This autoethnographic account analyzes the culture of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), its rules, and the 1-year scholarship through a personal narrative of the author’s experience as a Division I basketball player who had her 1-year scholarship revoked before her senior year. The author seeks to provide a voice of resistance through an experience few have access to, as well as respond to calls for more communication scholars to use personal narrative research in sport. This scholarly commentary concludes with recommendations to change the culture of the NCAA to make it more amenable to multiyear scholarships and student-athlete rights: Communication between the NCAA and institutional members must continue to advocate for student-athlete rights; if schools are not going to offer multiyear scholarships, the NCAA needs to change the deadline for when schools must notify of nonrenewal; and student-athletes need to be encouraged to join associations that support their rights.
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“The Most Evil Thing About College Sports”: The 1-Year Scholarship and a Former NCAA Athlete’s Personal Narrative
Karen L. Hartman
Fan–Athlete Interaction and Twitter Tweeting Through the Giro: A Case Study
Jeffrey W. Kassing and Jimmy Sanderson
This case study examines how fans can experience a major sporting event (cycling’s Tour of Italy) through a particular new communication technology platform—Twitter. To explore this possibility the authors tracked the “tweets” sent out by a selection of American and English-speaking riders during the 3-wk race. Their analysis of these texts revealed that Twitter served to increase immediacy between athletes and fans. This occurred as athletes provided commentary and opinions, fostered interactivity, and cultivated insider perspectives for fans. These activities position Twitter as a powerful communication technology that affords a more social vs. parasocial relationship between athletes and fans.
On Being a “Good Sport” in the Workplace: Women, the Glass Ceiling, and Negotiated Resignation in Sports Information
Erin Whiteside and Marie Hardin
This research survey explores the gendered work experiences of women in sports information, including their perceptions of the “glass ceiling,” their rationalization strategies for dealing with those perceptions, and the factors contributing to their low numbers in the business. The findings suggest that women perceive a glass ceiling but are hesitant to admit its existence. Second, women are internalizing some of the value systems embedded in this male-dominated industry. Finally, along with perceptions of a glass ceiling, women are facing a “maternal wall” that makes staying in sports information extremely difficult for women with children, given the job’s untraditional schedule.
Interview With John Humenik, Executive Director of the College Sports Information Directors of America
G. Clayton Stoldt
John Humenik is the executive director of the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA). Humenik has more than 30 years of experience in athletic communications, including stints as the sports information director at Princeton, Michigan, and Florida. Before assuming the new position with CoSIDA, Humenik was a senior manager for Sports Publishing LLC, a publisher of sports-related books. Humenik is already a member of the CoSIDA Hall of Fame, and he received the organization’s highest honor for professional accomplishment, the Arch Ward Award, in 1994. Established in 1957, CoSIDA has more than 2,300 members, most of whom work in college athletics public relations positions.
“It Makes Me Feel Like I Am an Important Part of This Team”: An Exploratory Study of Coach Confirmation
Gregory A. Cranmer and Maria Brann
Coaches are recognized as important sources of athlete experiences (e.g., learning, sport satisfaction, relationships with teammates), but little attention has been devoted to how coaches foster positive self-perceptions. The current exploratory study proposes that coaches are likely sources of confirmation (i.e., feeling of recognition, endorsement, and acknowledgment). This assumption was substantiated via 12 interviews with Division I volleyball players during the 2013 season as 6 confirming acts and messages used by coaches were identified (i.e., individualized communication, personal relationships, encouragement, demands for improvement, recognition, and demonstration of investment). In addition, 4 phenomena that influence confirmation were identified (i.e., adversity, knowledge of other coaches, athletes’ roles on the team, and timing). These results extend confirmation to the sport context, provide sport communication scholars with a novel framework to understand athlete–coach communication, and illustrate that various phenomena (including starting status) can influence confirming communication between athletes and coaches.
