The NCAA Division I Men’s and Women’s National Basketball Tournaments tip off this week, bringing together players and spectators from around the world. Commonly known as “March Madness”, these annual tournaments have come to be seen as one of the biggest performance platforms for young basketball players from both the United States and, increasingly, across the planet. Generating more than $1 billion in advertising revenue alone, the NCAA basketball tournament has drawn more attention globally thanks to international broadcasting, digital technology, and the rise of international (non-U.S.) “student-athletes” at U.S. colleges and universities. In this article, I’ll discuss some noteworthy international players in this year’s tournament in light of the debate set off on college campuses nationwide by President Donald Trump’s policies surrounding immigration.

In sporting leagues across the world, there has been an increasing movement of athletic labor between countries, navigating issues of ethnicity, politics, economics and culture. This international movement has become increasingly prevalent in U.S. collegiate athletics. According to NCAA records, close to 7% of all active, Division I basketball players are international (non-U.S. national), representing an overall increase of nearly 133% since the association began keeping track of the measure in 2000. Exemplifying this growing internationalization, the University of South Florida women’s team has players from eight different countries on its roster, with head coach Jose Fernandez stating: “There really is so much talent all over the world that it’s great to have a broader recruiting pool to choose from.” At Florida State University, the women’s team boasts a trio of players from Spain (Maria Conde, Iho Lopez, and Leticia Romero), plus Ama Degbeon from Germany, while the men’s team has two Canadians and one player each from Chad, Nigeria, and Colombia. More notable international players include Przemek Karnowski (Poland) of the highly-ranked Gonzaga men’s team and freshman Lauri Markkanen (Finland) of Arizona, who was recently named to the Late Season Top-20 list for the John R. Wooden Award. The Louisville men’s team is another example of a multicultural locker room, with Anas Mahmoud (Egypt), Deng Adel and Mangok Mathiang (Sudan), and Matz Stockman (Norway). Adel and Mathiang were both born in Sudan and hold full citizenship in Australia. Sudan, one of the seven countries included in President Trump’s executive order, has been a continual supplier of talent in college and professional sports in the U.S. that stretches back to Manute Bol in the 1980s. Such an example highlights the impact of geo-politics and cross-border (transnational) movements and processes athlete migrants must navigate under their respective sporting leagues or organizations.

Historically, U.S. colleges and universities have long been hubs for hosting and educating international scholars and students while benefitting from their presence in return. Only more recently has the steady growth of international student-athletes in college athletics also expanded. In NCAA Division I, college basketball coaches have fueled this migration through the steady recruitment of players from an assortment of countries. With international recruitment in college basketball becoming so standard in today’s game, the summer recruiting period for college coaches has transformed into the “overseas travel” period in order to attend FIBA world championships and other international basketball events. Under extreme pressure to recruit top talent and win championships, some coaches are even given expanded budgets to seek international stars beyond the U.S. border. Potential international players are recruited through a network of coaches, scouts and other basketball personnel.

As foreign affairs debates have escalated in the United States in recent months, immigrant hostility and xenophobic rhetoric have left college administrators feeling anxious about the future of international student communities. Reflecting concerns by both sport practitioners and sport sociology researchers (see Christorpher Faulker’s recent posting on Engaging Sports), understanding migrant athletes’ day-to-day experiences abroad are fundamental to preserving and fostering internationally diverse sporting leagues and organizations while also protecting the rights of the players themselves. For my dissertation, I am examining push-pull migration factors and cross-cultural experiences of basketball migrants in the NCAA. In exemplifying a unique case, Cal-Berkeley’s Chen Yue is China’s first female NCAA Division I basketball player and has proven to be an important figure on campus for both the international community and Cal student-athletes. Chen Yue’s relationship with her teammates was described in The Daily Cal as:

“The more time they spent with her, the more they learned about her upbringing in China and the cultural differences between her old and new homes. Talking about topics — from China’s one-child policy to differing gender norms — opened up a whole new perspective on life for everyone around Chen.”

Such athletes have the ability to enliven both classroom and locker room discussions. To date, sport and migration research has originated from scholars in different countries and sporting contexts. Comparative studies such as Norwegian players who chose to attend university in the U.S. and those who did not or an analysis of migratory motivations of American professional basketball players highlight the importance of understanding athlete migrant motivations and experiences. Future studies of this kind can better inform policies of sport organizations, educational institutions, and countries alike. International student-athletes will again enhance March Madness as elite performers and, more importantly, as students on their respective college campuses by bringing global perspectives to their American peers and serving as liaisons between the college athletics and international community populations. As underdog upsets and last second buzzer beating shots dominate the headlines in the coming weeks, we should also take note of the cultural exchanges happening between players of all nationalities and recognize the important place that international communities have on college campuses across the United States.

