Sports in Society Podcast

Tracie Canada joined the podcast to discuss her research on Black collegiate football players, their labor, and care. This episode addresses chapters 8, 9, 11, and 14 of Sports in Society. We begin discussing Dr. Canada’s experience getting to know football players as a student at Duke. Those experiences set her on a scholarly course that led to the publication of Tackling the Everyday: Race and N...

Jules Boykoff (Pacific University) and Cerianne Robertson (Fordham University) join us to discuss the cost of mega-sporting events to communities, athletes, and fans. This episode illustrates the relationship between wealth and sports. We begin by discussing the many costs of hosting mega-sporting events like the Olympics or World Cup that communities must bear beyond just the financial, such as a...

Drs. Jessica Kirby (UCCS) and Cassandra Phoenix (Durham Univ) join us to discuss aging and sports participation across the life course. We begin by challenging the ageist narrative of aging as a process of decline. We push back on that idea to argue that people across their life course participate in sports in a variety of ways and for a variety of purposes including skill development, competition...

Cheryl Cooky and Molly Cotner join us to talk about the complexities and contradictions of Taylor Swift and her engagements with the NFL. Contemporary feminism and postfeminism are central to the discussion: Ways in which pop and girl culture are trivialized and overlooked, men's angry reactions to Taylor Swift and her fans' presence in NFL football, how Taylor Swift is a commodity in the body of...

Anna Baeth and Madeleine Pape join us to discuss the highly politicized and complicated issue of trans-athletes in contemporary sports. At the heart of this discussion is debates about fairness, the meaning sex and gender, and positive outcomes of sports participation. This episode is directly relevant to chapter 7 on gender and sexuality as well as chapter 13 on sports and politics. This episode...

Michael Messner (USC) and Michela Musto (Brown Univ) join us to talk about how feminist sociology helps us to produce new, useful knowledge about sports and the social world. This is a companion episode to chapter 2 "Producing Knowledge About Sports in Society". We jump off from Messner's famous article "Barbie Girls and Sea Monsters" that analyzes a moment in youth sports that reveals how gender...

Cory Sutela and Shayne McCormick of Medicine Wheel Trail Advocates join us to discuss the pleasures and politics of mountain biking. We talk through how a vision for a well-designed, integrated trail system is developed over a period of decades and how the politics of land use is negotiated in that process. We go on to discuss the pleasures of mountain biking and how it can heal individuals and co...

Drs. John Singer and Ajhanai (AJ) Keaton discuss the importance of sociology within sport management frameworks. A key point they make is that there is more than one way to do sport management, and that critical perspectives gained from sociology produces better sport management practitioners. Moreover, they explain how sport sociologists can learn from sport management. Sport sociology and sport...

In this episode, Drs. Letisha Brown and Tomika Ferguson join us to discuss Black feminist thought in sports studies and praxis. First, Drs. Brown and Ferguson define Black feminism, what makes it unique, impactful, and important within sports worlds. Then they describe how they apply it and live it in their scholarship, policy, and practices. In this way, we can see real world implications of Blac...

This episode explores the diverse, complicated, and politically charged world of Latine sports, which is directly relevant to chapter 8 on race and ethnicity in sports. We look at the range of terms used to name this broad array of peoples and communities. That discussion launches us into a survey of different Latine sports worlds, the uses and meanings of sports across these communities, and thei...

Dr. C. Keith Harrison and Dr. Brandon E. Martin join us to explore the changing landscape of collegiate sports. We delve deep into the implications of NIL, player salaries, and conference realignments. We discuss how this impacts students at all levels of college sports from the Football Bowl Subdivision to community colleges and how high schools will be impacted. But mostly we focus on the impact...

Asians, and especially Asian men, are often seen as outside the boundaries of citizenship, manhood, and sport. This episode explores that conundrum with Stan Thangaraj and Constancio Arnoldo. We look at the enthusiasm with which Asian communities engage sports and how Asian men use it to produce masculine identities even if those identities are fraught with contradictions. We explore the meanings...