Expert Teachers’ Instructional Communication in Golf
Collin A. Webster
Expert golf instructors self-monitor their instruction and communication more than any other aspects of their teaching (Schempp, McCullick, Busch, Webster, & Sannen-Mason, 2006). Despite its apparent importance, however, the communication of expert golf instructors has received little investigative attention. The purpose of this study was to examine the instructional communication behaviors of 4 of the most highly accomplished golf instructors in the United States. Ladies Professional Golf Association instructors who met criteria for expert teaching (Berliner, 1994) and 4 students participated in the study. Videotaping, stimulated recall, and semistructured interviews were used to collect data on the teachers’ immediacy, communication style, and content relevance behaviors. Data were analyzed using modified analytic induction (Bogdan & Biklen, 1992). Findings indicated that the experts adapted their communication behaviors in ways that fit students’ learning preferences, personal experiences, and lesson goals. The findings resonate with previous research on expert teaching in terms of experts’ instructional flexibility.
Athlete-to-Athlete Verbal Aggression: A Case Study of Interpersonal Communication Among Elite Australian Footballers
John H. Kerr and Pippa Grange
This case study examined interpersonal communication in sport in the form of verbal aggression among elite athletes in the Australian Football League (AFL). It focused on the experience and motivation of athletes who use athlete-to-athlete verbal aggression and the responses of athletes who have been the targets of verbal aggression during games. In addition, the reasons athletes have for not engaging in verbal aggression were also examined. Purposive sampling procedures produced a select sample of elite male athletes known for their aggressive approach to playing Australian football. Qualitative methods and deductive analysis procedures, informed by J.H. Kerr’s categories of sport aggression, were used to interpret the interview data. Meaningful insights into verbal aggression in the AFL were obtained. Based on the underlying motivation, interview transcript descriptions of incidents were identified as examples of power, thrill, and anger verbal aggression.
The Medium of the Future: Top Sports Writers Discuss Transitioning From Newspapers to Online Journalism
Edward M. Kian and Matthew H. Zimmerman
In this phenomenology, interviews were conducted with former newspaper reporters now working for prominent Internet sports sites. Krumboltz’s (2008) Planned Happenstance Learning Theory on career development was used as a guiding framework. Data were transcribed and coded by two researchers. Most of the journalists decided to be newspaper sports writers early in life and began garnering professional experiences in their teens or in college. None planned to work for Internet outlets. However, all foresaw the demise of newspapers and landed with Internet outlets through media connections initially formed through newspapers. All but one expressed high satisfaction in their current jobs, citing large travel budgets, freedom to choose writing assignments, national platforms, and no hard time deadlines for submitting stories. These reporters find the future of sports journalism unpredictable, but believe they will be ready. Lehman-Wilizig and Cohen-Avigdor’s media life-cycle model (2004) was used to understand results in a broader context.
Sports Journalists and England’s Barclays Premier League: A Case Study Examining Reporters’ Takes on Modern Football
Danielle S. Coombs and Anne Osborne
England’s Barclays Premier League is one of the most successful and widereaching sporting organizations in the world, attracting the best football players and managers from around the world as well as a global audience. Since its formation in 1992, the Premier League has focused on commercial success for both the League and its constituent clubs. This emphasis has brought tremendous change to English football as a whole. This case study analysis seeks to understand the perceptions and experiences of sports reporters tasked with covering these Premier League sides. These football journalists describe limited access brought on by the clubs’ decisions to emphasize global brands and manage their own branded content through club-run websites and material. Respondents also perceive this limited access is exacerbated by increased multiculturalism and a growing culture of suspicion that widens the gulfs between teams and the reporters who cover them.
The Word-of-Mouth Phenomenon: Its Presence and Impact in a Sport Setting
Megan B. Shreffler and Stephen D. Ross
Word-of-mouth (WOM) marketing has the potential to effectively contribute to revenue generation as sport organizations continue to create and implement marketing strategies to build and maintain relationships with consumers. While there has been a plethora of research on WOM marketing in the general business literature, the magnitude of the phenomenon must be examined separately in a sport setting because of the uniqueness of sport fans as consumers. This study examined the effect of the transference of personal experiences through WOM activity on brand associations, team identification, and the behavioral intentions of college basketball fans. Through a 4-stage data-collection approach in which both positive and negative messages were used, it was found that WOM activity has a significant impact on some of the measured constructs. The results of the study suggest that negative WOM has a greater impact on consumers than positive WOM, providing significant theoretical and managerial implications.