Ryan Turcott is a Ph.D. Candidate and instructor at the University of Georgia. His research centers on sport labor migration, qualitative research methods in sport, and sport for development. His dissertation focuses on the migration influences and lived experiences of international (Non-U.S.) players in NCAA Division I basketball.

The United States Women’s National Soccer Team will take the field on March 1 for the SheBelieves Cup. With no upcoming major international tournaments, these matches will be the team’s most publicized events of 2017. Though the team’s success has been rightly celebrated as an achievement for women in sports, there has been far less analysis about the racial and ethnic diversity of the players. Prior to the 2015 World Cup, several journalists noted the team’s overwhelming whiteness, but this discussion largely took a back seat to female empowerment narratives and Title IX salutes that followed their victory, celebratory parade, and subsequent time in the spotlight.

Celebrating female athletic success is critical, but it is equally important to examine other factors that influence sport participation. Many sport sociologists have pointed out that Title IX has benefitted white women more than it has benefitted women from other racial or ethnic groups. They have also found that young people who aspire to be athletes have an easier time imagining themselves as successful in a sport if media images of that sport contain people that resemble them. The SheBelieves tournament is a good time to think about who the public will see when they watch some of America’s most beloved female athletes.

To assess this, I reviewed the past and present rosters of the team and recorded information about each player’s racial appearance. A research assistant helped me categorize the players and investigate their biographies for more information about each player’s background. Of course, photographic assessments don’t always align with player self-identification, but they do reflect the racial labeling system that is embedded in U.S. culture and, thus, suggest how the players are likely to be viewed by the audience. Within this system, those with fair skin are often classified as white, while individuals with darker skin tones are classified as non-white. With respect to skin color, the history of the “one-drop” rule suggests that individuals who have some black or African ancestry are non-white, even if those people also have white or European ancestry.

For the 2017 SheBelieves Cup, 76% of the U.S. players are white, while 24% are not. This roster features more players of color than recent American teams, but slightly fewer players than the US teams of the mid-2000s. Between 1999 and 2016, the U.S. women appeared in five World Cups and five Olympic tournaments. According to published records, 68 different women were rostered for the U.S. in those 10 events. Of those women, 58 were white (79%), while 14 were women of color (21%) (you can find full data at the bottom of the page). According to the 2000 and 2010 census, whites made up 75.1% and 72.4% of the population, respectively. This means that among the U.S. women’s team, white players are slightly overrepresented in comparison to the general population.

A deeper look shows that the players don’t necessarily reflect the racial and ethnic diversity of the United States. There are six players of color on the current roster. Four of them (Casey Short, Christen Press, Mal Pugh, Lynn Williams) are multiracial and two of them (Brianna Pinto and Crystal Dunn) are black. The increase in women of color from the last tournament is a welcome change; however, nationally, these two groups (black and multiracial) represented 15.5% of the U.S. population. Latinos of all races, who make up 16.3% of the population, are barely represented among the players. Amy Rodriguez, the only current Latina, has Cuban grandparents but is phenotypically white. According to my research, there has only been one other Latina national team member, Stephanie (Lopez) Cox. Several former players (Tiffany Roberts, Lorrie Fair, and Natasha Kai) were Asian/Pacific Islander, but none of the current players are, even though these groups represent five percent of the U.S. population. Furthermore, all of the current players were born in the United States. These numbers seem especially low given the massive popularity of soccer across Latin America and Asia as well as the cultural importance of soccer to American immigrants from these regions.

It’s also interesting to note that the women’s team stands in sharp contrast with the U.S. men’s national team. The latest roster of the men’s team (Feb. 3, 2017) is almost equally split between white and non-white players. Of the 21 players, one third have Latino ancestry; two of those players also have Asian ancestry. Further, several of the men’s team members immigrated to the U.S. as children or were born to immigrant parents. Bottom line, the men’s team reflects the global popularity of the game, while the women’s team does not.

