In August 2019, former National Football League (NFL) player Chris Long declared that he smoked marijuana and “is a good person”. Long is not the first professional athlete to discuss marijuana use, and his comments situate him in a conversation many former players are having about the benefits of marijuana compared to traditional pain killers. Long’s comments are also part of larger marijuana reform movements happening in places such as Canada, Mexico, New Zealand, Uruguay, and the U.S. In the U.S., however, it is white marijuana users like Chris Long who tend to get the benefit of the doubt with respect to being a “good person”.

Black Americans are almost four times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than whites despite similar rates of usage. These racial disparities are still present in U.S. states where marijuana is legal. Even within the legal cannabis industry, those running dispensaries and other parts of the recreational marijuana market are disproportionately white and male, allowing them to profit from the plant while women and racial minorities struggle to gain the same access. These inequities are representative of the long history of marijuana prohibition discourse that has used narratives of race, gender, social class, and nation to argue for the outlawing of the plant.

Within sport, former NFL player Ricky Williams is perhaps the most famous athlete that has used marijuana. In fact, Sports Illustrated called him “America’ s most infamous stoner-athlete”.  This label most likely comes from Williams’s long history with the plant. In 2004, during the prime of his career, Williams retired after a third positive marijuana test. During this time Williams had a medical marijuana prescription for his social anxiety, became a yoga instructor, and went to school for holistic medicine. Williams returned to the NFL in 2005, but was subsequently suspended for marijuana use again in 2006. This period found Williams ensnared into several competing narratives regarding marijuana use, including selfishness, discourses that labeled him a quitter, the “Bob Marley of football”, a bad role model, and Williams’s own description of his drug use as something he did because he wanted to quit football.

Ultimately, narratives about Williams cannot be separated from larger understandings of race and masculinity, and his case provides an important means for exploring broader narratives of Black masculinity in connection to sport and marijuana use. In a recent study, I examined narratives of Williams’s marijuana use in relation to Black masculinity, conducting a systematic investigation of articles appearing in the printed press as well as the documentaries Run Ricky Run (2010) and A football life: Ricky Williams (2014).

Sport is a useful space to examine complexities involved in narratives about marijuana use, as popular culture has been used historically to justify marijuana prohibition. For example, yellow journalism, film, and other forms of popular culture were used to perpetuate the belief that marijuana made Mexican and Black men violent, criminal, and hypersexual. Additionally, prohibitionists spread the belief that white women who smoked would become sexually deviant and have sex with men of color outside of wedlock. By capitalizing on the demonization of oppressed groups and by enflaming stigmatized narratives of interracial sex, prohibitionists such as Harry Anslinger were able to carve an easier path to prohibition. In essence, Blacks, Mexicans, and white women who used marijuana did not get to be “good people”.

By the 1960s, marijuana use grew among white, middle-class college students. This demographic change helped shift media narratives to focus on white teens who were “good people”, but made a mistake by smoking cannabis. The demographic shift also led to marijuana users being stereotyped as unproductive but not violent, with a connection to counter-cultural movements and leftist politics. Thus, Williams’s marijuana use and Long’s comments are part of a long history of marijuana prohibition shaped by issues of race, gender, and social class.

Similar narratives about marijuana use and stereotypical constructions of Black masculinity are prevalent in the sport media’s discussion of Williams. While Williams’ marijuana use was situated across a variety of different narratives, I found that the framing of Williams’s marijuana use as selfish and hedonistic was most dominant. I contend that this is due to the media’s inability to conceptualize the complexity of Williams, his performance of Black masculinity, and his identity as a Black marijuana user. From the onset, Williams was framed as a strange individual. “Ricky’s personality is the furthest thing you’d expect from a football player. He’s more like a writer, a poet,” suggested Greg Colbourne of the Toronto Star. Williams was often classified as a “bohemian” or “someone that cannot be defined”, positioning him as unrecognizable within professional football.

More so, these attributes are not recognizable because they do not fit into stereotypical tropes of Black masculinity as hyper-masculine and criminal or assimilated to white middle-class norms of respectability. The inability to understand Williams and his actions result in his marijuana use being pigeonholed into easily recognizable tropes of the Black male athlete. Comments like Greg Stoda of The Palm Beach Post, stating Williams “doesn’t care about anybody except Ricky Williams”,  or one-liners like “Ricky Williams, whose pot history is positively Marleyesque”, and the many others like it fall into the stereotypical tropes of the Black athlete and Black marijuana use.

The selfish and hedonistic athlete is consistently framed through the Black male body, but these labels of selfishness and hedonism were also applied to Black jazz musicians of the 1930s. Further, by calling Williams the “Bob Marley of football” and other similar labels, the Rastafarian and anti-colonial politics of Marley are erased, and instead both Marley and Williams are situated in historical discourses of hedonism and Black marijuana use. This connection obscures any association of Black marijuana use and politics. Thus, Williams is entwined with multiple messages that narrowly interpret the behavior of the Black body as selfish. And as a result, this obscures more complex reasons for Williams’s actions and choice to use marijuana.

For instance, Williams had a medical marijuana prescription for his anxiety disorder, and after retiring, he went on to train as a yoga teacher and holistic healer. Williams has specifically credited yoga for helping to restore balance in his life. More so, Williams has frequently stated “I didn’t quit football because I failed a drug test. I failed a drug test because I was ready to quit football”. This narrative aligns with Williams’ discussion of losing interest in fame and money leading to his first retirement. These more complex narratives are explored in both ESPN’s 30 for 30: Run Ricky Run documentary and NFL Films’ A football life: Ricky Williams. The NFL Films documentary celebrates football and the career of Williams through a redemption narrative, while ESPN’s 30 for 30 documentary, although not produced by Williams, involved his input capturing the complexity of his life “warts and all”.

These documentaries allow Williams to bring his own narrative into the larger sport media discourse of his marijuana use and retirement. Such alternative narratives from Williams and (occasionally from the press), offer the possibility to open new and wider ideas about what it means to be a Black athlete and a Black athlete who uses marijuana. Thus, considering cases such as Williams’ marijuana use may help us think more critically about the meaning we attach to marijuana and its different users—or more plainly, it helps render visible who gets to be a “good person” that uses marijuana. Reframing our understandings of marijuana and its users could generate support for marijuana and CBD oil to be used medicinally by athletes. More so, critically thinking about narratives of marijuana use and their relation to the history of marijuana prohibition has the potential to humanize both women and racial minorities who use the plant—a process that could work to counter-act racial disparities in marijuana enforcement and issues of discrimination within the legal cannabis industry. To do so would allow a broader scope of individuals to use marijuana and remain a “good person”.

Nik Dickerson is a Senior Lecturer in Sport Sociology at the University of Lincoln, UK. Both his research and teaching use sport and popular culture to explore historical and contemporary narratives of race and its intersections in the United States. He is particularly interested in representations of marijuana users within the marijuana reform movement, and issues of Blackness within ice hockey.  

