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“Futures—Past,” A Reflection of 40 Years of the Sociology of Sport Journal: An Introduction
Letisha Engracia Cardoso Brown, Chen Chen, Tomika Ferguson, Courtney Szto, Anthony Jean Weems, and Natalie Welch
Volume 16 (2023): Issue 4 (Dec 2023)
Volume 40 (2023): Issue 4 (Dec 2023): SPECIAL ISSUE “Futures—Past,”: Liberation, Futurity, Intersectionality, and Interdisciplinarity: Reading Sport, Physical Culture, and the (Physically Active) Body
Anti-Racism in Sport Organizations
Krystina B. Sarff
Authenticity Negotiation: How Elite Athletes (Re)Present Themselves as Personal Brands
Nataliya Bredikhina, Thilo Kunkel, and Ravi Kudesia
Projecting authenticity is crucial for athletes engaged in personal branding. Prior scholarship has emphasized the “frontstage” of authenticity: what tactics athletes use to present themselves and how audiences perceive such tactics. But it has not yet examined the “backstage”: why athletes pursue authenticity and the strategic considerations involved in such ongoing self-presentations. Using a constructivist grounded theory that draws on interviews with 30 elite athletes engaged in personal branding, we unpack these backstage processes, which are not straightforward but entail an ongoing cycle of authenticity negotiation. Our model of authenticity negotiation identifies conflicting authenticity demands and constraints imposed by various actors, which athletes attempt to resolve over time using a range of authenticity management tactics. By modeling the backstage processes in authenticity negotiation, our research integrates, contextualizes, and suggests extensions to the existing frontstage work on authenticity. It offers guidance to athletes and practitioners on managing athlete brands and stakeholder collaborations.
Graduate Education From Physical Education to Kinesiology: Preparing the Next Generation
Diane L. Gill
In line with the 2023 conference theme, I first honor the past, then move to the present, and offer my views on embracing the future. In doing so, my theme is connection. That is, we need to hang together and connect with our professionals, our communities, and the public, as well as with each other. From our beginning in the late 1800s through much of our history, we were connected through physical education, but since the 1960s we have shifted away from physical education to disciplinary specializations and lost connections. Graduate programs, especially PhD programs, focus on preparing researchers in specialized areas. Although we no longer focus on physical education, we do have strong professional connections to the allied health areas. By strengthening our connections with our professionals and the public, we can make important contributions to the health and well-being of our communities and larger society and embrace the future.
The Olympics That Never Happened: Denver ‘76 and the Politics of Growth
Craig M. Crow
Sport Management: Lessons From Yesterday, Applications for Today, Thoughts on Tomorrow
Donna L. Pastore
Sport management programs continue to expand and be a popular major in institutions of higher education. The aim of this article is to share the contributions made by National Academy of Kinesiology fellows to the growth of sport management. A brief background of sport management is presented followed by an overview of each fellow’s unique contributions. More specifically, lessons learned from our first three fellows in sport management and contributions made by current members are highlighted. Next, a discussion of the current status and critical issues facing sport management is presented. The concluding section includes scholars’ thoughts and directions for future scholarship in sport management.
An xG of Their Own: Using Expected Goals to Explore the Analytical Shortcomings of Misapplied Gender Schemas in Football
Sachin Narayanan and N. David Pifer
Although professional women’s football has benefitted from recent surges in popularity, challenges to progress and distinguish the sport persist. The gender-schema theory explains the tendency for individuals to hold female sports to male standards, a phenomenon that leads to negative outcomes in areas such as media representation and consumer perception. One area in which schemas have a more discreet effect is player and team performance, where the assumption that technical metrics developed in men’s football are transferable to women’s football remains unfounded. Using expected goals, a metric synonymous with the probability of a shot being scored, we highlight how variables important to shot quality and shot execution differ across gender, and how attempts to evaluate female footballers with models built on men’s data increase estimation errors. These results have theoretical and practical implications for the role they play in reframing schemas and improving the methods used to evaluate performance in women’s sports.