What does existing research tell us about this difference? Not much. The majority of research about race in American sports examines blacks and whites. Though there are some notable exceptions, the research on Latinos and Asians in sport has generally not included women, so we know very little about their participation in soccer or other sports. Globally, female athletes from Latin America and Asia have struggled for acceptance, recognition, and resources, which limits youth participation and influences cultural perceptions. Immigration scholars have noted that Latino and Asian migrants tend to place stricter regulations on girls than they do on boys. Both cultures also tend to place a great deal of emphasis on academic achievement, especially for girls. There is also some evidence that the structure and location of the national team pipeline might be a barrier for some women of color. Though these explanations are all helpful, it is important to remember that there is tremendous diversity among the U.S. Latino and Asian populations in terms of social class, immigration status, and length of residence.

Though we may not know much about why Asian and Latina women are not playing soccer at the highest level in the U.S., I hope that this story functions as a call for us to learn more about these communities and their involvement with sport. It is possible that these groups are playing other sports or are participating at more local levels. For example, NCAA data shows that Asians are represented well in tennis and golf but not in other sports. We should investigate the ways that race, ethnicity, immigration status, language, social class, and (dis)ability all interact to influence sport participation among these groups. In addition, we need continued research on how these factors also matter for black and multiracial women who are playing sports other than track and basketball. Research consistently shows that sport involvement helps young women develop self-confidence and learn lifelong health habits, and thus it is vital that sport experiences are not limited by race or ethnicity. As the American population continues to grow and diversify, and as women continue to embrace athletics, the sport community must engage with more diverse populations to ensure that there are meaningful opportunities for all women to play and to believe.

Players of Color and White Players Appearing for US National Women’s Team
1999 World Cup: players of color – 20%; white players – 80%
2000 Olympics: players of color – 16.7%; white players – 83.3%
2003 World Cup: players of color – 25%; white players – 75%
2004 Olympics: players of color – 16.7%; white players – 83.3%
2007 World Cup: players of color – 28.6%; white players – 71.4%
2008 Olympics: players of color – 23.5%; white players – 76.5%
2011 World Cup: players of color – 9.5%; white players – 90.5%
2012 Olympics: players of color – 5.9%; white players – 94.1%
2015 World Cup: players of color – 13%; white players – 87%
2016 Olympics: players of color – 16.7%; white players – 83.3%
2017 SheBelieves Cup: players of color – 24%; white players – 76%

Jen McGovern, PhD, is an assistant professor of sociology at Monmouth University. Her research centers around how race, ethnicity, and gender interact to influence experience and opportunities within sport, exercise, and physical fitness.

Sexual violence in college sport represents an important problem that coaches and administrators must address. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, the government has conducted 365 investigations of colleges for possibly mishandling reports of sexual violence since 2011. A simple search in the Chronicle’s Title IX database using the terms “football” and “sexual assault” yields around 250 matches for currently open investigations and 49 matches for cases that have been resolved. Further, roughly half of the student athletes surveyed in a recent study admitted to committing coercive sexual behaviors. Scholars have been investigating the relationship between college football and sexual violence for a long time, and the problem has not gone unnoticed by journalists, critics, and higher education administrators.

Jessica Luther’s 2016 book Unsportsmanlike Conduct: College Football and the Politics of Rape characterizes what she calls a “playbook” that sports organizations draw on time after time to respond to sexual assault allegations and investigations. This playbook includes tactics like convincing victims to stay quiet, just shrugging it off, and focusing on “moving on.” As a communication scholar, my primary interest is the ways in which the culture of collegiate sport and organizational identity is communicated by administrators, coaches, players, and fans – the members of university sports institutions. Their communicative “playbook,” to use Luther’s concept, can be both preemptive and reactionary, and usually involves bolstering values (and myths) of sport participation through their handbooks, public addresses, and promotional materials. This communication can be unintentional as well as intentional. Like Luther, I hope to point out some problems regarding institutional responses to sexual assault investigations and suggest some ways that student athletes in particular can use their voices to change, instead of perpetuate, the status quo in college football.

Let’s reflect on the recent case at the University of Minnesota, where ten players were accused of sexually assaulting a female student in September 2016. Since then, two separate investigations came to different conclusions regarding the matter. Though the legal details of the case and the well-being of the victim are of utmost importance here and in all cases, I want to focus on a particular moment in December 2016 and its rhetorical impact on the culture of collegiate sport both for the Gophers and for the NCAA more broadly. Following a players-only meeting, Minnesota wide receiver Drew Wolatarsky announced that the team would be boycotting all football activities, including the upcoming Holiday Bowl game, to stand in support of their teammates. Their reason? The ten players in question were “denied due process,” and the teammates wanted to make a public statement of condemnation. Wolatarsky said the following:

We the united Gopher football team issue this statement to take back the reputation and integrity of our program and our brothers that have faced unjust Title IX investigation without due process. We are concerned that our brothers have been named publicly with reckless disregard and violation of their constitutional rights. We are now compelled to speak for our team and take back our program.