There is a concussion crisis in sport. In some ways, concern about brain injuries in sport is nothing new. Over a century ago, medical journals started campaigning against the dangers of sport, and there were specific attempts to ban U.S. college football in the early 1900s and abolish tackle football in the 1950s. But the current crisis is different in four key respects:

1. It is a multisport injury crisis, spanning combat sports, various forms of football, hockey, and lacrosse to name but a few.
2. The crisis is global in nature, with debates in North America paralleled in most other English-speaking nations and, increasingly, mainland Europe.
3. The crisis extends beyond one type of injury—concussion or traumatic brain injury (TBI)—and is now inseparable from concerns about second impact syndrome and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). It even includes concerns about the influence of barely perceivable “sub-concussive” impacts.
4. The crisis is distinct in terms of its penetration into the popular cultural imagination, notably through the book and documentary League of Denial and popular movie Concussion.

Until now the issue of concussions has been approached in relatively narrow terms: as a medical problem; a media phenomenon; a governance and regulation issue; and a public health failure. It is, of course, all of these things. Within these areas, more work is needed to effectively diagnose, identify which particular impacts and/or symptoms equate with short- and long-term harm and, most fundamentally, find some kind of medical “cure”. We also need to examine media portrayals, scrutinize administrators’ responses, and change the way concussion awareness campaigns are designed and delivered. But many sport stakeholders and athletes have been slow to react, and the crisis has become bigger than any of these things alone—it is now a cultural crisis.

Conceived of as a cultural crisis, we now need to ask new and different questions, for health crises are rarely simply the outcome of the most pressing concerns, but are socially constructed through ideologies, interests and power relations. In light of this it seems pertinent to ask, what kind of society is it in which concerns over brain injury in sport have become so pronounced? What are the social roots of sport’s concussion crisis?

These are the fundamental questions I attempt to address in a new book, The Concussion Crisis in Sport. The analysis identifies three changing but interconnected cultural ideologies that help us understand the current situation: 1) health; 2) ageing; and 3) of course, sport.

First, concerns about concussions grow out of changes in the way we conceive of health in contemporary societies. Where health was once simply the absence of illness, we now think of health more in terms of our ability to optimize wellbeing through self-management. Concussion is a distinct contemporary health issue because our concerns are not just about the here and now, but also longer term risks, such as dementia and other forms of cognitive impairment.

Moreover, because healthiness has become entwined with ideas about our ability to be in control, brain health has taken centre stage. Neuroscience may be at a relatively early stage of development, but our expectations about how a deeper understanding of the human brain will enhance the human condition are reflected in the burgeoning market for brain enhancement products sold to consumers looking to develop their cognitive capacities. The exponential growth in social awareness of mental health issues is another expression of this. Specifically, while Mike Webster’s NYT obituary explicitly identified sport-induced brain injury as the cause of his 2002 death, it was the broader context (George W. Bush had just launched a comprehensive mental health review) that fuelled both Bennet Omalu’s investigation of CTE as a distinct medical condition and subsequent public and political interest. The concussion crisis stems from what has been termed Brain Culture and a belief that the brain is the key to understanding human existence and controlling human happiness.

Second, the concussion crisis in sport is also fundamentally wrapped up with concerns about different phases of the life-course. Children, once simply seen as small adults, are now thought of as uniquely vulnerable and in need of “concerted cultivation”. Parents invest in private tuition, after school clubs, etc. with the expectation that these actions will reap rewards for their children’s development. Moreover, because we think of childhood as the “cradle of the self” – the beginning of what defines us – the positive or negative experiences of young people are thought to have a spiralling effect. The result: we encourage children into sports, yet become acutely concerned about the potential effects upon them, such as concussions. These considerations explain how an occupationally specific concern related to the NFL has escalated to encompass all sports participants.

The hopes and fears about children’s early years are compounded by broader demographic shifts. As aging populations and medical efficacy for treating – e.g. heart disease – advance, so dementia has grown as a social concern. The primary response to this has been one of panic and fear – panic at the potential economic and social burden of an aging populace and fear at the prospect that we as individuals might also be subject to this “living death”. Medicine’s inability to develop a cure for dementia has led to a search for “faddy avoidance tactics”. Broader concerns about aging and dementia have spawned an ongoing search for a link between concussions and (early onset) dementia.

Third, changes to the structure and consumption of sport are also at the root of the current concussion crisis. Sport has become increasingly specialised in recent years and money and prestige have helped refine the performance experiments of sports science, creating a breed of “super-human” athletes. While we may not recognise it, the lived experiences of athletes have never been more distinct from that of sports fans due to the degree of devotion and singlemindedness required to become an elite performer.

Helping to obscure these differences is the cult of the sport celebrity. Richard Schickel, in his review of celebrity in modern life, describes how the public are drawn into the lives of these Intimate Strangers, which increasingly includes our consumption of the post-career lives of former sports stars. Inevitably this includes the longer-term detrimental health effects of a sporting career that, until recently, were largely beyond the public gaze. The concussion crisis is fuelled by an industry of sporting nostalgia (consider the focus on dementia amongst England’s 1966 World Cup winning soccer team), and a (misleading) conflation of demonstrably dangerous occupations with routine, everyday forms of sports participation.

So what can be done? Cultural crises are not resolved through technical or scientific innovation alone. Neither helmet design, rule changes, nor reliable diagnostic tools will get to the heart of these issues. We need something more than greater awareness and better regulation, for while both would be welcome, they continually fail because they misconceive the problem at hand.

The solution to a cultural crisis rests on uniting opposing factions and addressing their attitudinal differences. The first step toward doing that is to recognise how the current debate is guided by broader social processes. Our expectations for health, medicine, childhood and aging shape attitudes towards concussions. Second, we need to more clearly distinguish between the very different realities of elite and everyday levels of sporting experiences. This may go against the interests of commercial sport organisations for which forming a bond between player and fan creates meaning which creates revenue, but current portrayals misrepresent the levels of risk that most individuals experience in sport. Moreover, research shows that where regulations are out of step with participants’ experiences of concussion, they are likely to be rejected and ignored. Third, we must address the core paradox fuelling the concussion crisis; namely that what is believed to be a simple, cheap, accessible (and effective) strategy for boosting physical, mental and social well-being has become seen as a central cause of potentially the defining health issue of the twenty first century.

Finally—and many will find this counterintuitive—the way concussion has been elevated above and fundamentally distinct from other sport injury concerns may have had negative consequences. The voices calling for greater protection of the brain are contradicted by those that champion the traditional virtues of strength, fortitude and resilience in sport. A culture of sport that celebrates pain and injury creates an environment where disregard for one’s body is positively encouraged. Locating concussion within a more holistic concern about attitudes and responses toward sport injury, and a more realistic evaluation of the relative health benefits and costs of sports participation, would form the basis of a more authentically cultural agenda for change.

Dominic Malcolm is Reader in the Sociology of Sport at Loughborough University, UK. He is also Editor-in-Chief of the International Review for the Sociology of Sport. He has published a dozen books and over 50 journal articles on a range of subjects within the sociology of sport. His latest book is The Concussion Crisis in Sport (Routledge, 2020).

The field of podcasting has experienced rapid growth. Since its coinage in 2004, hundreds of millions have listened to podcasts—digital audio files available on the Internet, which are usually part of a themed series. As of 2019, over 64% of Americans were familiar with podcasts, a dramatic increase from 22% in 2006. In 2018, Google had indexed at least two million podcasts created around the world. According to Edison Research, over 700,000 active podcasts and more than 29 million podcast episodes were available on the Internet in 2019, rising from an estimated 550,000 active podcasts and 18.5 million episodes in 2018. In the United States alone, 51% of the population aged 12 and above have listened to podcasts. Internationally, a 2019 Reuters digital survey reported that 36% of international respondents recently listened to podcasts.

