As part of research I did several years ago on U.S. women’s professional soccer, I went to a lot of games. I still do. Since 2011, I’ve attended games in Chicago, Atlanta, Portland, New Orleans, and Birmingham.

In all of these locations, one thing has always stood out to me—how different the crowd is from that of many men’s sporting events. At professional women’s soccer games, girls fill the stands, accompanied by their parents. But not just any families are there—white girls and their parents predominate.

Some people assume that fan demographics simply reflect existing interest in sport. In other words, the stands are packed with white parents and their daughters because these groups are the “market” for professional women’s soccer in the U.S.—those who are already most interested in the product. And sure, many fans may be interested in women’s pro soccer due to having played soccer or watching their kids play. The overwhelmingly white and class privileged pool of players in the competitive, pay-to-play youth soccer pipeline undoubtedly makes interest more likely among these groups of girls.

However, sociologists of sport have challenged the idea that fan numbers and demographics simply reflect existing interest. Instead of seeing fandom as this one-way mirror where fans select into stadiums, there exists a two-way street where interest is also cultivated and grown by sport and media organizations. Fanbase numbers and demographics are influenced by the opportunities to become fans in the first place, how visible these opportunities are, and to whom they are available.

For instance, mass media outlets have a role in building audiences by making sports teams, leagues, and players visible to many people. Media communicate the history and stakes of sports competitions, drawing fans to the action and shaping their perceptions of sport. The fact that women’s sports receive less than 5 percent of mainstream mass media coverage is troubling, then, because women’s sports are denied the opportunities to connect with new and existing fans routinely provided to men’s sports. And, as sociologists Michela Musto, Cheryl Cooky, and Michael Messner have found, even when women’s sports are covered, they are often presented as less exciting than men’s sports.

In my book Kicking Center: Gender and the Selling of Women’s Professional Soccer, I argue that beyond media coverage, teams and leagues engage in their own forms of audience building. In studying the “Momentum” (I use this as a pseudonym for an actual women’s professional team), I found that this team ‘engendered’ fandom in the sense of creating opportunities for fandom and by making these visible, building interest among those who may not have known this young league existed. In the process of doing so, the team made opportunities for fandom more visible and available for white, class privileged groups than others.

In the process of building an audience, the Momentum participated in community events like road races, food festivals, and youth soccer tournaments. In team apparel and underneath a large team-logoed tent, players and staff members introduced themselves to potential fans, signed balls and jerseys, challenged one another to juggling contests, and handed out game schedules and, frequently, free tickets to upcoming home games. These events were designed to build awareness and interest in the team among locals. Yet, with the Momentum located in a predominately white and affluent suburb, these efforts made the team, its players, and its schedule most visible to white and class privileged residents.

Simultaneously, the Momentum also ‘engendered’ fandom by generating different opportunities for and experiences of fandom among men and women. Based in a frame of empowerment in women’s sports, girls were assumed to be the most highly interested in coming to games. As a result, audience building was largely designed and carried out with girls in mind. The Momentum partnered with girls’ soccer teams, featured girls in many of their promotional videos, and set up their game day spaces to welcome children, with inflatable bouncy houses, face-painting, toy giveaways, and child-friendly pop music.

The girl- and child-centrism of the team’s marketing campaigns, public appearance schedule, and game day spaces often marginalized or alienated adults whose fandom was not tied to children. This was particularly true for adult men. For instance, Jared, a 30-year old white season ticket holder, likened his fandom to strenuous swimming. He said, “I mean the league is totally geared to like teenage soccer players. That’s kind of what they’re going after. I just – nothing. Don’t care. I swim upstream. I like what I like. No one can tell me any different.”

In fact, in some moments, adult men’s fandom of women’s professional soccer was perceived as being suspect. Lacking motivations for fandom that clearly aligned with narratives of women’s empowerment, highly engaged adult men fans were feared to be more interested in the player’s bodies than their athletic abilities. At one post-game fan meet-and-greet, an older man with gray hair who attended the event alone was enthusiastic about meeting the players, telling me things like, “I can’t believe I just talked to Abigail!” After several of these post-meeting exclamations, he felt a need to explain his fandom to me, saying, “This isn’t sexual or anything…it’s just that I appreciate their play so much.” The man was right to be concerned about how his fandom was perceived—when I joined a group of Momentum staff members later, the table’s consensus was that the man was “inappropriate.” While some may believe that men are not interested in women’s sports, this example illustrates a more complex reality—men who are interested in women’s sports sometimes face questions about the motivation for their fandom.

