You’re probably thinking, “Duh! Of course bikes are good for the environment, we all know this!” But let’s take a minute to make an important distinction between cycling and bikes. The activity of cycling as a mode of transportation has been proven time and again to be beneficial for the environment; however, bikes are commodities made possible by the extractive industries, and they end up in the landfill alongside our diapers, toasters, and other trash. While sport sociologists who conduct environmental research have done an excellent job of highlighting the environmental cost of hosting mega-events, creating golf courses, and operating ski resorts, very few academics have asked questions about the environmental impact of our sporting goods. In fact, in 2009, in an article published in the journal Sports Technology, Subic and colleagues wrote, “The disposal of composite products in an environmentally-friendly way is one of the most daunting challenges facing the sports goods industry.” Thirteen years later, we have barely begun to scratch the surface of this issue.

Capitalism rightfully gets a lot of blame for the waste management problems we face today; however, waste is inevitable in every economic system to varying degrees. In their recent book, Discard studies: Wasting, systems, and power, Dr. Max Liboiron and Dr. Josh Lepawsky argue that both waste and wasting are exercises in power and are not just simple externalities of economic production. They suggest, “people have to be taught to practice and accept disposability as well as other waste practices.” Moreover, environmental sociologist Dr. Myra Hird argues that “we know ourselves through waste.” If we apply these questions to sporting goods, and specifically bikes, how did we learn to accept the disposability of our sporting goods? And what do we learn about ourselves when we unpack the waste created along the bike supply chain?

Bike Manufacturing

In November 2017, Outside magazine exposed the fact that bicycle factories in China had been dumping production scraps into the ocean because of a lack appropriate recycling options. Western Europe was once the geographical base of bike manufacturing, but the majority of that labour and its accompanying environmental footprints have been outsourced to China and Taiwan. Whether you are riding a Trek, Giant, Specialized, or Cannondale bike, odds are it was made in a factory in Taiwan or China. Leo Kokkonen, founder of Pole Bicycles, explained to Outside that he was shocked at the amount of energy, labour, water, and chemicals used to make his supposedly sustainable bicycles. He detailed how his lungs burned while riding around the coal-fired factories that were building his prototype frames.

Last year, Trek released its own sustainability report and, unsurprisingly, the majority of its carbon emissions come from the production of its bikes. The average Trek bikes creates 174 kg of CO2 during its production. While the report is very thorough in its carbon emission analysis, the disposal aspect of bikes is still completely absent from it. Approximately 80% of a product’s “environmental burden” is determined during the design process. Thus, if we have not thought about the end-of-use stage at the earliest production phases, our downstream/recycling options become extremely limited.

To make matters worse, there are bikes, and then there are “bike shaped objects.” These bike shaped objects, as some mechanics refer to them, have been designed with the purpose of failure. They are so poorly made that they are lucky to last for 100 hours of riding, often cannot hold adjustments, and have parts that are incompatible with other components. Therefore, even if you want to repair your bike, believe in saving money, and want long-lasting products, many of the consumer level bikes available today are built for obsolescence. The problem has gotten so bad that bike mechanics across Canada and the United States have created a petition asking for brands to do better.

End-of-Use

At the other end of the life cycle, bike sharing companies have come under scrutiny for contributing a large amount of bike waste to the waste stream. For example, when Ofo, a Dallas-based bike sharing company, closed its operations in the summer of 2018 it left thousands of bicycles in a pile at a recycling centre to become scrap metal. Bike sharing programs are often touted as the answer to congested, car-centric cities, but when companies such as CityCycle in Brisbane, Seattle’s Pronto!, and Bixi Montreal go bankrupt, all of their bicycles end up in the waste stream. With an estimated 18 million new bikes purchased each year in the U.S. alone, the bicycle becomes an important cultural text that has largely managed to elide environmental criticisms even though it ends up in the landfill with our other garbage.

Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 12 from the United Nations is a call for more sustainable production and consumption. The sporting goods industry (and we as consumers) are overdue in critically analyzing and demanding alternative consumption patterns for our sporting goods. When the United Nations Office on Sport for Development and Peace (UNOSDP) released its commitments to supporting achievement of the SDGs, nothing listed under Goal 12 actually addressed production or consumption. Six bullet points are listed and include actions items such as creating affordable and accessible facilities, promoting the use of public spaces for diverse and marginalized populations, integrating refugees and migrants into communities, raising awareness of people with disabilities, eliminating transportation barriers, and building more energy efficient facilities. However, none of these things really have to do with sustainable production and consumption. So why haven’t sporting goods manufacturers, brands, and consumers been called out as part of the problem?

As a way of spurring discussion (and hopefully action) about these issues, I produced a 15-minute documentary, Revolutions, which asks questions about the waste created by bike manufacturing, explores what happens when you donate your bike to a recycling outlet, discusses how waste is incentivized through crash replacement warranties, and offers alternative ways forward. For teachers interested in unpacking this topic with a class, please consider hosting a screening of Revolutions for students. Please contact Dr. Courtney Szto (c.szto@queensu.ca) to discuss screening costs and scheduling. As Revolutions is accepted to various film festivals, the viewing options will be updated on the website. You can watch the trailer for Revolutions below:

Author Biographical Note

Courtney Szto is an Assistant Professor at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. Her research broadly explores intersectional (in)justice in sports and physical activity. She is the Managing Editor of Hockey in Society and the author of Changing on the Fly: Hockey through the voices of South Asian Canadians. Learn more about Courtney here and follow her on Twitter @courtneyszto.

In 2022, Atlantic University Sport (AUS), a conference within Canadian university sport (U SPORTS), witnessed a significant number of its men’s hockey players sign professional contracts as a result of the uncertainty in their sport caused by COVID-19 pandemic restrictions. Deliberations about U SPORTS as a viable pathway to professional men’s hockey are not new; however, the number of athletes entering that pipeline increased significantly throughout the pandemic. In contrast, there was little to no public discussion of women having or pursuing the same opportunities. In this article, we discuss these issues by drawing on the first author’s research on AUS hockey athlete experiences of the pandemic and the second author’s personal experience as a former U SPORTS athlete who also competed internationally.

Inconsistency in the Atlantic Bubble

In a study of how the pandemic impacted AUS hockey athletes’ everyday lives and sense of wellbeing (publication forthcoming in a special edition of the Journal of Emerging Sport Studies), the first author employed an online questionnaire with men’s and women’s AUS hockey athletes, a content analysis of quotations from the same population in mainstream media articles, and a debrief interview with a player from a men’s team that graduated during the 2020-2021 season. In this data, we noted an unwelcome sense of uncertainty that called into question the limits of athlete patience and resilience (observed among 53% of survey respondents and 27% of content analysis material). The population was in a region known as The Atlantic Bubble, which permitted more—albeit inconsistent—competition and training than other U SPORTS conferences. Despite this, the athletes’ decisions to sign professional contracts was a by-product of the inconsistency. According to the interviewee, a man who had foregone a professional opportunity in 2021:

We thought we were going to start playing again after Christmas. Then we’re back at one point playing exhibition…Then Nationals are cancelled… So guys got tired of waiting and went pro—I think a couple women too…You only have so many opportunities left to play, so to not have to deal with that unknown, I understand that.