The proliferation of podcasts has acutely impacted the sports media industry. Networks like ESPN and Fox Sports offer menus of podcasts hosted by noted media anchors and former athletes. Current and former athletes are using podcasts to present their unique perspectives and tell stories of inspiration and female athletic empowerment. At the same time, the popular website Barstool Sports produces multiple lucrative podcasts that cater to the 18-34 year old male demographic through misogynistic conversations and the sexualization of female athletes, female podcast hosts, and podcast content. A simple Google search yields multiple lists of the “best” and “top ranking” sports podcasts available on the Internet, with such lists indicating that the current landscape of sports podcasting is dominated by content focused on a narrow set of professional sports, produced and hosted almost exclusively by men, with little perspective through a critical lens.

However, there are prominent sports podcasts on national platforms that critically examine issues in the sports world. Only a Game, produced by National Public Radio, devotes episodes to complex topics like the role of power, corruption and race in the NCAA’s enforcement of amateurism and the U.S. women’s national soccer’s team fight for gender equity. BackStory, another public radio podcast, devoted their July 26, 2019 episode to “the issue of sports and equality in American history.” Celebrity comedian Rhea Butcher’s Three Swings “reinvents” baseball history and culture, with one recent episode on “the hidden queer history” of the All American Girls’ Professional Baseball League. The Nation sportswriter Dave Zirin, meanwhile, discusses pressing issues in contemporary sports on his Edge of Sports podcast, with episodes featuring interviews with former athletes, journalists, and other prominent figures in the sports world. Further, individual episodes about sports have been produced by nationally-recognized podcasts like Malcolm Gladwell’s Revisionist History.

The feminist sports podcast Burn It All Down is a critically-focused sports podcast that unites contemporaneous discussion with scholarly analysis. Hosted by a group of feminist academics, activists and journalists, each episode gives an intersectional take on the latest news and events in sports. According to statistics available on their SoundCloud page (which does not take into account statistics from other podcast platforms like Apple or Google), hundreds of listeners follow the podcast, with each episode receiving roughly 4,000-6,000 plays. The hosts put their scholarly and interpretive tools into practice as they focus on the experiences of women athletes and fans as well as marginalized communities. With thousands of listeners streaming each episode, their continued success demonstrates the existence of listener appetite for critically-focused sports podcasts that present narratives and analyses alternative to mainstream media outlets.

Most of the podcasts outlined above involve similar approaches, with episodes generally geared toward offering critical analysis and reactions to the contemporary news and events in sporting culture. Others, like Australian media and sport academic Brett Hutchins, have created podcasts to highlight the important work of scholars researching sport. Through his MediaSport Podcast Series, Hutchins has interviewed numerous scholars conducting cutting edge research on the “key social, cultural, economic and political issues” in sporting contexts. By relying on the interview format, MediaSport mirrors the New Books in Sports podcast of the New Books Network, as both promote and increase the accessibility of the latest research related to sport. Aaron Lakoff’s hockey-focused podcast Changing on the Fly takes a similar approach, interviewing scholars, activists and artists as each episode speaks to critical issues in Canadian hockey culture, such as racism and gender equity. MediaSport, Changing on the Fly and Burn It All Down demonstrate that scholars of sport are using the podcast to discuss important issues through a critical lens as well as promote the latest research on sports.

The overall growth of podcasting has also created opportunities for scholars to explore its range of uses. Consider popular storytelling podcasts like This American Life and Serial. These acclaimed podcasts draw on a literary tradition of radio storytelling stretching to the early 20th century, when modernist artists and journalists used the radio’s emerging popularity to broadcast avant-garde, cutting-edge programs. Additionally, in taking a different direction, Radiolab, under the lead production of Jad Abumrad, has experimented with a wide array of sound production techniques. The drama and emotional intensity of sporting experiences make them ideal topics for exploring storytelling, sound production, and a range of other elements unique to audio as a medium. This is partly why I have been collaborating with colleagues in developing a podcast series, called Somatic, for the expressed purpose of experimenting with the podcast as a mode for telling evocative stories concerning our bodies in motion through the production of rich sound experiences.

In short, there are a number of podcasts focused on critically analyzing sports news, history and culture. Sport scholars are also being impacted by the podcast boom and are increasingly engaging with the digital audio format in innovative ways. Combined with the increasing audience for podcasts like Burn It All Down, the future is bright for the critical sports podcast.

Oliver Rick is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sport and Recreation Management at Springfield College. This article was written in collaboration with Samuel M. Clevenger, who teaches sport history at Towson University. Their digital audio project can be found at somaticpodcast.com or you can connect with them on twitter @SomaticPodcast

With the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) season underway, one storyline that made waves this offseason was the controversial trade of Chiney Ogwumike to the Los Angeles Sparks. The trade re-united Chiney with her sister, Nneka, in one of the biggest media markets in the United States. Through their success in sport, the sisters have built their social profiles in different ways, with Nneka finding more success on the court (WNBA MVP and champion in 2016) and Chiney in media working for ESPN.

As successful athletes and burgeoning media personalities, the Ogwumikes present themselves as figures of sociological interest, primarily because they exist at the intersection of an increasingly diverse Black America as second generation Nigerian immigrants.

As Black America has continued to diversify since the passage of the 1965 Hart-Celler Immigration Act, larger populations of immigrants from Caribbean and African countries have complicated what it means to be “Black” in the U.S. Sociologists have observed that Black Americans with recent immigrant backgrounds face difficulties integrating into U.S. society. In the U.S., people often use the words “Black” and “African American” interchangeably. But this tendency frequently causes confusion, especially when we consider Blacks who immigrated to the U.S. since the beginning of the 20th Century compared to Blacks whose ethnic identities were shaped through the history of the slave trade. That is why it is important to make distinctions when talking about the experience of “being Black” in the U.S., because not all Black people are treated the same even if they still encounter systematic anti-black racism.

Another issue is that the idea of Black success in the U.S. is often tied to what U.S./Western norms and institutions define as success. So the very institutions that continue to perpetuate anti-Black ideas also define what success looks like, and, simultaneously, often work against the formation of anti-racist coalitions. An example of this problem would be how sport is engaged in the charitable/philanthropy-industrial complex, as it lends itself to overly-simplistic solutions to problems facing poor and marginalized peoples with the idea that sport “builds character”—as if it is a lack of character, or access to sport, that keeps poor people in poverty both in the U.S. and abroad.

Given the issues noted above, our research tries to better understand how the Ogwumikes fit into the changing demographics of Black America. In a recent study, we examined media coverage of the Ogwumikes from 2007 through 2017. In doing so, we considered not only how the Ogwumike sisters were portrayed, but also how their representations fit into the larger context of gender, race, and immigration in sport. Our findings indicate two prominent themes in media coverage of the Ogwumike sisters.