Walking in the stands at games today and looking at the fans around me, I am acutely aware that these are not just the most interested, but also the most welcomed fans. I encourage us to ask, who is included and who is excluded in the process of building fandom? And, despite the goals of these efforts to make new fans and connect to existing ones, what might be the consequences of current audience building for the future growth and vitality of women’s pro soccer?

Rachel Allison is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and affiliate of Gender Studies at Mississippi State University. Her research examines the gender, racial, and class politics of U.S. professional sports. Her book on U.S. women’s professional soccer is out now with Rutgers University Press.

Some may have chuckled the first time Boston Bruins forward Brad Marchand kissed an opponent on the cheek. This was during the 2017-18 National Hockey League (NHL) regular season, and the “recipient” was Toronto Maple Leafs forward Leo Komarov.

In that moment, some of us may have had tingles thinking about when Phoenix Mercury star Diana Taurasi bestowed a kiss upon opponent Seimone Augustus of the Minnesota Lynx in what seemed to be an attempt to diffuse a heated situation during the 2013 WNBA playoffs. In that case, both players got called for a personal foul, then later joked about it in the post-game press conference.

Marchand was not penalized, though he too joked about it after the game. But as similar acts continued into the postseason, people were laughing a little less. This “tactic” was interpreted as antagonistic given Marchand’s history of fines, suspensions and, of course, penalty minutes. During game one of the first round of the 2018 Stanley Cup playoffs, Marchand again kissed Komarov. Some have quibbled over whether it was actually a kiss or a “nuzzle.” Regardless, the NHL demanded that Marchand stop the kissing/nuzzling. No specifics about potential penalties or other repercussions were provided.

Either word never reached Marchand, or he just didn’t care, because in the next round, he licked Tampa Bay Lightning player Ryan Callahan. This is when the league announced, via Twitter, that it had “put him on notice.” There were no further incidents, and the Bruins’ season came to an end after losing the series against Tampa Bay.

It is difficult for me to take seriously the collective “eewwwing” and complaints about inappropriate behavior because of the hypocrisy blanketing this whole situation. The NHL has failed to address its problems with homophobia, violence, and racism—all of which are exemplified in how the league reacted to Marchand’s behavior. It is not funny, and any “humor” masks the fact that these incidents were acts of antagonism and sexual assault.  Yet, no one has called them that—not explicitly.

Marchand’s last victim, Callahan, was upset because he felt licking was akin to spitting. Spitting falls under the category of bad behavior and is prohibited by the NHL and subject to a (minor) fine. This is likely due to potential health issues associated with exposure to bodily fluids, but also because spitting is a tactic used to antagonize opponents. Such concerns about health would be valid if we were not talking about players in a league who regularly are exposed to bodily fluids—namely blood—in the course of sanctioned on-ice assault. Fights are tactics as well; they send messages to opponents and are used to swing momentum. Fights are not only encouraged by coaches but have become expected behavior.

Because of the existence of sanctioned violence, the league’s threats against Marchand are hypocritical and lack legitimacy. The NHL’s response to Marchand’s behavior reflects a hierarchy of assault in which licking an opponent is treated as substantially more serious than punching someone, which draws a 2-minute penalty (or 5 depending on severity) and garners the respect of fans, teammates, and coaches. The uproar about Marchand’s behavior was not due to the fact it constituted assault perpetuated by one player against another, but rather was based in homophobia/homonegativity.

Cyd Zeigler of Outsports.com wrote about this facet of the controversy, but he too focused on the need for the NHL to penalize Marchand because it prohibits spitting. He noted the deployment of homophobia as a tactic to throw off opponents, but we would be naïve to think that this was the first time homophobia was used on the ice for such a purpose. I have sat close enough to the ice to know this not to be true. The non-anecdotal research on the culture of masculinity and hockey along with stories about sexually based hazing among intercollegiate hockey teams, reinforces this fact. Given the NHL’s homophobia problem, penalizing someone for spitting when it really is not about spitting—and it is certainly not about health—does not address the underlying problem.

Zeigler has a valid point, but he misses the assault part of it; specifically, the sexual assault. Marchand is deploying sexuality in a physical way to exert or maintain power over another individual. In this #metoo moment, the lack of recognition—by everyone—of this incident as sexual assault is unfortunate but not surprising. It remains difficult to convince people that (1) sexual assault happens between men and (2) that sexual assault is not about desire for sex and does not always include penetrative sex. In this case, the NHL could not talk about the homophobia without talking about the sexual violence, so it did neither.

The NHL’s violence and homophobia problems are steeped in a culture of hypermasculinity and misogyny. These things cannot be disaggregated. There is a failure to understand the intersecting operations of power and privilege here, including whiteness. The NHL has arguably taken more definitive stances on racism within the league, primarily by fans against players. But we cannot overlook that the perpetrator in this case is a white man and that his whiteness, along with his “successful” display of heterosexual masculinity, has protected him from any real censure and violence.