As it turns out, only one woman he mentioned transitioned to professional hockey and then returned to university hockey, but the authors were unable to locate local media coverage of her signing, apart from her Elite Prospects page. There are far fewer opportunities for women to play professional hockey, and this reality was highlighted by the lack of varsity-level women’s hockey athletes leaving their teams for the professional ranks. Nonetheless, the mention of professional hockey in the context of the study generated two streams of discussion: 1) why other competitive and professional leagues were operating while U SPORTS was not and 2) whether hockey is a bigger priority than education within U SPORTS.

Why were other leagues operating when U SPORTS was not?

An unexpected theme that surfaced in the AUS study was that many participants did not understand why non-academic hockey leagues were permitted to operate while U SPORTS was shut down. The authors flagged this as significant because study participants brought it up themselves and also due to the simultaneous push in Ontario to include university sport on the list of leagues that were permitted to operate. For the debrief interviewee, the fact that universities had more stringent regulations for sport participation than professional leagues was a reflection of education taking precedence over hockey. According to the interviewee:

Junior and professional hockey are a business first, and the university probably operates on higher ethical and safety standards. It’s not just about hockey here, it’s academics. I think the disappointment came from the fact that some of us were good enough to be in those leagues that were operating. I’ve got friends from AUS who are in the American Hockey League or the National Hockey League.

The interviewee’s response captures the frustration that ostensibly led athletes to pursue professional opportunities prior to graduation, which calls into question the extent to which education is a goal for them rather than a stepping stone to more hockey, if not both.

Does hockey take precedence over education for U SPORTS athletes?

In their study of the U SPORTS to men’s professional hockey pipeline, sport management scholars Cam Braes and Jon Edwards observed that, “although U SPORTS is not the most direct path to professional hockey, [interviewees] did not view it as a step backwards but as an alternative pathway to professional hockey while also gaining an education.” This is consistent with the second author’s experience, who in spite of valuing hockey over education while attending university, was committed to earning his master’s degree and going on to play on the international stage. According to the debrief interviewee, “it’s split in men’s hockey. You’ve got your people who are there because they want to go pro, you get people who are unsure, and you get people who are there for an education but also get to play hockey at the same time.” He also commented on the fact that several athletes enroll in university following Major Junior hockey (considered their best pathway in Canada to the formal professional ranks), adding: “remember that in Major Junior, hockey came first for us even though education was important, but here we’re ‘student-athletes’—we’re both—but not everyone balances it the same.”

The pandemic forced universities to move to online learning, which enabled many athletes to pursue professional opportunities while completing their education. At the same time, some athletes had to unpack their priorities between education and hockey. For men who had come from Major Junior, to play professionally meant that they would be giving up the scholarships they received from the Canadian Hockey League. Moreover, according to U SPORTS eligibility regulations, to play men’s professional hockey could possibly result in sitting out and losing a year of eligibility if the athlete were to return to U SPORTS. Conversely, women do not have the same Major Junior scholarship opportunities, and the eligibility rule does not apply to them, although they do not have the professional options that men do either.

Conclusion

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted U SPORTS hockey athletes’ patience and resilience. One impact of this was an increase in men transitioning to professional hockey. For women, the pandemic further exhausted the virtually non-existent opportunities to compete. How the athletes will continue to negotiate their educational and athletic priorities as they move through and past the shifting options and realities imposed by the pandemic remains to be seen.

Author Biographical Notes

Cheryl MacDonald is a sport sociologist and Associate Director of the Centre for the Study of Sport & Health at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. Her research interests include university athlete support and development programming as well as various types of qualitative ice hockey studies. Visit her institutional web page and follow her on Twitter.

Michael Auksi is an Anishinaabe-Estonian PhD candidate at McGill University in the faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education. His research areas of interest include Indigenous hockey in relation to the Canadian residential school system, current pathways to high-performance hockey, and the use of technosciences in supporting community sport and wellness goals. He is accessible via email (michael.auksi@mcgill.ca) and Instagram:@mike_auksi.

It can be argued that no sport is more identified with Canada than hockey, which makes it an interesting mirror through which to examine how race is defined and constructed. And yet, for a nation that prides itself as a “cultural mosaic,” there is little to suggest that hockey players reflect that self-image. Look no further than the overwhelmingly white National Hockey League. With the excitement of the Stanley Cup playoffs still fresh on our minds, it is worth reflecting on the question, “why are there so few racialized players in the NHL?”

Racialized players are relatively few and far between in the game as a whole, let alone in the sport’s highest league. Although Indigenous and Black communities played pivotal roles in the early development of modern hockey (see for example, the book, Black Ice), the emergence of the NHL saw hockey become a primarily “white” sport. Some of the racialized players who did make it to the NHL (such as Willie O’Ree and Fred Sasakamoose) are now lauded as trailblazers, while others such as Taffy Abel have remained largely in the shadows. The list of those following in their footsteps has continued to remain a relatively small one.

In more recent years, high-profile incidents involving racism at hockey’s highest levels brought attention to and cast serious concerns regarding the prevalence of racism in the sport. For example, Don Cherry was fired from CBC’s “Coach’s Corner” for racist stereotyping of immigrants – the final straw in a long list of controversial on-air statements. Bill Peters, former coach of the Calgary Flames, resigned when racist taunts he had employed in the locker room on a previous team came to light. Other NHL players came forward to share similar experiences.

As researchers passionate about the sport, those incidents at the highest levels led us to wonder about the experiences of racialized players in lesser-known developmental levels still dreaming of a career in the game. Could racism at these levels “filter out” racialized players and impede their presence at the sport’s highest levels? Questions like these led us to conduct research recently published in the Sociology of Sport Journal in which we sought to examine racialized players’ experiences with racism at the competitive developmental levels.

Our Research

As expected given our topic, the population of racialized players we could approach is a small one, and the leagues and teams we initially contacted about potential interviewees were not eager to facilitate our work. Through a multitude of strategies, we located 13 high-level hockey players from racialized communities who play/ed predominately in Western Canada; nine participants (from Black, Indigenous, Indo-Canadian and Asian communities) agreed to take part. Their highest hockey experience ranged from Junior “A” to semi-professional levels. Our interviews focused on themes such as (1) incidents in hockey that participants perceived as racist, (2) how various stakeholders responded to such incidents, (3) how systemic facets of the sport may condone racism, and (4) policy implications for combating racism in hockey.

Players’ Experiences

Our findings suggest that racism is alive and well at the rink, with incidents being categorized into three broad domains: (1) verbal incidents; (2) physical acts; and (3) micro-aggressions. All our participants described experiencing verbal racism throughout their careers, beginning as early as 10 years old. Players like Peter[1] and Stanley described facing unnecessary slashing and crosschecking, with racial slurs moments later cementing their suspicions that the roughness may have also been racially motivated. Experiences like these were common for our participants to endure, given their status as an “other” at the rink.