First, representations of the Ogwumikes as Black women are consistent with existing research on Black women in sport. Within these representations of Black women, what sociologists call gendered racism means that there are contradictions in how Black women are discussed compared to white women. For instance, although women’s sports are often devalued as “un-athletic” and not worthy of attention, Black women, including the Ogwumikes, are stereotypically portrayed in ways that explain their athleticism as “natural,” “aggressive,” and “imposing.” The contradiction that women are weak but Black women are physically strong and strike “fear” into their opponents tends to be the norm—Black women are seen and defined as un-feminine, or masculine, from the very start.

Second, the Ogwumikes are often portrayed as “model minorities” in the U.S. because they are second-generation Nigerian immigrants. In particular, White supremacy is maintained through the model minority stereotype because the “success” of some minority groups is coded as the result of adherence to social norms that include hard work, education, and, of course, ignoring issues of race and racism. In the case of the Ogwumikes, both sisters and their mother are quoted as saying the success of Nigerians is due to a “culture of hard work.” Considering that they are professional athletes and Stanford graduates, this seems like a reasonable statement. However, this explanation ignores the hard work that all immigrant groups do when they come to the U.S., regardless of educational or economic attainment. Moreover, while Nigerians, among other nationalities, are more highly educated than native-born white Americans, we must remember that U.S. immigration policy from 1965 has favored highly skilled/educated immigrants from developing countries. This policy means it is unlikely that poor and uneducated Nigerians would have the resources come to the U.S.

Ultimately, our research highlights some of the problems with how Black immigrants are portrayed in white media. Not only is it difficult for Black immigrants to escape stereotypes of blackness, but their immigrant status is also used to (re)marginalize native-born Blacks. By attributing the success of immigrants to their unique culture we simultaneously belittle those Black immigrants who do not succeed. White supremacy works to manipulate ideas of race in subtle and seemingly infinite ways—if we fail to be vigilant, it becomes too easy to buy into this ideology.

Munene Mwaniki is an assistant professor of sociology at Western Carolina University. He is the author of The Black Migrant Athlete: Media, Race, and the Diaspora in Sport (University of Nebraska Press, 2017). His work has appeared in the International Review for the Sociology of Sport, Communication & Sport, Journal of Sport and Social Issues, and various op-eds. His research broadly focuses on the intersections of race, immigration, and sport.

Manuel Zenquis is an independent scholar whose areas of concern are situated in culture, politics, and inequality. He has recently graduated from Harvard University with a master’s degree in religious studies.

The success of the United States (U.S.) Women’s National Team (WNT) has encouraged millions of young female soccer players. With television viewership records being shattered at the 2019 World Cup, these elite athletes may inspire today’s young players to pursue the next level of their game, with the hopes of earning a college scholarship, signing a professional contract, or maybe donning that coveted red, white and blue jersey. However, the opportunity to achieve those dreams remains beyond reach for many girls due to the expenses associated with youth sport.

In recent years, the cost of youth sports has skyrocketed. During this time, physical activity levels decreased among youth from low-income backgrounds, and soccer exemplifies this change. Through informal interviews with several parents and coaches in the Northeast, we learned that a town recreational league costs anywhere from $200-$500 per season, and there are usually at least three seasons per calendar year (spring, summer, fall). More competitive club teams, meanwhile, typically cost between $2000-$4000 per year. One Long Island, New York, club listed their yearly tuition for 11 and 12 years olds at $2,875, excluding uniform costs and players’ travel expenses. The most prestigious clubs come with an even higher price tag. No matter what the level, these fees do not cover the costs of family involvement (such as hotels during tournaments) and/or training gear, which can cost thousands. Needless to say, the costs of participating quickly accumulate. Even though many clubs offer scholarships and financial aid, many families still struggle to get their children to and from practices and games.

Examining the Socioeconomic Backgrounds of Elite Soccer Players

Given these parameters, we wondered if playing at soccer’s top level was correlated with women’s socioeconomic backgrounds. To answer this question, we examined the social class background of elite level female soccer players. While we don’t have personal data on each player, we followed other scholars who have used athletes’ hometowns to approximate players’ socioeconomic status. We first researched the WNT roster and recorded all players’ hometowns as the place where they were born or raised. For example, Christen Press was born in Los Angeles, California but her biography indicates that she raised in Palos Verdes Estates, therefore her hometown was recorded as Palos Verdes[i]. We then looked up each woman’s hometown median income using the American Community Survey’s five-year estimates, which were based on data collected between 2013-2017. Because cost of living varies by state, we also examined how the women’s hometown median income compared to the median of their home state. This was calculated with two separate measures—the difference between the hometown and the state income and a ratio between the hometown and the state[ii].

According to our research, the average hometown income of a WNT player was $84,456. This figure is significantly higher than the US median income of $57,642. Of the 23 women on the WNT, only seven were from hometowns that fell below the US median. That means 69 percent of the athletes come from places with incomes above the U.S. median. Though 10 women’s hometowns fell below their respective state medians, only three women came from places where their hometown income fell far below the state median.  Regardless of which measure we used, middle and upper class women are overrepresented on the USWNT.

The WNT consists of elite-level talent drawn from two major feeder systems—the U.S. Youth Development program and the U.S. college system. Therefore, we also examined the income distribution of players in those pipelines. Without extensive vetted biographies, we could not discern if individuals were born and raised in different places, so we used the hometown listed on their official biography.

We collected data from two college soccer conferences on the West Coast—The Pac-12 and the West Coast Conference. This sample contained 610 players. Ultimately, we were able to collect hometown income data for 560 U.S. born female players in these two conferences.  Using the same income measures, only 100 collegiate players (17.9%) came from hometowns below the U.S. median and only 86 women (15.4%) came from places where the hometown income was far below the state median. The average hometown income for a collegiate player was $80,373. We also collected data from the Youth National Team rosters. These data include all women and girls who were on the rosters in September 2018. Of the 148 women listed on the seven youth teams, we were able to determine the hometown for 142 players. Their average hometown income was $78,920. Only 34 players (23.9%) were from hometowns below the U.S. median, and 22 players (15.5%) came from places far below the median.

Why Socioeconomic Background Matters

Overall, these data show that women from low-income communities are underrepresented in elite soccer. Pay-to-play sports enable girls from wealthy families to have more sport opportunities at all levels while constraining the chances of girls from low-income families. Further, due to the intersection of race and social class, women of color are disproportionally left out of sporting opportunities. Though the percentage of non-white players has increased since 2015, women of color still make up just over 20% of the 2019 roster. Furthermore, the five women of color who are on the team are not from low-income hometowns.

During this year’s World Cup, the fight for equal pay and treatment at the elite level has captured headlines. The 2019 team, inspired by previous generations of players, is making important strides on that front. However, we also need more measures in place that ensure soccer in the U.S. is accessible, affordable, and inclusive for future generations. Moving away from a pay-to-play model for all youth sports can help increase physical activity levels among all children while also ensuring that talented young athletes have the opportunity to strive towards the elite level regardless of their families’ income.

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.

Esther Wellman is a senior political science major at Monmouth University and a member of the women’s soccer team.

Notes:

[i] Becky Sauerbrunn was born in St Louis, Missouri ($38,644) but went to high school in Ladue City, Missouri ($203,205).  Because these two places are quite different, we used the median income for St Louis County ($50,936) where both places are located.

