Search Results

While outdoor sports, such as skiing, impact the environment, the environment also impacts the sport. North College is a small, private, liberal arts college in the mountains of New England that sponsors four National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I sports, men’s alpine skiing, women’s alpine skiing, men’s Nordic skiing, and women’s Nordic skiing. New England’s weather has been struggling to help the both the men’s and women’s teams access adequate early season training due to the changing environment and the lower snowfall totals. Climate change has posed a risk to the sport of skiing due to the decreased natural snow cover and shortened ski seasons. In addition, manmade snow may increase the risk of injury to student-athletes participating. Through advocacy, partnerships, and climate literacy, this case study seeks to explore North College’s sustainably efforts and attempts to prevent further change in the environment.

Social media play a major role in marketing and promotional efforts in intercollegiate athletics, yet student-athletes are rarely included in these campaigns. This case study analyzes a campaign employed by Temple University’s football program that departed from this norm. During their 2018 spring game, Temple coaches allowed football players to put their Twitter handles on the backs of their jerseys. Through interviews with athletic department staff members and football student-athletes and analysis of football players’ tweets and media framing of this campaign, several positive outcomes emerged. These included how the campaign fostered student-athlete buy-in and generated favorable media coverage for the program. However, analysis also revealed that while many football student-athletes actively used Twitter, they were not fully integrated into the campaign. Implications for including student-athletes’ social media content in athletic department marketing, branding, and promotional efforts are discussed.

This research explored maladaptive parasocial interaction (PSI) expressed toward Chicago Bears kicker Cody Parkey after he missed a potential game-winning field goal in the 2019 NFL (National Football League) playoffs. Using a sample of 512 tweets posted during the week after the game, qualitative analysis revealed that maladaptive PSI manifested in the following ways: criticism, threats, anger, and support. The results help better illuminate the nature of virtual abuse and maltreatment of athletes that is increasing in online spaces. Results also suggest that maladaptive PSI expressed online creates friction among fans who have to reconcile defeat with problematic behavior from other group members. Implications for sport organizations are discussed, including the need to support and protect athletes against virtual abuse and maltreatment.

Sport management programs are disproportionately represented by students and faculty who possess multiple advantaged identities. This trend is indicative of the broader sport industry, which is troublesome given sports’ prominent role in conversations around racial injustice and inequity during the past century. It is incumbent on sport management educators to equip our students to recognize their role in and productively contribute to such conversations. Thus, this manuscript issues a call to action for sport management educators to utilize and build upon Nixon’s Coin Model of Privilege and Critical Allyship to understand, address, and normalize discourse around inequity, privilege, and oppression in their pedagogical approaches to education.

Informed by self-determination theory, this study builds on previous research to examine the work motivation and job satisfaction levels of sport management faculty members, as well as any relationship between their job satisfaction levels and work motivations. A total of 193 sport management faculty responded to a survey consisting of the Job Satisfaction Survey and the Motivation at Work Scale. Results revealed that regarding job satisfaction, faculty members were more satisfied with work itself, supervision, and coworkers and were less satisfied with pay, operating procedures, and reward. While participating sport management faculty had the highest mean in intrinsic motivation, job satisfaction also was significantly positively correlated with identified regulation. Male faculty showed significantly greater overall job satisfaction than female faculty, but gender did not affect work motivation factors. Finally, results revealed no significant differences among tenured, tenure-track, and non-tenure-track faculty in motivation levels, but after controlling for motivation, job satisfaction levels of non-tenure-track faculty were significantly less than those of tenured and tenure-track faculty. Results of this study can assist higher education administrators (i.e., department chairs, deans, provosts) to better understand that this population is highly intrinsically motivated and identifies deeply with their work. Administrators should work diligently to preserve autonomy, a factor that appears to lead to greater levels of motivation and job satisfaction.

Football Bowl Subdivision football success (i.e., winning) is predicated on the ability to successfully recruit prospective athletes. Reflective of NCAA rules and regulations, assistant (i.e., position) coaches are relied upon to secure the enrollment of prospective athletes. Extant literature has established that Black position coaches are tasked with greater recruiting responsibilities than their White counterparts. Such tasking is indicative of a structural barrier limiting Black coaches’ opportunities for professional advancement. The present study sought to examine recruiting responsibilities among position coaches relative the demography of unique geographic areas they were assigned to recruit. Findings illustrate disproportionate responsibilities among racially dissimilar coaches.

When compared with other disciplines, sport management educators are more likely to encounter student-athletes in their classrooms. While faculty mentoring is a key to student success for all, better understanding of this mentoring dynamic between sport management faculty and student-athletes is important to advancing pedagogical knowledge within the discipline. And perhaps, even more importantly, it can aid in creating a pathway for faculty advocacy and dispelling stigmas related to student-athletes. Consequently, the Mentor Role Instrument was used to determine if faculty mentorship of student-athletes differs by function type (RQ1) and if this was impacted by gender or faculty appointment (RQ2). An online survey of 88 sport management educators indicated that a significant difference was found, F(8, 783) = 44.16; p < .001, among mentoring function type. Friendship and Acceptance were the most prevalent mentoring functions, while Protection was the least frequent. Results did not indicate that gender or faculty appointment impacted faculty mentorship styles toward student-athletes.

Critical Race Theory (CRT), a theoretical framework that has been gaining much recognition in sport literature, is a useful and beneficial tool in discussing race and racism. To better understand the context in which academic support staff members appreciate the functionality and significance of race, the present study measures the racial competence and colorblindness of athletic academic support personnel. This study explores the need to integrate a model such as CRT that promotes “racial competency” among academic support departments working closely with student-athletes of color. The study surveyed 101 athletic academic support staff members at NCAA Division I member institutions. Findings suggest that there is a lack of understanding of the tenets of CRT and a need to implement multicultural competence and diversity training for athletic academic support staff members.

The revered tradition of amateurism has transformed due to legal and legislative challenges initiated by the name, image, and likeness landscape. In contrast to the traditional National Collegiate Athletic Association model, college athletes have now gained the opportunity to benefit financially from their notoriety by adopting an influencer role. The purpose of this manuscript was to explore the conceptual and theoretical shifts resulting from the introduction of the influencer role, considering the existing literature on athlete–student role theory. By achieving harmony between the athlete, student, and influencer roles, athletes should produce the most significant gains in each area, including academic performance, athletic achievement, and monetary benefit. However, greater psychological and sociological consequences may emerge for athletes if the influencer role further complicates the conflict between their athlete and student roles.