Although we anticipated discussions about verbal incidents and physical acts, we found more subtle barriers to be a common talking point. The underlying oppressions in hockey were often speculative and ambiguous, leaving players with no more than a “gut feeling” of being treated “less than.” For example, the majority of participants perceived that they were cut from a team or held back in their career based on inequitable treatment they believe was based on race, yet justified by amorphous criteria such as “effort” and “attitude.” Having been cut from a Bantam AAA team (13-14 year olds) under these ambiguous circumstances, Sahil tracked that coach’s past behaviour and discovered a similar trend of otherwise well-deserving racialized players who had been mistreated in one way or another. In this way, Andre’s reflection on his career progression sums up our participants’ more general sentiments: “I felt like I had to work twice as hard as others to get the same opportunity during my career, and thoughts it had to do with my skin color have undoubtedly crept into my mind.”

Participants described how they struggled to find the appropriate space to cope with racism at the rink. Little was done by stakeholders in positions of power (managers, league administrators) to address such incidents. The message received by the players was that they did not belong, with all at some point asking themselves the question of whether it was worth it. The racialized targeting of players we heard about makes us wonder about all the potential Quinton Byfields (a Black player drafted second overall in the 2020 NHL Entry Draft) who heard such messages and decided to leave the game. And indeed, although our participants persevered and were still playing hockey, some were reconsidering their future relationship with the game, as evidenced by Ajay’s thoughts:

There are just things to look at when I have kids. Do I want to put my kids in hockey? Do I want them to experience the things I experienced? …I guess I was able to cope with these things, but who knows if my kids would be able to, or if the incidents would be worse in their situations…it might be limiting to their lives. (Ajay)

While many hockey organizations and associated businesses have pledged to make changes to policy and practice since we conducted our research (e.g., Scotiabank’s “Hockey for All” campaign), the prevalence of racism in the game is still concerning. In this vein, our findings regarding policy implications – notably, that of education, enforcement, and oversight (as similarly reflected in a recent Policy Paper for Anti-Racism in Canadian Hockey) – continue to remain a pertinent point of discussion. With events of the recent past highlighting racial injustice across North America and around the world, hockey is among those with much to improve upon. Our research suggests that more work needs to be done, beginning at the youngest levels, to make the meaningful cultural change required and open doors to arenas for all players.

Ryan Sandrin is a PhD Student in the School of Criminology at Simon Fraser University. He also serves as the Director of Education for SFU Men’s Ice Hockey and formerly played on the team while completing his undergraduate studies. He has recently published his work in the Journal of Experimental Criminology, Policing: An International Journal, and the Sociology of Sport Journal.

Ted Palys, PhD, is a professor in the School of Criminology at Simon Fraser University. His teaching and research interests have focused on methodological and a variety of social justice issues, the latter primarily in the realms of Indigenous rights and Internet governance. His newest book (with co-author Chris Atchison), Research Methods in the Social and Health Sciences: Making Research Decisions (2021) is available through Sage Publications.

[1] Note that all names of participants and others mentioned in participant recounts are pseudonyms.

To read the full article:

Sandrin, R., & Palys, T. (2021). The hat-trick of racism: Examining BIPOC hockey players’ experiences in Canada’s game. Sociology of Sport Journal. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1123/ssj.2020-0175 or email rsandrin@sfu.ca

For the first time since tennis player Renee Richards in the 1970s, transgender (trans) women athletes, including Lia Thomas and Laurel Hubbard, received major media coverage in 2021. However, these athletes weren’t spotlighted because of their athletic abilities per se, but because they became political targets caught in the crosshairs of arguments about fairness and competitive advantage in sport.

The state legislative sessions of 2021 were the worst in recent U.S. history for the political rights of trans people. Over 60 bills banning access to sport for trans youth passed in 31 states. These bills garnered significant media attention with thousands of online news articles, public statements, and opinion pieces published about trans athletes. For the first time, outlets like CNN and the New York Times introduced millions of readers to the topic of trans inclusion in sports.

In fact, the issue is not new, as trans people have competed in sport for centuries. And, currently, there are only a handful of trans youth competing in each state across the U.S. We wondered, then: why are these bills being introduced now? Where does this media frenzy around trans athletes originate? And who is benefiting from efforts to exclude trans athletes?

As scholars who study sport from a sociological perspective, we captured online texts written in English about trans athletes via a systematic algorithm through Google between the dates of December 1, 2020 and May 31, 2021. Our approach identified 1,224 relevant texts from web pages, newspaper articles, and blogs as well as transcribed podcasts, radio interviews, and videos during this six-month period. We examined each text as mediated—produced by the media to have political influence and socialization effects on readers. After conducting an analysis of the most common themes in the texts, we concluded that trans athletes were made into a spectacle as part of a larger, political agenda, aimed at creating a moral panic.

Periods of moral panic occur when a particular group is portrayed as a threat to societal values, stereotyped by the mass media and conservative politicians, and thrust in the limelight. The majority of the texts we examined discussed trans people in sport as a political issue, and nearly all included quotes from conservative politicians and lobbyists.

Lawmakers’ statements about trans athletes were primarily used to portray trans athletes, and particularly trans women, as spectres—invisible, alien beings feared as something dangerous. Most often, lawmakers engaged in fear-mongering tactics around trans athletes by focusing on trans women and equating them to cisgender men using terms like “biological males”.

Trans women were characterized as spectres through unfounded assertions that trans athletes have malevolent motives to participate in sports. For instance, Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah argued that trans women will take opportunities and achievements from girls “just to prove that they can or for bragging rights… [or] in a deliberate, sadistic effort to harm girls.” This narrative invokes a sense of panic that may be used to justify the marginalization and policing of trans athletes. At the same time, it compares trans athletes to cisgender girls, who are presumed to be white, vulnerable, and fragile.

In other cases, lawmakers stated that trans women were aiming to steal sport opportunities from cisgender girls, that they want to physically harm girls, that being trans is something children should fear becoming, and that trans people are dangers to themselves.

Based on the timing of these statements (as 2022 is a congressional election year), we argue that politicians have leveraged the moral panic about trans athletes to present themselves as protectors of women’s sport in order to engender support from voters. In the texts we examined, politicians acted as pillars of moral integrity concerned about threats to cisgender women and girls in sport to establish themselves as moral entrepreneurs, a key aspect of moral panics.

Moral panics are initiated and fueled by moral entrepreneurs to construct social rules, penalize social deviance, and frame certain people as social deviants. In this case, politicians positioned themselves as moral entrepreneurs through rhetoric about protecting women’s sports, characterizing trans women as threats to fairness and safety.