[ii] Hometowns where households earned less than 90% of the state median were far below the state median. In the dataset, this ranged from between $25 and $6930 below the median. For example, Julie Ertz is from Mesa, Arizona. At $52,155, Mesa’s median income is below the national median, but on par with Arizona’s state median ($53,510). Julie would be classified as below the U.S. median, below the state median, but NOT as far below the state median.

In 2016, Colin Kaepernick continued a tradition in US sports by staging a protest against racial injustice during the playing of the US national anthem. Following his initial protest, Kaepernick said:

“I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color. To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.”

Kaepernick’s comments were in reference to a series of deaths of unarmed Black American men, such as Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and Tamir Rice. Reactions to Kaepernick’s protest were split. Within the NFL and beyond, many Black athletes, performers, fans, and even some coaches and officials joined in the protest against state violence in Black communities. At the same time, many others vociferously objected while claiming to not be racist. The image above illustrates the color-blind racism of the objectors; an anti-black statement of on-going hatred (“We hated Kaepernick before…”) is modified by a racially neutral phrase (“For football reasons”). The denial of racism when protesting an anti-racist protest obscures the ongoing operation of racism as a multifaceted construct that disproportionality targets Black Americans. Moreover, it prevents understanding of the US’s failure to provide equal protections for all citizens when state violence and poverty disproportionately affects Black communities.

As the above figure illustrates, Black and White Americans tend to perceive race and racism differently. To a large extent whites take a more benign view on racialized social problems since they are less impacted by them than Blacks. This may be explained by the fact that ongoing racial segregation keeps them from having many meaningful interactions with Black people. This perceptual gap maps onto attitudes about the players’ protests; supporters of the protests tend to be Black and liberal, while opponents tend to be white and conservative. In fact, NFL fans (like other professional sports fans) have very little face-to-face interaction with players, which contributes to their deep racial misunderstandings and ill-interpretations of Black Americans. It is not coincidental then that the critics’ rhetoric has painted the protests as disrespectful, deviant, anti-patriotic, and anti-American.

To better understand how people interpret the recent protests, we interviewed 32 mostly white university student-athletes who were NFL fans and had a strong interest in the players’ protests. When we began talking to college athletes about the protests, we were well aware that perceptions of and support for or opposition to the protests were largely split along racial and political lines. What surprised us was that the liberal white supporters of the protests (similar to the critics who opposed them) did not articulate a deep understanding of what drove the players’ to protest state violence. Instead, these fans drew on what Eduardo Bonilla Silva calls “color-blind racism” via their ideological appeals to abstract, liberal conceptions of freedom and individualism. Rather than a stated concern with racial justice, support or opposition to the protests turned largely on whether or not the student interpreted the actions as patriotic.

The white student-athletes’ understandings of the players’ protests reveals much about the contemporary operation of white racial power and privilege in the US. Instead of addressing state violence and the material consequences of ongoing racial inequality, their accounts of the protests were predicated on their personal perceptions and investments in whiteness. In other words, they collectively interpreted the protests through what sociologist Joe Feagin calls a “white racial frame” that views the US and its social institutions, particularly the police and military, as the authors of prosperity, freedom, justice, and equality for everyone—even when whites enjoy what Ethnic Studies professor Evelyn Nakano Glenn calls “unequal freedoms”. As one student-athlete stated, “The players should be punished… Go protest somewhere else where it isn’t disrespecting the nation. They aren’t gaining respect by kneeling, all that they are gaining is disrespect. They are corrupting our nation by ruining the patriotic fun before a sports game.”

Ultimately, fans’ whiteness functioned in ways that blinded them from considering how or why race could be central to the protests. Additionally, about one fourth of the student-athletes expressed a firm white supremacist ideology that perceived players as breaking an unstated, imaginary racial contract where the bestowal of their fanship and adoration was predicated on the player protesters acting as extensions of US civic pride, freedom, and equality without reference to enduring US racial violence and oppression. The other group of respondents took an attitude of white privilege by describing the protests in racially neutral language of a civil society where all citizens have equal opportunity to engage in political protest, ignoring how they as white fans benefited from the racial injustice and inequality being protested. So while there was a clear distinction between their two positions, neither position demonstrated awareness of the everyday challenges Black players encounter on and beyond the playing field.

In both cases, we found ideas about patriotism politically disempowering for Black player protesters and Black Americans more broadly. Students that found the protests unpatriotic, unapologetically refuted the players’ rights to protest racial injustice and inequality. Instead, they characterized the players as immature, deviant, and disrespectful to the nation, veterans, the flag, and the National Anthem. Further, they argued that players had an obligation to provide them with uninterrupted entertainment since they—the fans—pay the players’ ‘inflated’ salaries. According to one student-athlete, “Yes, being a social activist is extremely important, but it needs to be done on the right platform. An NFL football game is not the one to do it at. I feel like it’s rather ridiculous to protest the US when you’re being paid millions of dollars to throw around a football, life sounds so hard for these people.”

The students who found the protests patriotic embraced protesters that acted according to liberal white ideals of civility that may have reminded them of the Civil Rights Movements. If the players were to engage in radical political action or directly challenge the surplus flow of resources into their white dominated communities, then these liberal students could easily react with the charge of incivility and deny the patriotism of the protesters even if they were still working towards racial justice. As one student-athlete stated, “They should be allowed to exercise their rights in whatever ways they want to. As long as they are not breaking any laws or causing violence by their actions, they should be free to do what every other law-abiding American is allowed to do. If their actions become violent or harmful in some way, a line would need to be drawn.”

Racism today often operates covertly, perpetuating black-white divisions between mostly Black, working-class NFL player protesters and their mostly white, affluent fans. We found that much of these white fans’ racial animus is reflective of their own misunderstanding and investment in white racial power and privilege, their overall lack of regard for Black Americans’ lives, and their desire to be entertained by Black athletic bodies. We also found market relations empowered white fans to adore black athletes on the condition that these athletes never challenge their consumer pleasures by drawing attention to the realities of institutional racism and state sanctioned police violence. As one student stated, “Freedom of speech goes out the door when you are under contract by a corporation because you technically represent them. So now because individuals within the organization are kneeling, the entire National Football League looks bad.” Their lack of knowledge and understanding of the racial experiences of the player protesters beyond the field keeps many of them from understanding the meanings and motivations of the player protesters.

W.E.B. Du Bois wrote in 1903  that “the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.” Although racial language has become more coded and indirect in the post-Civil Rights era, the NFL players’ protests demonstrates the on-going truth of Du Bois’ statement. The color line in the United States creates an unequal material reality where Black people experience far greater rates of state violence, and white people tend to poorly understand that racial reality. This leads to a contradiction between the “American Creed” that celebrates equality and a material reality of profound racial inequality. How, then, do white Americans hold two contradictory ideas in their heads without seeing the contradiction? We argue that it is in the myth of patriotism, or the idea that the United States, a nation with a long and ongoing history of racial oppression, is also the vehicle to achieve racial justice. Such an ideology is evident in the fact that the protests by Black athletes for racial justice are interpreted, both by white supporters and opponents, as being a test of patriotism, diverting attention from the systemic racial inequalities that permeate US society.