What happens to Marchand in the off-season is unknown. Regardless, it is unlikely anything will change in the culture of the NHL. It will continue to allow fighting, and this will perpetuate the culture of violence that is widely tolerated until something “beyond the pale” occurs. It will remain impossible to punish a player for the same type of actions that earn him praise, a hefty salary, and a fan base, while also maintaining credibility as a sports governance organization.

Kristine Newhall is an assistant professor of Kinesiology at SUNY Cortland where she teaches courses in sports ethics and sport and sexuality. Her research interests focus broadly on the intersections of race, sexuality, and gender in contemporary and 20th century sports and fitness cultures. Current projects include athletes’ coming out narratives; the history of women’s sports spaces; applications of Title IX; sexual violence and intercollegiate athletes; and trans policies and representations.

In November 2013, a capacity crowd of nearly 40,000 fans at the Maksimir Stadium in Zagreb, Croatia celebrated one of the great moments for any team competing in international soccer: by defeating Iceland 2-0, the Croatian national team was among the last of 32 countries to qualify for the 2014 Men’s World Cup finals in Brazil. Amidst the ecstasy, someone made the fateful mistake of handing a microphone to Josip Šimunić.

As a hard-tackling defender for Croatia aged 35, this was almost certainly Šimunić’s last chance to play in a World Cup. Alone on the field but for a cameraman tracking his every move, Šimunić moved with an energy that belied his gangly 6’5” frame, receding hairline, and perpetual five o’clock shadow. As he gesticulated with the microphone, jersey in hand, he screamed to the crowd in a call-and-respond repeat “Za dom spremni” – “For the homeland!” In perfect and immediate synchrony, a large portion of the crowd responded “Ready!”

Unfortunately, Šimunić’s chant was also a clear reference to a hateful nationalist cry used by the fascist Ustase pro-Nazi regime that ruled Croatia during World War II. Šimunić protested innocence, relying on a defense of simple patriotism and claiming “some people have to learn some history.” Global soccer authorities disagreed, as he was suspended through the 2014 World Cup for his “discriminatory” act and never played for the Croatian national team again.

To make Šimunić’s story even more intriguing from a sociological perspective, his moment of nationalist frenzy followed a lifetime spent mostly nowhere near “the homeland.” Though Šimunić’s parents were Croatian, he was born and raised in Canberra, Australia and developed into a world class soccer player at the Australian Institute for Sport. Professionally, Šimunić spent the majority of his career playing in Germany, and in his personal life he married a “Canadian-Croat.” Though he ended his career with the Croatian professional team Dinamo Zagreb and spent several recent years as an assistant coach for the Croatian National Team, it is plausible to suggest that Šimunić’s emotional nationalism was not necessarily “for the homeland.” Instead, it may have been a way to make sense of splintered and imagined identities – types that powerfully shape our 21st century lives.

Šimunić’s story thus becomes less a morality tale and more a prompt for broader thinking about soccer, and the 2018 World Cup now underway in Russia, as a mirror and a lens—reflecting and refracting our social world in ways that both illuminate and distort how we understand our selves and others. The World Cup provides a rare combination of global attention and emotionally engaging spectacle—a combination that offers a unique perspective on critical issues such as nationalism and identity. Global sports mega-events derive at least some of their popularity from the rare opportunity to put usually imagined communities on display. Though United Nations meetings may be more consequential, they don’t make for particularly good television. The World Cup final, in contrast, draws enough viewers to make it the globe’s most broadly shared cultural experience.

That shared attention is then often framed by broad social narratives about the places and politics of World Cup hosts. To cite recent examples, the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, as the first World Cup hosted in sub-Saharan Africa, became a forum for discussions about development and division—soccer’s global governing body FIFA trademarked the phrase “Celebrate Africa’s Humanity” as if there was something singular and unified about the humanity of that diverse continent. The 2014 World Cup in Brazil, particularly after massive 2013 street protests surrounding the Confederations Cup warm-up tournament, became about corruption and inequality. There are still regular news briefs about “white elephant” sporting facilities from both Brazil’s World Cup and the 2016 Rio Olympics—emblems of bread, circus, and massive profits for well-positioned elites. The 2018 World Cup cultivated narratives about hooliganism and racism that pervade an unfortunate proportion of the soccer landscape in Russia, while the 2022 World Cup in Qatar is already rife with attention to worker’s rights and religious tolerance.