Although religion and race may not immediately seem connected, Jeffrey Scholes (UCCS) and Umer Hussain (Missouri State) join us to explain how they are intimately intertwined in sports. We discuss what is religion and its relationship with sports. We then explore how Muscular Christianity did not just popularize modern sports, but also made sports central to the British empire . We look at how Bri...

Jay and Jeff discuss where the idea for podcast came from and how professors can use it as a companion to the textbook Sports in Society, including suggestions for assignments. We also discuss the role of the many ancillaries available to professors who assign Sports in Society in their classes, and how to maximize the value of the ancillaries to enrich your class and save you time.

We begin this episode discussing why talking about violence in sports can be challenging for some people, especially sports fans. We then address if human nature is inherently violent or drawn to violence. That opens up a debate between us on the ritual nature of violence in sports and how a "quest for excitement" operates in modern societies. Through a discussion of the Oklahoma Drill in American...

This episode focuses on how all of us can collectively work together to great a sports future that we want to see. In sociology, we do not try to predict the future, but based on studies of trends in social worlds, we try to understand emergent trends and possibilities so that we can create a world that is more democratic, inclusive, and humane. We do that in this episode by looking at two sports...

Whether religious or secular, people often shy away from discussions of religion since they worry it will be uncomfortable or confrontational. We address that question and argue the connection between sports and religion is important and needs to be analyzed sociologically. We also discuss how sociology gives tools for analysis of sports and religion. Through a discussion of "muscular Christianity...

We situate this episode in the classic framework of structure and agency and show how changes in the organization of school sports impacts athletes’ ability to make meaningful decisions over their own lives as well as leadership skills they can develop. We then move into complexities around elite collegiate sports, including the relationship between sport and education, economic changes at the top...

We begin by discussing NFL players’ protests during the US national anthem against police violence in Black communities, and many white people’s negative reactions. This leads into a discussion of people’s belief sports and politics should be kept separate. We challenge that idea by discussing obvious ways in which sports are politicized. We then discuss how larger social context can cause people...

This episode focuses on chapter 12, "Sports and the Media: Could They Survive Without Each Other?" We begin the episode by situating sport media within neoliberal capitalism, which leads into a discussion of media deregulation. We further develop a discussion on how digital media technologies impact the experience of consuming sports. We also discuss how digital media allows athletes and fans to b...

This episode begins by contrasting people’s motivations to participate in and watch sports as well as the motivations people who stage local sporting events to the motivations of businesspeople that stage commercial sporting events. This leads into a discussion of neoliberal capitalism and its major characteristics. We follow up that abstract discussion with a list of concrete examples of neoliber...

In this episode, we begin our discussion focusing on ableist ideology and how we can avoid stigmatizing others. We then discuss how sports participation can counter ableist notions of aging as a process of decline, why ability is challenging to define, and we recognize limits of what sport can accomplish. This opens up a discussion about how life developments both facilitate and restrict the choic...

We begin our discussion of social class in sports by addressing class ideology and the American Dream. We then focus on how the unequal distribution of resources in society leas to an unequal playing field in sports. We push that discussion to address inequalities in the built environment, and how that creates different access to health resources and fun. This leads us to address how wealthier peo...

This episode on chapter 8 “Race and Ethnicity: Are They Important in Sports?” begins by recognizing that race is a social construction and how that leads people to see the social truths of race as fixed, immutable biological facts. The search for a jumping gene in Black athletes provides a case in point. We then differentiate ethnicity from race before applying our analysis of racial ideology to J...

This episode focuses on chapter 7 "Sex, Gender, and Sport: Are Inclusion and Equity Possible?" We begin by focusing on how sex and gender are social constructions, and what is meant by social construction. We then turn to how men are paradoxically empowered in a patriarchal society but their gender expressions are also more heavily policed. This leads into a historical approach to research, how do...