Kenneth Sean Chaplin is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and affiliate of the Department of Exercise Science, Physical Science & Sports Studies at John Carroll University. His research examines the intersections of race, class, gender, and culture in sport and higher ed. You can find out more about him at http://sites.jcu.edu/sociology/professor/kenneth-sean-chaplin/

Jeffrey Montez de Oca is an Associate Professor of Sociology and founding director of the Center for the Critical Study of Sport at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. He is currently the President-elect of the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport and author of Discipline and Indulgence: College Football, Media, and the American Way of Life during the Cold War (Rutgers University Press, 2013). You can find out more about him at https://www.uccs.edu/ccss/oca

Women’s professional team sports seem to be flourishing, especially basketball in China and the United States (WNBA), and various soccer leagues in Europe. The news is not so good for women’s ice hockey in North America.

The Canadian Women’s Hockey League (CWHL) discontinued operations on May 1, 2019. In the U.S., the recently established National Women’s Hockey League (NWHL) is in a vulnerable position. Many of the players are hoping to develop a more stable women’s league by partnering with the National Hockey League (NHL), following the model established by the WNBA and the women’s soccer leagues in Europe.

As a sociologist of sport, I am interested in the conditions under which women and men play sports. Here, I consider some of the potential risks of partnering with a men’s league and suggest some alternative ways of developing a successful women’s hockey league.

Player solidarity

At the end of March 2019, a week after the Calgary Inferno won the Clarkson Cup (the women’s equivalent of the Stanley Cup), the CWHL announced that it was closing down because it was “economically unsustainable.” That announcement was overshadowed by a remarkable statement signed by more than 200 professional players from the CWHL and the NWHL.

The players’ statement — fittingly released on May 1st — declared that “we will not play in ANY professional leagues in North America this season until we get the resources that professional hockey demands and deserves.”

In this unusual demonstration of solidarity by professional athletes, the CWHL players highlighted the circumstances under which they had been working. Using the Twitter hashtag, #ForTheGame, the players declared:

“We cannot make a sustainable living playing in the current state of the professional game. Having no health insurance and making as low as two thousand dollars a season means players can’t adequately train and prepare to play at the highest level.”

Seeking stable alternatives

In the CWHL, salaries ranged from CDN$2,000 to $10,000 per season. In the NWHL salaries in the first season of operation (2015-16) ranged from US$10,000 to US$26,000 per season, but these were reduced in the second season, often by 50 per cent.

Players who also play for their national teams in North America and Europe are often relatively well-funded, but the majority of professional players have careers outside hockey. Some also have children. Some older players realize that the job action could mean they have played their last game of high-level hockey.

As with other forms of labour action, those who have withdrawn their labour acknowledge that any gains that are made will be most likely to benefit the next generations of players. The protesting players have recently formed a union, the Professional Women’s Hockey Players’ Association (PWHPA).

It seems that the players’ actions to improve their working conditions, as well as the overall image of women’s hockey, may follow the lead of their peers in the WNBA and European professional soccer leagues. That is, they advocate affiliating with men’s professional leagues and teams, in this case the National Hockey League (NHL) and select teams in that league.

Part of my work as Director of the Centre for Sport Policy Studies at the University of Toronto involves monitoring the rights and working (playing) conditions for athletes in professional and high performance sport.

What if players controlled the game?

Prompted by the corruption and mismanagement evident in many national and international sports organizations and by the disturbing “ownership” model of many professional team sport leagues — where players are bought and sold, drafted, traded and auctioned — I have been asking the question: “what if the players controlled the game?”

Low pay and short careers for the majority of the world’s professional athletes are accompanied by health compromising behaviours and extraordinary rates of injury that would be a topic of major concern in any other industry or institution.

In the authoritarian conditions under which most sports are played at the highest level, athletes have very little opportunity to determine the form, the circumstances and the meaning of their participation. Partnering with the NHL to form a women’s professional hockey league is likely a much better alternative than the status quo, but the billionaire owners of NHL teams are not likely to include players in their decision making.

The NHL has declared no interest in partnering with a women’s hockey league, despite the fact that such a move has been a profitable declaration of corporate social responsibility in other sports. Some women’s soccer teams in Italy and Spain are now demanding to play in the men’s team’s stadiums because of the size of their fan base. NHL team owners may be waiting until they can partner with women’s teams on conditions most favourable to themselves.

Given the solidarity demonstrated by so many of the top women players, perhaps they would be ready to consider some alternatives — player ownership, community ownership or some combination of these in order to form a league of their own.

Before the NFL Players’ Association went on strike in 1982, the union produced a pamphlet titled “We Are the Game”, which stated that the NFLPA wouldn’t only run exhibitions games, it “would create a league of several teams, owned and operated by the players themselves.” Two games were played, but the experiment failed under enormous legal resistance from team, media and stadium owners. However, the players’ recognition that “we are the game” remains a resource of hope.

Ownership

The best current example of player ownership is in roller derby, the international Women’s Flat Track Derby Association (WFTDA), where teams and leagues are owned by the players, for the players. A hybrid example is the U.S.-based Freedom Football League (FFL), where teams are co-owned by players, fans and investors. Crowd-funding is another potential alternative to establishing their own league, and working toward community ownership.

Community ownership is the best established model of alternative ownership. Examples can be found in soccer, with teams and leagues in at least 31 countries, and also in American football, Canadian football, Australian Rules football, baseball, basketball, ice hockey and rugby leagues.

The PWHPA might consider one of these alternatives if they do not “get the resources that professional hockey demands and deserves” from the NWHL or the NHL. Community tax bases have provided major support to men’s professional sports, including hockey, in the form of direct subsidies, tax holidays and financing stadium or arena construction. Player- and/or community-owned women’s teams would also have an equity-based right to call on community resources … For The Game.

Peter Donnelly is currently Director of the Centre for Sport Policy Studies, and a Professor in the Faculty of Physical Education and Health, at the University of Toronto.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

In recent decades, sport has become recognized increasingly as an important site through which to examine broader society, including its history, culture and politics. Since the 1960s, sociologists and historians have been researching sport and leisure practices in a serious, scholarly way, with their attention initially drawn to the global, mass-spectator team sports of soccer, baseball, cricket, rugby, (American) football and basketball. The sports of golf, track-and-field, ice hockey and horse-racing also received scholarly attention, but the omission of tennis from early academic scrutiny was one “research gap” that caught the attention of social scientists. In 1983, historian William J. Baker, in a summary paper on the state of British sport history, described the scholarly marginalization of tennis as “one of the most baffling gaps in the entire literature.” The same was certainly true in North American sport history, yet only modest advances were made in the initial years following Baker’s astute observation.

By the late 1990s, the only books offering a critical perspective on this popular sport rich with cultural nuance and history were Heiner Gillmeister’s magisterial Tennis: A Cultural History and E. Digby Baltzell’s comprehensive but value-laden Sporting Gentlemen: Men’s Tennis from the Age of Honor to the Cult of the Superstar. Even including the handful of well-researched texts authored by journalists, broadcasters and other non-academic writers—including John Feinstein, Peter Bodo, Richard Evans, John Barrett, Bud Collins and Eliot Berry—the ostensible appreciation of tennis as a subject of sociological analysis was meagre.

