Showing titles in Sociology of Sports

Sports fandom isn’t what it used to be. Owners and executives increasingly count on the blind loyalty of their fans and too often act against the team’s best interest. Sports fans are left deliberating not only mismanagement but also political, health, and ethical issues. In Rethinking Fandom: How to Beat the Sports Industrial Complex at Its Own Game, sportswriter and lifelong sports fan Craig Calcaterra outlines endemic problems with what he calls the sports-industrial complex.

The Last Shot: City Streets, Basketball Dreams is the “revelatory” (New York Times), “deeply empathetic” (New Yorker) true story of four teenagers attempting to escape the cycles of poverty, crime, and despair in 1990s Brooklyn by getting recruited to play college basketball. With poignant intimacy, Darcy Frey chronicles the aspirations of these young men, including the future superstar Stephon Marbury, who are among the most promising players in Coney Island.

Si può mentire su tutto: sulle opinioni, sui giudizi, sui desideri e persino sui sentimenti, ma mai sulle passioni. E quale passione più vera e nobile può esserci di quella che abbiamo per la nostra squadra del cuore? Quando poi la prescelta è l’Inter, i ricordi delle undici partite che hanno cambiato la vita dei tifosi nerazzurri, assumono i contorni di una insonne nostalgia. Educazione ambrosiana racconta l’Inter del mago Herrera, quella dei record del Trap, quella di Ronaldo “il Fenomeno”.

Dear England: The Real Story of the Three Lions Rebirth delves into Southgate's turbulent journey to being hired as England manager, to his emergence as a waistcoated cult figure and becoming the country's most successful manager since Sir Alf Ramsey. Award-winning football writers Jonathan Northcroft and Rob Draper have had extraordinary access to the England team during Southgate's tenure and take us behind the scenes as they exclusively interview key backroom staff and players.

After Grant Wahl died of an aortic aneurysm at the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar, collapsing in his press seat during a quarterfinal match, tributes to Wahl poured in from around the globe. Wahl was beloved for good reason—he was kind, generous, and unflinching in the face of injustice. He was also clearly one of the best journalists covering sports of his generation. Spanning four decades of storytelling, World Class collects for the first time the finest work of Grant Wahl.

With the triumph of England's Lionesses at Euro 2022, the women's game has been in the spotlight like never before, enjoying unprecedented media attention. But this is the result of decades of struggle to get women's football–banned by the English FA for fifty years–on a more equal footing to its male counterpart.

Hockey culture: it’s a commonly used phrase inside the game, glorifying sacrifice, toughness, loyalty, and a sense of identity. Justin Davis viewed this culture as something he was lucky enough to experience. After all, he’d won a Memorial Cup after leading the tournament in scoring, and he’d been drafted by the Washington Capitals. “In my mind,” he says, “I was the normal one.” Unfortunately, after stepping outside the game, he began to recognize the racism, sexual abuse and bullying that was so deeply ingrained in the sport.

When James Montague first began covering football in the Middle East two decades ago, people asked him what future there could possibly be for the beautiful game in one of the most volatile regions in the world. In the years that followed, it would become one of the biggest stories in global sport, from the from revolutionary ultras of the Arab Spring and the takeover of some of the world's biggest clubs by the Emirati super rich, to Qatar's controversial journey towards hosting the 2022 World Cup finals.

Danielle Williams, skydiver and founder of the online community Melanin Base Camp, profiles dozens of adventurers pushing the boundaries of inclusion and equity in the outdoors. These compelling narratives include a mother whose love of hiking led her to found a nonprofit to expose BIPOC children to the wonders of the outdoors and a mountain biker who, despite at first dealing with unwelcome glances and hostility on trails, went on to become a blogger who writes about justice and diversity in natural spaces.

Randall Balmer was a late convert to sports talk radio, but he quickly became addicted, just like millions of other devoted American sports fans. As a historian of religion, the more he listened, Balmer couldn't help but wonder how the fervor he heard related to religious practice. From baseball to basketball and football to ice hockey, Balmer explores the origins and histories of big-time sports from the late nineteenth century to the present, with entertaining anecdotes and fresh insights into their ties to religious life.

Ein Hörbuch nicht nur für Fußballfans, sondern für alle, die erfolgreich im Team sein wollen. Warum wird der FC Bayern jedes Jahr Meister? Wie hat es der FC Liverpool wieder an die Spitze der Liga geschafft? Und warum schafft der HSV es trotz guter Spieler nicht, wieder aufzusteigen? Tobias Escher begibt sich auf die Suche nach Erfolgsfaktoren für Fußballteams. Er spricht mit Trainern, Spielern und Verantwortlichen und analysiert die vielen Aspekte, die zusammengenommen stimmen müssen, damit Teams Meisterschaften gewinnen.

Sports fans, dads, and data analysts David Sikorjak and Ben Valenta argue that fandom can not only increase our sense of belonging but also serves as a powerful antidote to loneliness because sports fans experience increased social connection. What they didn't realize was how deep that connection was, the potential it carried for individual and societal wellness, or the opportunities it offered for adult friendships, making and keeping friends, and family ties.

Skating on Thin Ice exposes the culture of toxic masculinity in professional hockey and suggests how sport and society can change the narrative on sexual assault and violence.

Those who have been lured by the sound of skate blades slicing into fresh ice and everything-or-nothing attitude of the game know that hockey can seem like its own world. Yet in another light, that tight community can turn insular; the values of teamwork and humility can manifest as collective silence in the face of abuse and discrimination. In Game Misconduct, reporters Evan Moore and Jashvina Shah reveal hockey's toxic undercurrent which has permeated the sport throughout the junior, college, and professional levels.

Cuando el trofeo se olvida y la violencia se impone, cuando la obsesión supera la estrategia, cuanto el juego se vuelve peligroso...

In Mallparks, Michael Friedman observes that just as cathedrals represented power relations in medieval towns, and skyscrapers epitomized those within industrial cities, sports stadiums exemplify urban America at the turn of the twenty-first century.

In our increasingly polarised society, having productive discussions about social justice issues has never been more challenging, or more crucial. From the persistent ('not all men,' 'I don't see colour') to the insidious ('to play devil's advocate...', 'climate change is coming'), too often, antagonistic or problematic responses threaten to distract and derail our most urgent conversations. Tackling twenty of the most enduring conversation-stoppers, No Offence, But... equips listeners with the knowledge, tools and context to respond with confidence.

The GAA is Ireland's largest civil society organisation, woven into the fabric of families and communities - and yet most books about Gaelic games focus on the greatest players and inter-county teams. This is the Life is a book about the 99 per cent: a witty and provocative look at grassroots GAA from the most intelligent and interesting Gaelic games pundit at work today.

Every decade brings change, but as Michael MacCambridge chronicles in The Big Time, no decade in American sports history featured such convulsive cultural shifts as the 1970s. So many things happened during the decade—the move of sports into prime-time television, the beginning of athletes’ gaining a sense of autonomy for their own careers, integration becoming—at least within sports—more of the rule than the exception, and the social revolution that brought females more decisively into sports, as athletes, coaches, executives, and spectators.