Adding to the portrayal of trans athletes as spectres is the fact that only 7.8% of the texts named a specific trans athlete. Over 92% of the texts we read mentioned trans athletes from a general, theoretical perspective alone. Rather than amplifying the voices of the athletes at the center of these debates, the majority of the texts centered cisgender, conservative male politicians’ voices.

In March of 2021, the Associated Press asked conservative politicians in states where anti-trans legislation was being proposed to name a trans athlete. In almost every case, the politicians could not cite a single trans athlete in their jurisdiction. This lack of knowledge signals not only politicians’ ignorance—it also signals the ways trans athletes, by remaining unnamed, are dehumanized and made invisible in conversations about their own rights and sport participation.

While conservative lawmakers are ostensibly concerned about threats to sport opportunities for cisgender women and girls, they are in fact exploiting their role as moral entrepreneurs to win public support for right-wing political agendas that rationalize the exclusion of trans athletes and to reinstate primarily white, cisgender, male power in sport. While trans athletes are denied gender-affirming healthcare and sporting opportunities, politicians benefit from the moral panic they have incited by invoking anti-trans sentiments to “ignite” the conservative voter base.

Meanwhile, trans athletes bear the most harm from this moral panic. At its heart, we found the media attention in 2021 was not about trans athletes or even inclusion in sport. Rather, trans athletes are the latest marginalized group to be sidelined in sport (through the media) so politicians can get elected and uphold the power systems that benefit themselves as cisgender people, most often, cisgender men—systems that work against gender equity in sports.

Anna Baeth, Ph.D., a white woman who uses she/her pronouns, is the Director of Research at Athlete Ally. Baeth is a critical feminist scholar whose research centers on the gendering of sport spaces, the eternally moving body, and social movements and sport. Baeth is a coach and advocate for cultural awareness in sport spaces and can found on Twitter @BaethAnna

Anna Goorevich, a white woman who uses she/her pronouns, is the US-UK Fulbright Postgraduate Scholar in Health, Well-being and Sport at the University of Stirling, Scotland, where she is currently pursuing a MSc in Sport Management. Goorevich’s research interests revolve around gender identity, leadership, social justice, and sport. Goorevich can be found on Twitter at @AGoorevich

Tracing its origins back to 1960s California, skateboarding represents both a popular “lifestyle sport,” and an irreverent subculture that exists in a space between mainstream notoriety and obscurity. Highlighting its progression into the “mainstream,” the International Olympic Committee included skateboarding events for the first time in the delayed 2020 Summer Games. Today, people of all class backgrounds, age ranges, genders, and racial identities enjoy rolling around and performing tricks, such as kickflips, 5-0 grinds, and melon grabs, on nearly any architectural feature that is accessible, including sidewalks, streets, stairs, concrete ledges, rooftops, warehouses, and parking lots.

Further demonstrating the growth of skateboarding, a $2 billion industry supports the lifestyle sport, producing apparel, equipment, and media. Skateboard companies from Alien Workshop to Zero Skateboards sponsor talented riders at the professional and amateur level. Acting as ambassadors for their brands, these riders comprise a promotional “team.” They wear clothing emblazoned with logos, appear in advertisements, try to gain exposure, and compile clips for skate videos. In many cases, skateboard companies release videos of their riders performing impressive tricks as a form of advertising. Existing alongside these actors is an ecosystem of legacy and digital media that likewise promotes companies and their riders, such as the physical Thrasher Magazine, and the Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube accounts of The Berrics, which have millions of followers. Foregrounding the money and business behind skateboarding is important, because it allows us to see pro skaters as workers who perform athletic labor; as I explain below, part of their job is to promote and brand themselves on social-media platforms. Upon further investigation, we find that these alternative athletes face precarious employment, as well as an industry that discourages discussion about their working conditions.

Since my early days as a skateboarder, I wondered how the sponsorship system worked and why some skaters were able to navigate it successfully while others failed to do so. There was also the question of pro skaters who had mysteriously “fallen off” (suddenly disappeared from regular coverage in skate media). The magazines and videos provided little information about these topics, and, to this day, discussion about working conditions is nearly absent from mainstream skate media. As I entered graduate school, I revisited this issue, looking at skateboarding through a critical eye and asking questions about non-standard employment in the neoliberal economy. Just like the skate media of my youth, few scholarly studies have investigated labor and working conditions in pro skating (for examples, see Bastos & Stigger, 2009; Camoletto & Marcelli, 2018).

In order to help better understand such issues, I published a study in the Journal of Sport and Social Issues that offered some preliminary insight about labor in skateboarding. In doing so, I compared the careers of skateboarders to others who work precarious jobs without benefits or guaranteed contracts. Therefore, I likened pro skaters to video-game testers, web-based writers, and fashion bloggers. These individuals are otherwise known as creatives, freelancers, gig workers, or people with “cool” jobs. Professional skateboarders are independent contractors, signing deals with companies for free product and monthly pay in exchange for promotional acts. Such acts may include maintaining a social-media profile or wearing branded clothing for competitions and other media appearances. At least two factors link the working conditions of pro skaters with game testers, writers, and bloggers: (1) there is a highly imbalanced hierarchy with a few high earners at the top, while the vast majority in these fields earn little income and (2) digital media technologies are indispensable for these workers.

While it may seem strange, given that skateboarders are out shredding the offline world, these precarious workers are compelled to use social media and networked devices. Digital dexterity is beneficial for building and securing one’s career, since, for example, a skater who is active on Instagram and boasts 500,000 followers will appeal more to a sponsor. To be sure, this isn’t limited to skating alone; personal promotion via social media is critical for athletes in other sports, such as those in fighting, racing, surfing, and tennis. In these cases as well, athletes who use social media to build their personal brand can secure the sponsorship of companies in the sports industry.

However, as media have become more democratized with Web 2.0, the old skateboarding gatekeepers have lost some grip over the discursive limits of the subculture. In other words, new communication channels have arisen on the web that have allowed skaters to voice concerns about their subculture. A prime case was the founding of a website called Jenkem, which dabbles in more controversial topics than one would find in the pages of Thrasher. In my research, Jenkem proved to be a valuable resource for data on the working conditions of professional skateboarders, with articles and user comments discussing the following topics: contest prize money, skaters’ access to health care, the need for a skateboarders’ labor union, and sponsorship obligations in the age of Instagram. One particularly interesting finding was that companies who sponsor skaters sometimes engage in backhanded, subtle tactics to discipline or oust a skater from the industry by labeling them a “kook.” Referencing a study on working-class sentiments, I argue that the term “kook” provides cover for industry insiders to ostracize skaters without assuming the role of a traditional boss.

In addition to highlighting an underacknowledged subject in lifestyle sports, there is a more practical and political reason to study pro skater labor. Since the early 1970s, neoliberal capitalism has structured economic opportunities in a way that forces many workers to do more with less as wealth transfers to fewer and fewer hands at the top of the income scale. Compounded by other developments, such as automation, deindustrialization, and globalization, neoliberalism has engendered the rise of non-standard, temporary work undertaken by an increasing number of freelancers and independent contractors. Some figures show that independent contractors represent over 15% of the workforce. Skateboarders might seem to have a “cool” job—like video game testers do—but as contractors, they face barriers to unionizing, substandard pay, and lack health insurance, just as DoorDashers and Uber drivers do. To study this area of lifestyle sports is to call attention to an economic reality many Americans now face, whether on or off the board.