For the introductory chapter to my edited collection, The Routledge Handbook of Tennis: History, Culture and Politics (Routledge, 2019)—compiled with the assistance of Carol Osborne from Leeds Beckett University—I gathered statistics from journals to document the advancement of tennis scholarship. From just 14 articles published in the 1990s mentioning “tennis” in the abstract (across 20 of the leading social science journals in sport), the number increased to 37 in the 2000s and 89 in the 2010s (up through the summer of 2018). This spectacular increase in scholarly material—drawing on historical, sociological, political, media/communications and/or management perspectives—illustrates a growing appreciation for tennis and its potential as a rewarding site of critical analysis. My sense is that, even with the publication of the handbook—the largest and most comprehensive collection of tennis scholarship to date, amassing 45 chapters through the collaboration of 50 authors—we are merely scratching the surface of this potential.

Several of the chapters therein are worth highlighting in this regard. Analyses of tennis superstars and celebrities from the past—including historical work on Suzanne Lenglen, Bill Tilden, Fred Perry, Richard “Pancho” Gonzales and Arthur Ashe—highlight just some of the case studies of socio-historical relevance, in wider examinations of class, gender, sexuality and race. Complemented by analyses of living figures—such as Billie Jean King and the “Original 9,” Renée Richards, Boris Becker and Steffi Graf, Li Na, Anna Kournikova, Venus and Serena Williams and Andy Murray—critical discussions around the intersectionality of class, gender, sexuality, race and national identity abound. Thus, it has become apparent that if someone, for example, were to write a book on the physical emancipation of inter-war women through sport, the study would be deficient without discussing Lenglen—the Frenchwoman whose balletic style, courageous play, and glamorous persona made her into a global icon and an embodiment of the 1920s “New Woman”. Similarly, it would be an incomplete historical analysis to ignore Arthur Ashe’s achievements in the context of social activism around US civil rights and South African apartheid in the 1960s and 70s. The fact that his South African visa applications were rejected, personally, by that nation’s President, B.J. Vorster, makes Ashe’s repeated attempts to compete there of great significance. Similarly, would an author get away with ignoring the influence of Billie Jean King (and her colleagues within the “Original 9”) in a book about 1970s feminist advances in sport, or the achievements of the Williams sisters on debates around the intersectionality of class, race and gender in 21st century popular culture and sport? Indeed, for so many reasons, Serena Williams might well rank as one of the most culturally significant athletes, female or otherwise, of all time. To provide another example, an analysis of celebrity influences on contemporary issues of nationalism must also include Andy Murray, whose contested British/Scottish identity was mobilized repeatedly by the media since his emergence in the public eye 15 years ago, famously coming to the forefront during the recent referendum on Scottish independence. In the context of Brexit, such issues of representation demand greater attention. The above examples are of importance both within and outside of tennis, and burgeoning historical-sociological work on them brings to light the significance of tennis within discussions of socio-political movements around feminism, white privilege, neo-colonialism and national sovereignty, among several other subject areas, in both the distant and recent past.

The shifting media for communicating information about social movements and cultural phenomena have also brought new opportunities for scholarly analyses. Thus, original research to explore the place of tennis within online tennis communities, the strategic use of social media among players, and the creation and diffusion of policy discourse around mass-spectator sporting events like the Australian Open, presents fruitful avenues to explore further the sport’s contemporary position as a vehicle for societal change, identify formation and profit maximization. Further, the exploration of tennis through developments in fashion, playing styles and behavioural etiquette, and both literary and artistic depictions situates the sport as culturally noteworthy. So, as we have sharpened our critical senses of bodies as social (as well as biological) constructions, and have come to analyze how bodies are used, viewed and conceptualized, interesting if not profound insights are gained about the societal contexts in which they are situated.

Thus, it is apparent the sport of tennis has come of age as a subject of scholarship in the social sciences, and it seems opportune and well overdue to ask for “New Balls Please!” to signal the commencement of a new era in tennis scholarship. And as the sport continues to hold its own within the public arena—driven increasingly by viewership figures, sponsorship dollars and numbers of Twitter followers—it is only right that its sociological importance is recognized appropriately.

Dr. Robert J. Lake is in the Department of Sport Science at Douglas College, Canada. His research interests revolve around the sport of tennis, its history and culture, particularly in relation to issues of social class and exclusion, gender, race/ethnicity, national identity, coaching, talent development and policy. He is the author of A Social History of Tennis in Britain (Routledge, 2015), which recently won the Lord Aberdare Literary Prize awarded by the British Society of Sport History. More information, including a detailed list of publications, can be found at: http://www.douglascollege.ca/programs-courses/faculties/science-technology/sport-science/faculty/rob-lake His publications can be found, free to read/access, at: https://douglas.academia.edu/RobertJLake

On March 8, the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team filed a lawsuit against the United States Soccer Federation, claiming gender discrimination. This was only the most recent step in the team’s two-year old fight for more equitable resources, a fight that has inspired women athletes to push for change in other sports as well.

Reading the lawsuit, what struck me most was not evidence of disparate treatment of the women’s team compared to the men’s team, but the argument used to justify it. Specifically, U.S. Soccer argued that, “market realities are such that the women do not deserve to be paid equally to the men.”

However, this argument doesn’t easily fit the data. The women’s team has performed far better in international competition than the men’s team, which failed to qualify for the 2018 World Cup. In recent years the women’s team has drawn sizeable crowds and generated substantial revenue for U.S. Soccer, with record television viewership numbers for the 2015 Women’s World Cup final. In other words, the market has valued and rewarded the women’s team despite their poorer training and travel conditions and lower compensation than the men’s team.

The persistence of appeals to the “market” despite the women’s team’s recent outperformance of the men’s team suggests that the issue isn’t really the market at all. It’s about the way that women’s sports are treated differently than men’s sports, with greater hesitation to invest on the part of media and corporations and greater skepticism that reward will follow.

What I identified as the “ideology of interest” in Kicking Center: Gender and the Selling of Women’s Professional Soccer is a one-sided logic that return drives investment but not the other way around. It is an idea we apply uniquely to women’s sports, denying them resources by pointing to the size of their fan bases or corresponding revenue generation as if there were no way to improve these.

Ultimately, this logic moves responsibility for unequal patterns of investment from decision-makers within sport, media, and corporate organizations onto sports fans. Inequality diffuses across the many thousands who could be paying customers but aren’t, presumably because they just aren’t interested in the product. Appeals to market forces not only fail to recognize the two-way street that is interest and investment, but they make inequality harder to see, and thus to challenge.

Men’s sports routinely receive media and corporate investment to boost their visibility and enhance interest. Consider Major League Soccer (MLS), which saw English language TV viewership increase between 2006-2014 while the league enjoyed a broadcast deal with ABC/ESPN worth $8 million annually. A decline in viewership from 2011 to 2013, and a small decrease in average game attendance between 2012 and 2013, did not present a “market reality” that prevented a new contract in 2014 with ESPN and Fox Sports worth $75 million in rights fees.

In contrast, the National Women’s Soccer League, the regular home of many U.S. women’s national team stars, currently has no national television exposure after the league recently parted ways with A&E. This is despite an increase from 4,271 to just over 6,000 fans per game on average since 2013 and an average of 106,000 viewers across 21 regular season games on Lifetime. This is a third of the audience for MLS games on a less prominent network not known for sports coverage, and for a league that has been around less than a third as many years.

