We have discussed the intersection between sports and society on a variety of issues including race, gender, and social class. You are to trace a story involving sports and one of these key social concerns (or other major social concerns) from the last five years. Writing on an older story will lead to a zero on this assignment. You are to trace the entire “story” of one major sports event of the last five years. You are to follow the story’s trajectory from first report to last report. Thus, the story must be considered dead, or ended.
Your analysis of the story will involve a critical discussion of the value systems sports and society brought to this particular issue. As noted, in some cases sports have been well ahead of society in bringing about social change, in other cases sports have been well behind society and in most cases sports have followed their own unique value criteria in matters of race, gender, sexuality, disabilities, and social class. In examining the story, you are to describe the values exemplified in the actions of sports organizations, compare those to the values shown in the actions of the contemporary society and compare the two. Your comparison should illuminate the distinct value systems brought to these important social arguments.
For example, in 1987, Al Campanis, General Manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers, made some infamous remarks on ABC-TV’s “Nightline” program. Campanis stated that African-Americans may not have the “tools” to be Major League Baseball managers. These comments immediately caused a firestorm of controversy throughout the country. Yet, as groups throughout the United States voiced anger over Campanis’s comments, the first reaction of the Dodgers and Major League Baseball was to defend Campanis as a leader in positive race relations in baseball. These actions showed a clear disjunction between the perspective of the sports organizations and of the larger culture. Or, as we’ve discussed in class, in 1965, the Chicago Bears started assigning rooms on the basis of position rather than race. This action was perceived as radical and offensive in some parts of American society, especially the South. Yet, it made Gale Sayers and Brian Pollcolo into sports icons whose story was eventually told in Sports Illustrated and a pair of movies.
The tension between the pragmatics of sports and the views of the larger culture should give you a fascinating field to explore in examining the trajectory of a sports story that deals with issues of gender, race, or social class.
To examine your story, you will need to search the archives of a major news service. (The LA Times, The NY Times, etc.) You are to examine the reports to find the first notes indicating the event(s) that reflected social change or controversy, the developing narrative as the story began to develop characters/setting/events/social tensions, and the climax and conclusion of the story.
Drawing on the theoretical approaches discussed at the start of the semester, you are to examine the narrative construction of the story, how reports turned events into stories, how those stories framed events and sustained or challenged cultural norms, and how the narrated relationship between characters, setting, and events exemplified the tension between various players in the cultural drama.
This is not a review of the events that were reported, nor is it a repetition of news reports. You are to critically assess the stories, explaining their role in sustaining cultural assumptions.
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