L. Dugan Nichols holds a doctorate in Communication from Simon Fraser University, and he is currently a sessional lecturer at the University of Toronto Mississauga. Skateboarding is only one dimension of his research, as his interests include political economy, media spectacles, journalism, and the common-sense beliefs people have about the consequences of capitalism. The above text draws from a more comprehensive study on social media and working conditions in the skateboard industry, titled, “Gnarly Freelancers: Professional Skateboarders’ Labor and Social Media Use in the Neoliberal Economy.”

“What do you do in the middle of a pandemic, when winter weather has arrived and almost every form of recreation is banned? Build an outdoor ice rink.” This was the question CBC Manitoba asked its readers—and answered for them—in December 2020 at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic’s second wave. A month later, firefighters in rural Ontario were filling backyard rinks for residents, and CTV highlighted pandemic induced backyard rinks from Ottawa to the Maritime provinces.

Outdoor ice rinks play a significant social and cultural role in the construction of a collective Canadian identity; from the romantic images of children scrimmaging on frozen ponds in commercials for Tim Hortons coffee shops, to the National Hockey League’s Winter Classic games, outdoor hockey is painted with nostalgia and innocence, as the game in its purest form. So, when backyard rinks had a renaissance during the COVID-19 pandemic, it was not surprising the Canadian media viewed such a development as worthy of celebration. Yet, as we face another winter marked by the pandemic, it is important to consider that, despite these media images, many Canadians have not been able to stick-handle “around the pandemic on [their] backyard rink.”

Hockey scholar Robert Rutherdale has argued that underneath this celebratory narrative is the reality that equal access to backyard rink spaces is a myth within the myth of Canada’s game. While backyard rinks share some aesthetic similarities with community rinks, there is one fundamental difference: backyard rinks are, by definition, private property. Therefore, access to these rinks is limited, both in the sense of who can build them and who is allowed to play on them.

Critical Indigenous scholars have suggested that private property is both material and ideological, where the very notion of private property naturalizes settler belonging and occupation of Indigenous lands. In the context of the pandemic, when access to public, community rinks faced varying restrictions, hockey became more or less limited to private backyards, creating the conditions where only certain groups were privileged enough to participate in the national winter pastime. Instead of breaking down barriers to increase hockey’s accessibility, backyard rinks delineate space in a way that reproduces boundaries of belonging and exclusion established by capitalism and colonialism, exposing sport’s role in the inherently uneven process of solidifying claims to space.

The value of a backyard rink

Consider the financial side of building a backyard rink. Not only does a family likely need to own their home, but they also require a reasonable backyard to install even a small rink. According to research at Wilfred Laurier, and looking at companies Rink Master and EZ Ice, the cost of materials for a backyard rink begin at around $500 (do-it-yourself) and can range upward of $2,500, not counting landscaping or water costs. Then there comes the time it takes to install, maintain, disassemble, and store the rink each year.

These factors should lead us to pause and consider some questions that are often overlooked in media narratives about backyard rinks: which families are included and, perhaps more importantly, who is excluded? If we examine the numbers, we see that Black, Indigenous, and other people of colour (BIPOC) disproportionately bore the economic hardship of the pandemic, with Indigenous people facing the greatest unemployment rate—a gap projected to persist following the pandemic given that non-Indigenous people’s unemployment rate had dropped to 8% at the end of 2020, while Indigenous men’s and women’s unemployment remained at 11% and 12%, respectively.

Along with being overrepresented in the low-income bracket, BIPOC individuals who live in urban centres are more likely to rent, not own, in dense, lower-income neighborhoods—a situation exacerbated by the cost of housing that climbed steadily throughout the pandemic. Given these factors, pandemic rinks tended to remain in the backyards of upper-middle class, predominantly white families. Therefore, those who were not privileged enough to build one were left with the choice of facing public contempt for using community rinks or forgoing recreation entirely.

A fun family activity only some can enjoy

Now, once a backyard rink is built, who gets to skate on it? The most obvious answer is the family who built it, representing a narrow demographic. But who is invited or allowed into the space? While public, community rinks and ponds are, at least in theory, open to anyone who can lace up a pair of skates, backyard rinks are largely under constant surveillance by property owners. Because property owners have the perceived right to determine who is granted access to their private space, backyard rinks are accessed by invitation only.

This ability to exclude means that, while there is an increasing number of BIPOC players taking part in the game, backyard rinks remain spaces where primarily white players (and their families) can choose not to integrate, maintaining a safe space for whiteness. As scholar Courtney Szto discusses, a shift toward private over public spaces impacts the game at local, national, and at times global levels, as it functions as another means of filtering out BIPOC individuals before they reach the level of the game that shapes public memory and the supposedly collective Canadian identity.

Discussing the experience of Indigenous players described in Ojibwe author Richard Wagamese’s award-winning book Indian Horse, scholars Sam McKegney and Trevor Phillips note that language of “rights” delineates insider and outsider status within dominant society. Based on racialized distinctions, this details who belongs—namely, “white people”—and whose access to space is impermanent and conditional. Therefore, backyard rinks, like any (dis)possessed and commodified space, can reproduce an inherently white, masculine, and heteronormative entitlement to space.

Concluding thoughts

Throughout the pandemic, Canadian leaders tried to sell the line “we are all in this together” –a narrative that may comfort some people. Yet the pandemic has exacerbated pre-existing inequalities, and while backyard rinks may not be the most serious outcome of this, they are a readily identifiable example of the colonial and capitalist driven social divisions likely to persist. Ultimately, backyard rinks demythologize the mythical notion of community and collective identity supposedly underpinning hockey in Canada. At a time when many people would benefit from stronger community spaces, we ended up with bounded, individualized spaces instead. Moving forward, it is time we stop painting backyard rinks as romantic, innocent spaces where Canadians come together to play Canada’s game, but recognize them as an often-overlooked player in the game of capitalism and colonialism.

I (Kennedy Kneller) am a third-generation settler of Western European descent. I am a master’s candidate in the School of Kinesiology at the University of British Columbia working with Dr Moss Norman. My MA thesis explores experiences of Indigenous girls and women in ice hockey in a Northern BC community, specifically focusing on how these experiences are negotiated and informed by local knowledges and cultural values.

Elite soccer in Scotland operates within a relatively small financial domain compared to wealthier soccer countries like Italy, England, Spain, and Germany. Nevertheless, soccer remains the country’s dominant team sport, with attendances in Scotland’s top league the highest in Europe when population size is considered. Soccer in Scotland is largely dominated by two famous institutions: Rangers, a club and fanbase with a definitive anti-Catholic history and tradition, and Celtic, a club founded by Irish Catholic immigrants. Approximately 70% of fans in Scottish soccer devote allegiance to either of these two clubs. The histories of Rangers and Celtic, and the rivalry between them, also means they have millions of supporters around the globe, especially, though not solely, where Irish Catholic and Scottish Protestant immigrants have settled during the latter 20th and early 21st centuries.