The phrase “take back our program” should be concerning, as it implies that the “threat” posed by a Title IX investigation is more important than achieving a football culture free of sexual violence. Later on in Wolitarsky’s statement, he rhetorically transformed the athletes in question into victims when he said, “These kids’ reputations…have been ruined.” This is a familiar tune used to defend athletes accused (or found guilty) of sexual assault, and it minimizes the acts at the center of the investigation.

The choice to boycott drew controversy. Minnesota head coach Tracy Claeys initially decided to support the players’ proposed boycott, tweeting “Have never been more proud of our kids. I respect their rights & support their efforts to make a better world,” and was subsequently fired. The Athletic Director, Mark Coyle, and University President, Eric W. Kaler, instead defended the suspensions as being in line with the university and team’s values. Eventually, the team rescinded their boycott threat. Wolitarsky conceded, “It’s clear that lifting the ten suspensions was not going to happen.”

This exchange is important for a few reasons. First, when athletes use their voices, people tend to listen. What they say matters. Sociologists and communication scholars have highlighted the importance of “activist athletes” in public life. High profile athletes can wield political influence. Think Colin Kaepernick, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and John Carlos/Tommie Smith, all standing up/kneeling to send a message of social justice. The players at Minnesota, meanwhile, chose to defend their “brothers” who were “denied due process” instead of attempting to support an institutional culture that is committed to the well-being of all its students. It was a tone-deaf response, even if unintentional.

That leads me to the second reason this is significant. From the perspective of the audience, the intentions of the speaker(s) often do not align with the effects of their speech. Communication is not one-directional, and the context – everything from who is listening, to what else is being said, to the social conditions surrounding the message – can have a bigger influence on the meaning than the intent or purpose behind the rhetorical act. In rhetorical studies, critics adopt this stance to evaluate public discourse according to its social consequences. In other words, that Wolitarsky and the team “didn’t mean” to sound like they were condoning sexual violence does not matter. Regardless of the intent, the team’s statement minimized the importance of sexual assault.

Third, this moment reinforces a point Jessica Luther makes about rewriting the playbook institutions and their members often use in these cases. Advocacy is a powerful tool. We should teach student-athletes about the problems in college football and how to be advocates to change a culture that often condones sexual assault. Athletes’ voices have the power to shape the present and future of college football. This threatened boycott, however, missed the mark. As representatives of the University of Minnesota, student athletes should exemplify and advocate for the principles the institution claims to stand for.

Though the case at Minnesota has faded from broader public scrutiny since the firing of Coach Claeys, we should keep in mind that collegiate sports organizations have an ethical and rhetorical responsibility to enact the values and ideals of sport and drive meaningful change to the culture of sexual violence through their discourse.

Rebecca Alt is a doctoral candidate in Communication (Rhetoric and Political Culture) at the University of Maryland. She is interested in the communication of collegiate sport culture, organizational rhetoric, and identity. You can follow her on Twitter at @rhetorbec.

As NFL fans gear up for Super Bowl LI between the New England Patriots and the Atlanta Falcons, some fans are apt to feel more included in the broadcast than others. Advertisers, as critics have long noted, tend to assume that American football fans are straight men. Many long-awaited and expensive Super Bowl ads tend to be, well, pretty sexist. While the most egregious examples of sexism in Super Bowl broadcasts and advertisements seem to be decreasing as the NFL tries to acknowledge the presence of women fans (at minimum as a new marketing demographic), many women continue to feel left out of the Super Bowl spectacle.

Secret, a deodorant line with a history of taking on important social issues in ads, is trying to address that in this year’s ads — taking direct aim at sexism within sports fan communities. One of the company’s ads, titled “NFL—Red Zone” (subtitled “Ain’t No Party Like a Teachable Moment Party”), features two men shouting at the TV encouraging the quarterback to “throw the ball.” A woman standing nearby interrupts and explains, to the shock of the two men, why their calls to throw the ball are wrong and that the team should run the ball instead. In another Secret advertisement, titled “No Love At First Sight” (subtitled “Throws Before Bros”), a woman watching a game in a Pittsburgh Steelers jersey stares longingly as a handsome party guest enters the doorway, while the camera pans in slow motion between the two of them exchanging eyes as her windswept hair blows and he basks in a sunlit glow. This “love at first sight” moment is quickly extinguished, however, when he takes off his coat to reveal a New England Patriots jersey, which prompts her to not allow him to sit on the same couch.

