN thinks its viewers are stupid. The Olympics claw at your inner sap. Barbaro, after all, was just a horse. So says Will Leitch, founding editor of Deadspin.com, whose God Save the Fan is your new manifesto.

Arch and unrepentant, Leitch is the mouthpiece for all the frustrated fans who just want their games back from big money, bloated egos, and blathering sportscasters. Always a fan first and a journalist second, Leitch considers the perfection of fantasy leagues, the meaninglessness of the steroids debate, and the aching permanence of loyalty to just one team. He'll tell you why, long before that dogfighting mess, Michael Vick's undercover STD clinic name was Ron Mexico; why athletes persist in publicly praising God; and what the beer companies really think about you. Share Leitch's dread as he spends twenty—four hours watching ESPN. Sit and have a beer with John Rocker and his surprising girlfriend. Be inspired by Rick Ankiel's phoenixlike rise, and fall.

With a voice strengthened by the success of Deadspin and its chorus of commenters, Leitch has written all—new material for God Save the Fan. If you or a fan you love is suffering from the sense of listless dissatisfaction brought on by the leagues and networks, this is your restorative tonic. Packed with lists, glossaries, confessions, and rages, Leitch's manifesto sings a rallying cry for fan empowerment. The games, after all, belong to us.

Cheer!: Inside the Secret World of College Cheerleaders

Think cheerleading is just pom-poms, "gimme an 'R,'" and pleated skirts? Not anymore. Take an exhilarating trip through the rough-and-tumble world of competitive college cheerleading....

College cheerleaders are extreme athletes who fly thirty feet in the air, build pyramids in which a single slip can send ten people crashing to the ground, and compete in National Championships that are won by hundredths of a point. Cheer! is a year-long odyssey into their universe, following three squads from tryouts to Nationals.

Meet the Stephen F. Austin Lumberjack cheerleaders from Nacogdoches, Texas, whoseem destined to win their fifth National Championship in a row -- until they are shaken by the departure of their longtime coach. Fall in love with the Southern University Jaguars from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, an African-American team hoping to raise the $17,000 needed to travel to Nationals and transform their near win several years ago into a Cinderella victory. Root for the University of Memphis All-Girl cheerleaders from Tennessee -- a team that continually struggles for the same respect Coed teams get -- when their quest for a national title is threatened by injuries and dropouts.

Along the way, meet unforgettable characters like Sierra, a cheerleading prodigy who has never lost a competition; Doug, who is in his eighth year as a college cheerleader; and Casi, one of the few female bases who can lift anothercheerleader on her own. These are people who risk horrifying injuries on a daily basis, battle demons like eating disorders and steroid use, and form intense bonds.

In the immersive tradition of Friday Night Lights, Cheer! is a captivating, all-access journey into a deeply absorbing world.

Economics of Sports, The (3rd Edition) (The Addison-Wesley Series in Economics)

Many economists find the sports industry to be the ideal paradigm to illustrate a range of economic concepts, which explains why the Economics of Sports course continues to grow in popularity. Now in the Third Edition, The Economics of Sports explores economic concepts and theory—industrial organization, public finance, and labor economics—in the context of applications from American and international sports.

Introduction and Review of Economic Concepts: Introduction; Review of the Economist's Arsenal. The Industrial Organization of Sports: Sports Franchises as Profit-Maximizing Firms; Monopoly and Antitrust; Competitive Balance. The Public Finance of Sports: The Public Finance of Sports: The Market for Sports Franchises; The Costs and Benefits of a Franchise to a City. The Labor Economics of Sports: An Introduction to Labor Markets in Professional Sports; Labor Unions and Labor Relations; Discrimination; The Economics of Amateurism and College Sports.

For all readers interested in sports economics.