From a sociological standpoint, it’s important to understand how communal memory contributes to this great and storied rivalry. For many supporters of Rangers and Celtic, such memory is infused with politics, religion, history, ethno-religious discrimination, colonialism, and anti-colonialism.

However, these memories are also contestable, particularly in terms of what is actively remembered, unconsciously forgotten, and knowingly discarded, as well as how and when such memories might be recalled, abused, or celebrated.  Generally, even when collective memories commemorate famous people and events, they can be selective and malleable. This can be witnessed with military remembrance in Britain, North America, and Australia,  where the fusion of sport with past and current politico-military events can make commemoration problematic.

With regard to Rangers versus Celtic, historical selectivity and ideological narrative construction play a role in dominant and popular media representations of the rivalry.  For example, commentaries favoured by political and media elites in Scotland frequently suggest that the Rangers and Celtic football clubs and their respective fandoms characterise an importation of Irish problems into Scotland.  This is a principal example of how popular political and media representations reflect an obliteration of more incisive accounts of this soccer rivalry, as well as with regards various ethno-religious prejudices linked to wider society and Scottish-British-Irish history.

In this context, pointing to Ireland as the cause of ethno-religious or “sectarian” cleavages in Scotland is incessant. For example, during a 2011 debate over the “Offensive Behaviour in Football Act”, which frequently focused on Rangers and Celtic supporters, a politician in the Scottish Parliament suggested that Protestant (majority) and Catholic (minority) differences and fissions in Scotland were “born out of the history of Ireland”. A Scottish newspaper reproduced a similar narrative, claiming that conflicts arose from “a mindset rooted in the poverty and violence of Northern Ireland, imported to the west of Scotland by 19th century migrants”. Another criticised Celtic and Rangers fans for offering their “interpretation of 500 years of…Irish history”. Although celebrating the enormity of Rangers versus Celtic as Scottish soccer’s crown jewel, in the build-up to one derby game a BBC Scotland sports broadcaster sought to remind listeners, “this is a football match, not a re-enactment of Irish social history”.

Such narratives construct “Irish history” as distinct, and mainly as a negative series of often violent events disconnected from parallel or related ones within Great Britain. These views reflect a deep ignorance of the actuality of wide-ranging socio-cultural, military, religious, and political interweaving that has intimately connected both islands for centuries. To better understand Rangers versus Celtic and Scottish society, it is necessary to go beyond rhetoric that frequently references and blames Ireland as the cause of Scotland’s ethno-religious problems.

Scots have occupied a decisive role in modern Irish–British history, especially in relation to national, ethnic, and religious conflict. In the 17th century, tens of thousands of Scottish Protestants colonised Ireland’s militarily conquered northern Ulster Province, under terms that allowed them to acquire land and power for the British Crown, and as a result, to dominate and control remaining native Irish Catholics.  After conquest and control (the rest of Ireland had already been conquered, though often remaining in a state of rebellion), many Scottish-British colonists, referred to as “Scots-Irish” and “Ulster-Scots”, migrated to North America, where they became central to the European colonial enterprise that would become the United States of America.

In addition to its impact on Ireland, British colonisation also acquired significance in relation to the development of professional soccer in Scotland. In this sense, British colonialism was central to the conditions that gave rise to, and the consequences of, the catastrophic Great Irish Hunger of the mid-19th century. In the space of a handful of years, over a million humans perished and a similar number were forced to emigrate as refugees, including around 100,000 to nearby Scotland.

Members of the resultant Irish Catholic refugee community in Glasgow founded Celtic Football Club in 1887/88. Rangers began earlier in 1872. As with many employments and other socio-cultural organisations in Scotland, the latter club was characterised by exclusionary anti-Catholic-Irish prejudice and discrimination. In this context, the presence of Celtic, a well-supported and successful soccer club, largely defined through its Irish ethnic and Catholic origins and identities in an anti-Catholic society, a country that had also been joint partner with England in the exploitation of the island of Ireland and elsewhere, kindled the development of the Rangers-Celtic rivalry. Today, through various cultural practices and expressions, including song and fan symbols, many Rangers fans celebrate the historical conquest of Ireland, while Celtic supporters commend rebellion against it.

The evolution of the Rangers-Celtic rivalry and its contemporary media and political representations demonstrates how history is contested terrain. To understand this rivalry on and beyond the soccer field, it is necessary to consider how British colonialism in Ireland is remembered and forgotten in both Scotland and Britain more generally.  Such an exercise also offers insight into how sport and politics are often inseparable.

Dr. Joseph M. Bradley is Teaching Fellow in Sport Sociology at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, UK. He has authored, joint authored and edited several books, and written numerous journal and newspaper articles on sport and ethnic, national and religious identities, and prejudice.

The COVID-19 pandemic necessitated fundamental changes in people’s everyday lives. For example, social distancing measures drove changes to individuals’ fitness routines, leading to the popularization of home workout equipment such as the Peloton spin bike and treadmill. Part of Peloton’s growing ubiquity  is likely due to the social aspect of its platform and the sense of community many users feel through the use of hashtags and Facebook groups based on shared interests and identities. As a sociologist, I am interested in how fitness not only improves health, but also provides spaces for belonging. For example, a study published in 2016 about women who participate in Zumba reported that it had a range of benefits, including serving as a means of socialization and camaraderie. Social circles focused on physical activity can nurture fitness engagement and help people stay motivated to achieve their health goals.

In an effort to reduce stress and re-create a gym environment during the pandemic, I started taking some of Peloton’s cycling and treadmill classes at home using their mobile app. Some of my favorite treadmill classes are those taught by their instructors who are Black women, including Marcel Dinkins, Kirsten Ferguson, and Jess Sims. In large part, I connect with these instructors because I rarely saw people in fitness I could relate to while I was growing up. When I discovered their classes I thought, “Finally! Some runners who look more like me!”

This was an especially welcome discovery given the homogeneity of the running community. When I started running recreationally in graduate school about a decade ago, I quickly noticed a trend: as a Black woman, I often found myself, as one of my research respondents so aptly put it, as a “chocolate chip in a sea of milk.” As others have noted, recreational running—in particular, distance running in road races—tends to be an overwhelmingly white activity both in the United States and internationally. In theory, running should be one of the easiest sports in which to participate—it does not require a gym membership, expensive equipment, or fancy apparel. Due to its accessibility compared to other forms of fitness, recreational running has grown exponentially in the past several decades. Many middle-class people probably know someone who has participated in a 5k race or other running event due to their widespread proliferation.