While I don’t look to advertisements to bring about revolutions, they are nonetheless emblematic of the appetite among women sports fans to be taken seriously, which the majority of other commercials that actively or passively exclude women, do not satisfy. The two Secret ads are emancipatory in an extremely limited and specific sense, in what Andi Zeisler calls a “marketplace feminism” that is based on consumption (of deodorant, in this case) rather than collective social change. But even more, their challenge to dominant norms of fandom doesn’t go nearly far enough. My own research on women who are fans of men’s sports, which I recently published in the Sociology of Sport Journal alongside Cheryl Cooky and David L. Andrews, shows that defining the quality of one’s fandom by criteria like these—knowledge of the game, unwillingness to pay attention to men’s bodies—also serves to exclude those who do not fit those criteria.

Gendered Sports Fan Stereotypes

The first ad discussed above illustrates a situation that many women who love sports are familiar with—being greeted with low expectations for knowledge and needing to prove people wrong before being accepted. The second ad challenges the stereotype that women become sports fans in order to impress men, which may suggest that women are not serious as fans or that they are not fans for the “right” reasons (such as being initiated into the local team in childhood by a father figure and loving the team forever no matter how bad they are). A belief that women’s fandom is guided by heterosexual attraction, whether it is attraction to other sports fans or to the players on the team, is all too common.

While many feel that sports can bring people together, it is important to ask who is excluded from the definition of a sports fan, and how this exclusion creates the boundaries that reaffirm others fans’ membership. When I interviewed women who strongly self-identified as sports fans for the aforementioned study with my colleagues Cheryl Cooky and David L. Andrews, I quickly discovered that the women knew those stereotypes very well. One participant was frustrated that when she goes to the sports bar:

People don’t talk to me, they talk to my boyfriend. … And I don’t always know how to answer sports questions, but it’s just the fact that people always talk to my boyfriend who is a man, who is a sports fan, as opposed to a girl.

While everyone I interviewed felt that the stereotypes were unfair, their explanations for this unfairness differed. For some women sports fans, stereotypes were unfair because they excluded all women whether they fit the stereotypes or not. The women that conform to dominant ideas of what sports fandom is, they argued, should be included. This was explained by one woman I spoke with, who responded to a question about gendered stereotypes:

[Being subject to stereotypes is] not fun but [the stereotypes are] true. I’ve seen it. … I thought of someone I work with who’s a really annoying Blackhawks fan, and his girlfriend claims to be a Blackhawks fan because of him, so it’s all really annoying.

In this quote, the participant is stating that if gendered stereotypes about a woman are true, then she is not a real fan. Conversely, others felt that women should be included as fans regardless of whether they fit the stereotypes or not. As one participant put it:

I feel like I’m living the definition of what it means to be an actual sports fan, female, male, whatever, doesn’t matter. …For something like, I think, you know, A.J. Pierzynski is hot, you know, to kind of disqualify… or somehow cheapen my sports fandom just really irritates me.

For her, the belief that women are not legitimate fans if they engage in any of the stereotypical fan behaviours—regardless of any other aspect of their fandom that might be deemed more serious or appropriate—is unfair and frustrating.

I think there are two important but slightly contradictory points to take from this. On the one hand, stereotypes that women sports fans are driven by heterosexual attraction, that they are not knowledgeable, or that they are not passionate about sports, need to be rejected. These assumptions serve to exclude women and to solidify sports as a heterosexual and masculine preserve. But on the other hand, sports fans should broaden their understandings of what counts as a “real” fan. Why is it wrong to get into sports because of a significant other, or to be attracted to the players? Why is a large amount of specialized knowledge about a sport the bar that we set, when everyone has to start somewhere? Why can’t people be fans in the way that they want to be fans?

Sports can be a very meaningful part of people’s lives, and exclusion based on gender or any other facet of identity is harmful. Super Bowl broadcasters and advertisers would do well to acknowledge the diversity of fan bases and to scrap sexist programming. But the work of creating more inclusive fan communities cannot be limited to teams and broadcasters. Fans need to personally challenge sexist stereotypes when they encounter them; strict definitions that exclude others (especially women) should give way to more inclusive and welcoming sports fan communities. The inclusion of women as sports fans should not be dependent on their ability to meet specific criteria, or worse, by rationalizing one woman’s deservingness of being accepted by marginalizing another. There are many ways to be a fan, and fan bases are stronger when they include everyone who wants to be a part of them.