Ultimately, audiences do not emerge from thin air. Yes, preferences exist and numbers matter, but investment plays a role in generating interest. We simply don’t give women’s sports the resources, exposure, or time to reach a sizeable audience—a process that has taken decades for most men’s professional sports leagues. And, as in the case of the women’s national team, we often discount the audiences that do exist, failing to reward them in the ways we do for men’s sports audiences.

Couching low investment in women athletes and the leagues they play for in terms of existing market returns contributes to perceptions that women’s sports are inferior to men’s. The expectation of little reward and hesitance to invest on this basis create the conditions in which this perception thrives. It’s an unforgiving cycle for women’s sports where low investment damages perception and hinders interest, which then makes future investments less likely.

Recently, cracks have appeared in this cycle. Adidas announced that it would compensate this year’s Women’s World Cup winners equally to their male counterparts. This is an important start. Giving women in sport equitable resources is not only the right thing to do, it’s a smart business decision given that 84% of self-identified sports fans report an interest in women’s sports, including 51% of male fans. Soccer is the most popular sport among women under 30, with 59% reporting that they “sometimes” or “regularly” watch on TV.

There is a market for women’s sports. Historically, women’s soccer has accessed it, but it has required a leap of faith. Upon moving 1999 Women’s World Cup games into the largest possible U.S. stadiums, the theme of the tournament became a famous line from the movie Field of Dreams: “If we build it they will come.” As midfielder Julie Foudy explained, “Women’s athletics needs to know it can put on a big event and be successful. The hardest part is they don’t want to take the risk. We were fortunate enough that we had great backing to take the risk.”

The over 90,000 fans who watched the tournament final in the Rose Bowl that year remains the largest audience for a live women’s sporting event in the U.S. to date. In that case, the risk paid off. Following that example, I’ll revise the 1999 slogan for a new, 2019 Women’s World Cup era: “If we build it, there’s no guarantee they will come. But if we don’t build it, they can’t.”

It’s time to break the cycle. It’s time to invest in women’s soccer.

Rachel Allison is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Mississippi State University and author of Kicking Center: Gender and the Selling of Women’s Professional Soccer.

Professional athletes in the United States and Canada are increasingly discussing their personal struggles with mental health on commercial media outlets. Notably, National Basketball Association (NBA) star Kevin Love has received praise for his “courageous fight” to combat the stigmatization of mental illness in sports. In a March 2018 essay for The Players’ Tribune, Love detailed his bouts with panic attacks during the NBA season, writing, “Mental health isn’t just an athlete thing. What you do for a living doesn’t have to define who you are. This is an everyone thing.” As a successful athlete, Love has accrued lucrative endorsement deals with Banana Republic and the Built with Chocolate Milk campaign. Following the public stories of other NBA players like Channing Frye and DeMar DeRozan, national media outlets framed Love’s essay as a “courageous decision to speak candidly on mental health.”

This recent media coverage of mental health in sports, however, is concerning for several reasons. First, the coverage has primarily amplified the personal stories of successful male athletes. For example, the media attention on Love’s struggles with mental health has led to opportunities for lucrative corporate sponsorship. Love is now partnered with the personal hygiene company Schick to produce a new web series on mental health struggles among elite athletes with fellow NBA players Paul Pierce, Channing Frye, and Olympic swimming gold-medalist Michael Phelps. Due in part to this publicity, Love and Frye were featured in Nike’s recent advertising campaign for their new line of yoga apparel. Canadian professional basketball player and former NBA draft pick Royce White, due to his noted advocacy for changing mental health policies in professional sports, will be the subject of an upcoming episode of the HBO series Real Sports. However, much like the general lack of media attention given to women’s sport, there seems to be little coverage afforded to mental health in women’s sport—though approximately one-third of all female student-athletes struggle with mental health issues and professional female athletes like the WNBA’s Imani Boyette have publicly discussed their struggles.

Second, there is a notable absence of stories from athletes whose mental health struggles derailed their professional careers. For example, Delonte West is a former NBA first round pick who earned more than $16 million from 2004 to 2012. While athletes like Love now receive supportive coverage, the media attention on West’s mental health played a role in stymieing his career. In 2009, following a highly successful season starting alongside LeBron James with the Cleveland Cavaliers, West was arrested for firearms possession. Some coverage at the time detailed West’s struggles with bipolar disorder and depression, framing the struggles as an impediment to the player and his team’s success on the court. Though the Cavs “dearly love[d] their hard-nosed guard’s personality and ability,” then-Cleveland reporter Brian Windhorst wrote, West’s personal and legal problems were becoming a “challenge for the team.” From 2009 until his last season in 2012, West’s career was marked by a series of challenges, ranging from being homeless during an NBA work stoppage, to being the subject of a vicious, unsubstantiated, race-tinged internet rumor involving LeBron’s mother Gloria James. At a time in which the NBA did not have a “competent mental-health program for players,” West’s struggles were often framed as a product of individual failures, an NBA player whose “self-destructive behavior” derailed his once-promising NBA career.

It is not a coincidence that the recent media coverage of mental health in sports has prominently featured professional male athletes like Love and Royce White, who, though he has not been signed by an NBA team, has been highly successful in the National Basketball League of Canada. Such coverage has advanced narratives of individual achievement, positing mental health as an obstacle that successful athletes have overcome, their experiences inspiring them to speak candidly for the benefit of others. Though the coverage of White’s struggles has allowed for an important discussion of mental wellness protocol in professional sports, the omission of stunted athletic careers limits the possibility of highlighting the systemic failures of sport organizations in caring for the mental health of athletes. Love is framed in terms of his individual success and how he exemplifies a commercially-lucrative definition of masculinity linked to sponsored, public discussion rather than obstinate silence. The story of Delonte West, in contrast, exposes the dark side of professional basketball as an unequal social institution and highlights the systematic failure of the NBA to provide support for one of their athletes.

By omitting West’s story and struggles, the national discussion of mental health in sports exhibits important class and racial dimensions. In 2014, West, who identifies as Black and Native American, gave a candid interview with Vice Sports, in which he documented his struggles with bipolar disorder, the personal and family context surrounding his 2009 arrest, and his continuing difficulty to provide for his wife and children through professional basketball. Though he publicly rejected the rumor that he had an affair with Gloria James, and multiple media outlets deconstructed the rumor as a vicious iteration of the “locker room affair” myth, the unsubstantiated hearsay resurfaced in other articles reporting West’s candid Vice Sports interview. West, in short, continues to be racially framed as a disgraced athlete, whose personal and criminal transgressions both “explain” his story and deny him the possibility of redemption.

While athletes like Kevin Love are publicly applauded for overcoming personal obstacles, the struggles of female athletes and former athletes like Delonte West continue to be marginalized in media discussions of mental health in sports. Notably, scholars in the sociology of sport field are increasingly studying the issue of mental health. For more productive mental health awareness in sports, we must begin by highlighting the experiences of those without corporate sponsorship, those whose careers were negatively impacted by media coverage of their struggles, and the systemic inadequacies of the professional sports industry.

Samuel M. Clevenger is an instructor in Sport Management at Towson University.  He recently received his Ph.D. in Physical Cultural Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park.  He teaches and studies the history and sociology of sport and physical culture in Western societies.