Rooted in part from my personal experiences, I conducted a sociological study of Black middle-class women who engage in recreational distance running. I was particularly curious as to how these runners find their place in a predominantly white sport. I wondered, how do Black women runners view themselves and how is their engagement affected by their status as minority participants? From a sociological perspective, having a reference group—defined by Tamotsu Shibutani as a “group which serves as the point of reference in making comparisons or contrasts, especially in forming judgements about one’s self” —is important for being able to envision yourself as able to find success in particular occupations, activities, and, in this case, fitness endeavors.

One theme that emerged in the research interviews I conducted was that joining running groups—specifically, running groups for Black women—helped participants to feel a sense of belonging in the sport. One group that many participants in my study belonged to is Black Girls RUN! (BGR), which has thousands of members among dozens of local chapters across the United States. Most of their organizing and communication is done via social media. Mia*, 51, spoke of the importance of BGR’s online presence when I interviewed her:

“It’s just nice to see people of color moving, and it’s nice to not be the only person. Running has opened so many doors for me. In addition to BGR, there’s the National Black Marathoners, Black Runners’ Connection…I travel for races and you start seeing some of the same people and you’re all friends. I would’ve never met these folks if it was not for social media.”

Social scientists have written about other running groups created to foster community among people from marginalized groups, including the Clydesdale Runners Association for larger runners, and the Front Runners, which is a running club for those identifying as LGBTQ+. When 40-year-old Kourtney started running with BGR, she said she was pleasantly surprised that the group existed:

“It’s encouraging because in the past, you would do a race and you wouldn’t see anybody that looked like you, seriously, and in Lewisville…that was the first time I’d seen so many Black people running. I’m like, ‘Oh my god. Where are you guys at normally?’ Then Duncantown, the half [marathon], I was amazed. They had a huge BGR group there.”

In her interview, Kourtney emphasized how encouraging it was to realize there was a chapter of BGR in her town. She ultimately took on a leadership role in her local chapter to lead evening jogs with other Black women.

As BGR states in its mission statement, one of its goals is to “create a movement” that combats the preponderance of chronic illness Black women are disproportionately subjected to, such as heart disease and type 2 diabetes. Several of the women I spoke to in my study said part of what drew them to this group was the desire to change health statistics and challenge dominant narratives about Black women.

For example, 38-year-old Tyra said in her interview:

“…for me it was important to be around other women of color because of those same stories—that we don’t exercise. We don’t swim. It’s, you know, because I know we tend to be caretakers and we put ourselves last. So to be around women who wanted to kind of break out of that kind of trend or that legacy that we tend to inherit from our mothers was really important for me.”

Groups such as BGR are important for promoting a sense of comfort and empowerment among people who did not grow up seeing other people of their racial group engaging in particular sports and fitness activities. For individuals in the Black middle-class who are often one of few Black employees at their workplaces, these types of groups can provide a reprieve from feelings of isolation experienced throughout the day.

It is not only important to capitalize on opportunities to create community during the pandemic, a time when it may be more important than ever, but also in a post-pandemic future—especially for the most marginalized members of society seeking to find safe, inclusive spaces to engage in leisure sport and health-promoting activities.

*names of all research participants and locations changed to protect anonymity

Alicia Smith-Tran is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Oberlin College. Her research and teaching interests include topics related to medical sociology, aging & the life course, the intersections of race, class, & gender, sociology of sport & leisure, and qualitative methodology. You can follow her on Twitter @aliciasmithtran.

From the day Qatar was awarded an opportunity to host the FIFA men’s World Cup in 2022, Islamophobic coverage of the Qatari state has proliferated in Western media. The Western media discourse has been heavily focused on highlighting human rights issues, immigration laws, climate, and bribery accusations while obscuring possible successes of the first Muslim country to hold the FIFA World Cup. For example, an article on Bleacher Report with the title “6 reasons why the World Cup should be taken away from Qatar,“ led with concerns about scorching heat in the small Gulf State, followed by criticisms of how the event would cause a “disruption to European leagues.” At the same time, other sport media analysts have questioned why an Arab country (approximate population of 2.8 million) with little soccer history succeeded in becoming the host nation. Such reporting serves to cast doubts on the acceptability of holding a mega-sporting event in a Muslim country.

In recent years, Qatar has made meaningful changes in its human rights laws as compared to many Muslim countries in the region. For instance, in a small but symbolic action, Qatar will allow football fans to display rainbow LGBT+ “pride” flags during the World Cup. Similarly, the Qatari government has now formally recognized the harsh conditions of migrant workers and promised to take steps to improve their lives. These changes depict how a mega international sporting event, such as the World Cup, can have a socio-political impact on a conservative society. Thereby, rather than calling to ban Muslim countries from inclusion in hosting mega-events, there may be benefits in encouraging a sporting culture in the Muslim world. Further, the one-sided discourse in Western media about Qatar poses a threat to the rising sporting culture among Muslim women in the region. Overall, the current portrayal of Qatar in the popular sporting press illustrates the existence of Islamophobic bias within the Western media and broadly in the sporting industry.

Numerous scholars have argued that media discourse on sports is not just about sports but is also entangled in a variety of socio-historical forces. Historically, global sport media and culture have been dominated by Euro-Western nations. For instance, in my own Ph.D. dissertation research on sporting culture in South Asia, which involved collecting data from marginalized Muslim women taking part in traditional sports within the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, I uncovered how British colonizers systematically eliminated traditional and indigenous sports in the Indian sub-continent to further their sporting agenda. In this research, I also examined how Western media and scholarly discourse propagates a biased, Islamophobic understanding of sporting culture in the Muslim world. Ultimately, there are very few Arab voices among media analysts in the West. Hence, the biased reporting against the Qatari state may be understood through the broader lens of Islamophobia prevalent in the Western media.

Scholars such as Mahmoud Arghavan, Tariq Amin-Khan, and Sunniya Wajahat have previously used Edward Said’s (1978) work on Orientalism to understand broader Islamophobic trends in Western media. Said defined Orientalism as consisting of three symbiotic elements. The first element of Said’s definition entails a Western academic bias toward harvesting and teaching knowledge about the Muslim world via a Eurocentric lens. The second element emphasizes Orientalism “as a means of thought” in the broader Western discourse (e.g., popular media), whereas the third element of the definition elucidates how Orientalism is a Eurocentric style for controlling, rearranging, and maintaining colonial authority over the East (aka Orient). Considering Orientalism as a Eurocentric “means of thought” helps explain the tendency of Western sports media analysts to believe that the Western world has the true birthright to control and organize sporting events and structures. In contrast, the Muslim and Arab world are portrayed as disorganized, anti-human, and retrograde by the same media analysts. For instance, the implicit belief in covering the Qatar World Cup from many sport media experts stems from targeting the capability of an Arab country to hold a mega-event rather than discussing how Qatar can improve its policies to make the event more inclusive.