Katelyn Esmonde is a doctoral candidate in Physical Cultural Studies at the University of Maryland. She is interested in gender, sports fandom, digital technologies, and theories of physical culture. You can follow her and her Toronto Maple Leafs commentary on Twitter at @phylliskessel.

Each year, universities in the United States spend millions of dollars and college football coaches invest countless hours in an effort to lure top players to their schools. The recruiting process culminates with “National Signing Day,” on which high school seniors are officially able to sign National Letters of Intent that bind them to attend a particular university. As National Signing Day 2017 approaches this Wednesday (Feb. 1), millions of people will visit recruiting websites, such as rivals.com and scout.com, to follow who signs with which school. College football fans will alternately experience joy when a top prospect commits to their favorite team and devastation when a recruit goes elsewhere (this is often how I’ve felt as a fan, at least).

One popular outlet for fans to express their joy (or vent their frustration) are the message boards attached to recruiting websites. Initial research on the demographics of college sport message board users suggests an online community that is primarily composed of middle-aged white men with relatively high levels of education and income. In contrast, more than 80% of the Rivals top 250 high school football prospects are black. So, what happens when a group of mostly older white men gathers in a virtual community to discuss the decisions and actions of predominantly young, black men being recruited to play college football? Well, my colleagues Bianca González-Sobrino, Matthew Hughey, and I examined this question in a study that will appear in the Sociology of Sport Journal.

Based on a review of 3,800 posts from college sport message boards that we systematically collected and examined in the study, we found that fans seldom mentioned race overtly. Rather, message board commenters used forms of “color-blind” racial rhetoric that invoked racial meanings without the explicit mention of race. Message board users tended to rely on several common racial assumptions, expressing beliefs in the natural superiority of black physicality, doubts about black intellectual ability, and expectations about whites possessing skill, technique, and mental capacity. For instance, 66 comments in our sample expressed concerns about or insulted a player’s intelligence; of these comments, 64 were directed toward black players compared to two toward white players. Notably, message board users frequently voiced doubt about the ability of black players to qualify academically for entrance to a university. In contrast, 15 comments in the sample offered praise of a player’s intelligence or character, nine of which were directed toward white players compared to six toward black players.

In general, we found it somewhat surprising that relatively few comments on college sport message boards mentioned race overtly, since racism is often rampant on the Internet. While harsh, Jim Crow-style racism has declined in public settings during the past few decades, many people are still comfortable making racially deprecating remarks in private areas with others of the same race. Similarly, the anonymity offered by the Internet allows people to be comfortable writing racist comments they wouldn’t ordinarily make in public settings. Even in the context of sport, researchers have found that overt racism is common on English soccer message boards.

So why do message boards devoted to college sport teams remain relatively free of overt racism? One factor may be that a unique sense of community exists on college sport message boards, which leads users to temper their discussion similarly to how they do when speaking in public settings. In our observations, many message board users perceived themselves as “representatives” of their universities, and it was not uncommon for them to express fear that negative comments would reflect badly on the university and, in turn, harm a team’s recruiting efforts. Therefore, if a user were to write comments that others perceived to be racist, it could jeopardize their status in the message board community.

Ultimately, the persistence of common racial assumptions on sport message board sites—including beliefs in the natural superiority of black physicality and athleticism, doubts about black intellectual ability, and expectations about whites possessing skill, technique, and mental capacity—show that our society is anything but “post-racial.” In other words, we may have witnessed a declining tendency for people to speak openly about race in public, but we have seen little change in dominant ideas about race. While it may be tempting to think of comments on sport message boards as being trivial, such discussion (and the ideas it reinforces among privileged groups) can work to reproduce white superiority and rationalize racial inequality in subtle, yet important ways. During an era in which we are seeing a rise in white nationalist groups, online sites serve as important fields in which the very meanings of race are contested and reproduced.

Adam Love is an assistant professor in the Department of Kinesiology, Recreation, and Sport Studies at the University of Tennessee. His research investigates racial and gender ideology on the Internet and in sports media. To read more of his research about college sport message boards, click here and here. You can find him on Twitter @AdamWLove

As Donald Trump assumes his new role as President of the United States after a bitterly divisive campaign, it is increasingly relevant to examine the ways in which politics intersect with sport. While much attention has been given to the proliferation of national anthem protests by athletes and spectators, and the modest group of NBA coaches speaking out against Trump’s rhetoric, no examination of politics and sport would be complete without discussing how this intersection is brought to bear on those who report and/or comment on sporting news for a living.