Therefore, to tackle the current wave of Orientalism, the Qatari state needs a comprehensive strategic media policy. For example, the Qatari state should be open about current human rights issues and discuss how they plan to resolve them within the cultural context. Attempting to hide data and information because of the fear of being prosecuted by the Western media and sporting organizations, such as FIFA, can further aggravate Orientalist discourse. For sport media consumers, considering a broader socio-historical lens while reading and analyzing current Western media coverage of the FIFA men’s World Cup in 2022 can yield important insight. Keeping in mind Edward Said’s concept of Orientalism as a “means of thought” used to marginalize the East can help us untangle the inherent Islamophobic bias that has permeated much of the Western popular discourse about the World Cup and broader Muslim world.

Dr. Umer Hussain is a post-doctoral research associate at Texas A&M University, USA. His scholarship focuses on investigating the intersection between race, religion, and gender in sports and the eSports context.

In the high-stakes world of NBA free agency, players coming and going is never simply transactional. Free agency is a source of hope and intrigue for fans and a rite of passage for players who are theoretically liberated to select the team that empowers them to fulfill their goals. It is also a major media spectacle, with each player coming, going, and staying the subject of analysis and scrutiny by journalists and media commentators. With free agency underway again, we ought to reflect upon the legacy of sports media rhetoric surrounding the most impactful free agency in NBA history: that of LeBron James and “The Decision.”

On July 8, 2010, ESPN aired “The Decision” to an audience of nearly 10 million, tuning in to behold the then 25-year-old James announcing he would leave his hometown Cleveland Cavaliers and “take his talents to South Beach,” signing with the Miami Heat. In a content analysis study that surveyed print, web, and broadcast media, I found that sports media backlash to “The Decision” was swift and overwhelmingly negative. It was obvious James’ exertion of agency, compounded by his choice to leave Cleveland to join the more-talented Heat, seriously upset the social order.

Media commentary on sports isn’t just about sports. Though rarely explicit, the mediated messages we consume encourage us to accept particular interpretations of reality over others and extend the values and attitudes they promote into our lives. As the backlash to “The Decision” reminds us, sport media is often the site of disciplinary rhetoric against threats to the status quo.

Since “The Decision” and James’ signing with Miami, sports media practitioners have often promoted an ideology of neoliberalism rationality in framing NBA free agency. In particular, media commentators have advanced a distinctly neoliberal conception of competition to send a sharp warning to players, and also to fans, that collaboration and solidarity have no place in labor.

In his landmark book A Brief History of Neoliberalism, anthropologist David Harvey explains that neoliberalism “proposes that human wellbeing can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterised by strong private property rights, free market, and free trade.” The implementation of governmental and economic neoliberal policies is undergirded by the political-ideological project of neoliberal rationality. Critical scholar Wendy Brown identifies this as the process of “extending and disseminating market values to all institutions and social action.” For individuals, this involves envisioning life and labor through the lens of cutthroat, zero-sum competition. In the neoliberal imagination, prosperity—and, by extension, freedom—can only be obtained through perpetual self-motivated competition to outhustle and subjugate peers, lest they outhustle and subjugate us. Neoliberal rationality tells us that we are solely responsibility for our own successes and failures—that if we work hard and are sufficiently talented, we will be rewarded both financially and socially.

As we watch our sports heroes succeed while journalists and broadcasters reinforce the idea they are the best at what they do because they work harder and “want it more” than everybody else, we are hailed to internalize that we, too, must scratch and claw past our peers lest we, too, become dominated by someone who wants it more. Should we fail to prosper, we are conditioned to internalize that blame rather than question systemic inequities that impede us and others along the way. We are conditioned to blame others for their struggles and to approach any threat to neoliberal rationality as undesirable, weak, and deviant.

Aghast that James would opt to improve his working conditions by joining fellow all-stars Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh in Miami, media critics appealed to neoliberal rationality by framing James’ embrace of collaboration as a gesture of weakness and an abdication of greatness. CBS Sports’s Ken Berger, for example, accused James of criminal collusion with Wade and Bosh. New York Times columnist Maureen Daud feminized James, likening Miami’s all-star trio to women who must go to the bathroom together, while also appealing to rhetoric of criminality by likening the trio to a cartel. Journalists at ESPN.com appealed to negative stereotypes of millennials as entitled and unwilling to work hard or acknowledge (neoliberal) reality. “James is the perfect case study of the I’m-Somebody-And-You’re-Not phenomenon,” ESPN’s Tim Keown wrote. “They’ve grown up in a world of parents who worship them rather than discipline them, and they’ve rarely been given honest, frank assessments of their talents. Everybody is good at everything, nobody loses, nobody fails, nobody should be called to account for their inadequacies.” “James represents oversensitive players who can’t take criticism or fans not pulling for them,” Rob Parker wrote. “Some of the greatest players both expected it and relished the fans of their opponents to despise them. Everybody isn’t going to root for you. Just ask Jordan.”

The “Jordan” to whom Parker refers is, of course, Michael Jordan, the icon to whom James was compared since he entered the NBA as a teenager. Jordan’s evocation in this equation is no accident, as Jordan has long been a quintessential Reagan-era hard body, “inextricably articulated as a living, breathing, and dunking vindication of the mythological American meritocracy,” to quote sports scholar David Andrews. The reality-distorting legend of Jordan being cut from his high school team, only to use that failure as fuel to work harder than everybody else, is a quintessential neoliberal mythology: if we fail, the fable tells us, only working harder can transcend failure.

This decade-spanning campaign of commentary on NBA free agency extends and perpetuates itself when star players such as Anthony Davis, Paul George, Kyrie Irving, or James Harden are traded to teams with fellow stars. Like clockwork, when a high-watt NBA star joins a talented team, or aligns with an all-star teammate via trade, he will be chastised for taking the “easy way out,” for shrinking from their potential, for lacking the desire to win that Jordan and his contemporaries possessed. “Any super-competitive person would rather beat Dwyane Wade than play with him,” Bill Simmons wrote for ESPN. “Don’t you want to find the [Muhammad] Ali to your [Joe] Frazier and have that rival pull the greatness out of you? . . . That’s what Jordan would have done.”

Why is the prospect of NBA players asserting agency over where and with whom they play so disruptive, not merely to the NBA but to the social order itself? Interestingly, this disciplinary rhetoric about “The Decision” coincided with an influx of millennials into the workforce. Framing James, and later contemporaries like Kevin Durant, as weak-minded and lazy provides an unambiguous message to not only players whose legacies might also be denigrated but to anybody listening: competition, not collaboration, is the only acceptable path to self-actualization. And thus, neoliberal rationality may extend beyond the basketball court and into our own relations.

Dr. Matt Foy is an associate professor of communication at Upper Iowa University, where he conducts research on popular culture at the intersections of performance, cultural, and rhetorical studies. He is the chief journal editor of the Professional Wrestling Studies Journal. This post is adapted from the author’s 2020 article “The Neoliberal Disciplining of LeBron James and Kevin Durant: Sports Media Discourse on NBA Free Agency as Ideological Critique,” published by the Journal of Sport and Social Issues.