Although sports journalism has long been viewed as the “toy department” of the mass media, rarely reporting on serious topics such as political corruption or healthcare reform, sports journalists play an important role in society, working to meet the demands of a seemingly insatiable appetite for sports news. In spite of this appetite, sports journalists and sports media personalities are increasingly discovering that some of their patrons don’t want the extra side of politics that sometimes comes with the sports news entrée.

“Stick to sports” has become the rallying cry of sports media consumers who prefer apolitical sportswriters and sportscasters. Nowhere is this more apparent than on social networks such as Twitter, which gives sports media consumers unfettered access to those who work in the sports media industry. On November 9, 2016, the day after Election Day in the United States, many sports media personalities took to Twitter (and, in some cases, the airwaves) to voice their opinions vis-à-vis the election result. In response, however, many men and women in the industry were told by some of their followers to “stick to sports,” as seen in the examples below. In many instances these commands to be apolitical were accompanied by threats to click the dreaded “unfollow” button.

Where does this phenomenon come from? Little scholarship exists on media consumers’ desire for apolitical sports coverage. However, an interview with Dave Zirin conducted by sport sociologist C. Richard King for the Journal of Sport and Social Issues in 2008 offers a few potential explanations.

Zirin, a self-proclaimed “radical journalist” who maintains an online column/blog called The Edge of Sports, professed to King an increased social and political awareness during the 1990s that coincided with a disenchantment with sports. As athletes such as Mahmoud Abdul Rauf—an NBA player who refused to stand for the national anthem, a la Colin Kaepernick—found little support from their mostly-conservative team and league administrators, Zirin saw a void which needed to be filled, that of political sports commentary.

For Zirin, what made sports journalists (and, perhaps their audiences) resistant to a having their work politicized is the fact that sports journalism, widely viewed as the “toy department” of the news machine, is very seldom taken seriously. This is perhaps because the people covering sports have not taken themselves seriously. “For far too many people, politics is what the people with the bad haircuts do on CSPAN,” Zirin said in the interview.

Exacerbating matters, and perhaps striking closer to the heart of the “stick to sports” moment, is the fact that, as David Theo Goldberg has argued, the sports media industry (in Goldberg’s case, sports talk radio) has been a bastion of dominant, conservative ideals, despite the increasing number of women and people of color employed in the industry. These values, which tend to ignore issues related to race, gender, sexuality and socioeconomic status (to the extent they don’t impact the privileged), have long had an effect on the ways in which “old-school” sports journalists have viewed the world, their work, and the intersections therein. Additionally, inasmuch as the sports media have conditioned their audiences over the years—some people watch the Super Bowl just for the commercials, after all—the average sports media consumer has come to expect sports coverage that is relatively apolitical or, at the very least, socially indifferent.

But the landscape of sports media coverage and politics has changed in recent years. According to Zirin in 2008, as sports journalism became increasingly democratized thanks to the web, “old-school” sports journalism and sports journalists were being challenged politically, often called out for ignoring their social privileges. But now the roles have reversed; sports media personalities have become more outwardly political, particularly online. In a sense, sports media professionals have played a significant role in making sports journalism more democratic, which has coincided with the increasing demands placed on sports journalists to build and maintain active presences on the web. These changing demands have been evidenced by research conducted by Pamela Laucella, Mary Lou Sheffer, and Brad Schultz in Routledge’s Handbooks of Sports Communication and Sports and New Media, published in 2013 and 2014, respectively.

Thus, what we are witnessing in the current, “stick to sports” moment is a perfect storm that is the result of competing political views within the sports media industry and sports journalism’s web-driven democracy. Given the fact the web fosters more nuanced sports commentary, and the divisive political environment in which we currently find ourselves, it’s no wonder sports media personalities have been more inclined to express their opinions online, despite repeated calls by their audience not to do so. Also, due to sports journalism’s lack of any “official” connection with Washington, sports journalists are free to provide personal political commentary. Thus, any inclination to provide political commentary would appear to be natural.

A cursory look at the Twitter profiles of sports media personalities suggests many of them have taken notice of the “stick to sports” moment. For example, Toronto Star sports columnist Bruce Arthur and Comcast SportsNet anchor and reporter Trenni Kusnierek both tell their profiles’ visitors, to varying degrees, that they will not stick to sports. Atlanta Falcons online writer Jeanna Thomas’s pinned tweet, which remains affixed atop her timeline, warns her followers that she does not stick to sports. An accompanying trademark superscript following the phrase suggests Thomas’s awareness of the phrase’s increased prominence.

As Donald Trump assumes his new role in White House, bringing with him inflammatory rhetoric, many sports media personalities will be disinclined to stick to sports. To expect otherwise would be unrealistic. “[P]olitics are of course the food we eat, the air we breathe, and yes, the sports we watch and play,” Zirin said in 2008.

Because of the web and social media, sports media personalities are no longer required to stick to sports and their audiences will have to grapple with, and/or enjoy, this new reality.

Guy Harrison is a doctoral candidate in the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University. His research examines constructions of gender and race in the sports media. You can follow him on Twitter @GuyMHarrison.

President Obama knows the importance of sports in American culture. After all, he’s married to a Princeton University sociology major. This was evident on Martin Luther King Jr. Day (January 16th) when the Chicago Cubs were the 86th and last championship or elite sport team to visit the Obama White House.

After acknowledging the significance of Martin Luther King Jr. and the community service and charitable activities of people in the Cubs’ organization, Obama highlighted the ways that sports can create unity amidst diversity—a connection he also mentioned in his final press conference. Choosing his words carefully, Obama made sociological observations about sports:

“. . . throughout our history, sports has had this power to bring us together, even when our country is divided. Sports has changed attitudes and culture in ways that seem subtle, but that ultimately made us think differently about ourselves and who we are. It is a game and a celebration, but there is a direct line between Jackie Robinson and me standing here. . . . And sports has a way, sometimes, of changing hearts in a way that politics or business doesn’t.  And sometimes it’s just a matter of us being able to escape and relax from the difficulties of our days, but sometimes it also speaks to something better in us.  And when you see this group of folks of different shades and different backgrounds, and coming from different communities and neighborhoods all across the country, and then playing as one team, and . . . celebrating each other and being joyous in that, that tells us a little something about what America is and what America can be. So it is entirely appropriate that we celebrate the Cubs today, here in this White House, on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday because it helps direct us in terms of what this country has been and what it can be in the future.”

The headlines and articles about Obama’s comments focused on “the power of sport to create unity” even though the president was using the occasion to highlight a seventy year process of acknowledging that diversity is inherent and valuable in the human experience. When he mentioned that sports can change hearts, he was referring to beliefs about race and ethnicity and inferred nothing about the challenge of changing how a city is organized, who is advantaged or disadvantaged by that organization, and who has power to make changes.  Obama knew that the collective euphoria and emotional unity occasionally generated by sports fades quickly and only rarely bridges the real differences created by inequality and the dynamics of everyday power relations.

To explain this point, it is useful to distinguish between relationships that bring together socially and economically similar people versus those that bring together people who are socially and economically dissimilar. The former can be described as horizontal bonding and the latter as vertical bonding. The emotional unity created by the long awaited Cubs’ championship season certainly created shared relief and euphoria, and undoubtedly reaffirmed or facilitated horizontal bonding among Chicagoans, but there is little evidence that it facilitated vertical bonds that could be effectively used to bridge structural divides in the city. But it is vertical bonding that is needed to create policies and programs that might erode the racial and ethnic segregation and the oppressive inequalities at the heart of many problems in Chicago (to read more, see Lewandowski, 2008).

In sociological terms, sport talk, whether it annually commiserated the Cubs’ 108 year string of not winning a World Series, or celebrated the win in 2016, stops short of discussing serious social issues in the city.  It creates a veneer of togetherness that feels good for a time, especially for long suffering fans, until the reality of everyday life intervenes. It does not automatically lead to civic engagement focused on the deep social and economic problems that currently plague Chicago, nor does it automatically create bonds bridging the social divides created by those problems.

But this still leaves an important question unanswered: Can the emotional unity generated by sports be used to strategically create social relationships through which structural problems are identified and met with policies and programs that produce positive changes?

Research is needed to answer this question. However, in his recent book, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer, journalist James Dorsey provides examples from Egypt, Algeria, Syria, and other countries of fans using sport-based emotional unity to form and sustain relationships focused on social and political issues. These examples are not always positive, but they provide sites for exploring the strategies that might be used to convert the unity associated with sports into relationships and actions that go beyond changing hearts and directly confront the inequalities and injustices that undermine social foundations of democracy.

As he left office, Obama made the case that the physical, social, and cultural differences that are so often complimentary on sport teams can serve as a model for what America can be. But to turn that model into a reality in connection with the emotional unity created by sports is a challenge far from being met in the United States.

Jay Coakley is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. He is an internationally respected scholar and author of Sports in Society: Issues and Controversies (McGraw-Hill, 2017, 12th edition).