During the month-long tournament itself, attention often shifts to narratives about the nations and identities represented through competition. As the British cultural historian Eric Hobsbawn famously (among soccer scholars) noted, “the imagined community of millions seems more real as a team of eleven named people.” The start of a World Cup match, with eleven men from each side donning national colors and saluting their flag, is a powerful visual image of nationhood. But, like many such visual representations of identity, it is also often inaccurate. For one, the simple fact that the players who get the most global attention are men, despite the athletic accomplishments on display in the women’s World Cup, only starts to hint at the many questions about gender, masculinity, and sexuality embedded in global soccer. In addition, World Cup teams often visually present complex stories about race, class, and ethnicity—stories that vary by nation from the relative homogeneity of the Russian national team to the sometimes surprising diversity of teams such as Belgium.

The complexity of these narratives and the emotional nationalism of the World Cup is reflected in a final addendum to the Šimunić story. Since his banishment from the 2014 World Cup, and in a quest for exoneration, Šimunić collaborated on a documentary film titled Moja Vlojena Hrvatska—My Beloved Croatia—that argues his moment of nationalist fervor was an embodiment of noble pride rather than a hateful screed. The English language trailer for the film begins with the claim “Soccer, to Croats, is much more than just a game” and segues into interviews with Croatian World Cup players talking wistfully about the patriotic feelings of playing for their national team. Even Šimunić’s father, the Australian emigree, makes a tearful appearance describing his pride at seeing Josip in the distinctive red checked uniform of the Croatian national team.

It is, ultimately, an emotional jumble of personal concerns and public issues of the type that sociologists love to dissect and the World Cup seems ever-primed to provide. To really watch the World Cup, a more humble Šimunić might say, “some people have to learn some sociology.”

Andrew Guest teaches sociology and psychology at the University of Portland in Oregon. His research focuses on youth and community development, particularly as reflected in sports and activity programs. A longer version of this essay is available amidst his other occasional sports jottings at sportsandideas.tumblr.com.

As the furor over NFL players taking a knee during the national anthem rekindles, the full power of the players themselves has not yet come into play. Presidential politics and U.S. culture wars combined to make the issue a dominant subplot of the 2017 NFL season. In late May, the league’s team owners reopened the debate by deciding to create a policy requiring players on the field during the playing of the national anthem to stand, under penalty of fines and on-field penalties, though players can also stay in the locker room.

The policy was made and passed unilaterally, without consultation of the players or their labor union, the NFL Players Association. Unusually, the owners didn’t even conduct a formal vote, and at least two owners abstained from the informal vote that was taken. President Donald Trump responded favorably and injected fresh criticism into the process by suggesting that NFL players who choose to stay in the locker room during the anthem “maybe … shouldn’t be in the country.”

Having made their moves, the teams and the president have three months before the 2018 season begins, in which to wait for players to respond. What happens next is uncertain, but my background as a sports and social media researcher tells me it could be both surprising and unexpected for those who have traditionally wielded the most power in the NFL.

Why is this happening now?

The timing of the owners’ move is both calculated and politically savvy for the NFL. The announcement did generate significant backlash from many sports media commentators, as well as current and former players and the players’ union. The long Memorial Day holiday weekend didn’t do much to blunt those criticisms, but it’s likely that the most negative reactions will dissipate by the middle of the summer.

If and when the issue is reignited, it will likely be viewed as the players creating the issue, rather than the owners. For instance, the players’ union is considering whether and how to respond – including potentially claiming violations of the collective bargaining agreement under which football players work.

How effective their actions are will depend largely on how the players present themselves on social media – what communications scholars call “framing.”

Framing the controversy

The controversy began in the 2016 NFL preseason with San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick protesting structural and institutional racism and bias in the U.S., particularly in American police practices.

The NFL’s initial reaction supported Kaepernick’s right to protest, saying “Players are encouraged but not required to stand during the playing of the national anthem.” The 49ers organization was even more direct: “In respecting such American principles as freedom of religion and freedom of expression, we recognize the right of an individual to choose and participate, or not, in our celebration of the national anthem.”

There were initial complaints about Kaepernick’s choice not to stand for the anthem – including feedback that led to him taking a knee rather than just sitting on the bench. But the protest didn’t become a public lightning rod until President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence created a new frame around Kaepernick’s kneeling in protest against injustice. They proclaimed he was disrespecting the country and its military.

The effect was immediate and stunning. Before Trump objected, more than 60 percent of his supporters viewed the NFL “somewhat or very favorably.” In less than a month after he first spoke out against the NFL for allowing Kaepernick’s protests to continue, that plummeted to near 30 percent. That drop no doubt played a part in the NFL owners’ recent action to block on-field protests.

Regaining control of the narrative

As the players determine how to respond, they’re starting from a difficult position. Historically, NFL owners have almost always won their public relations battles, whether against players in collective bargaining negotiations or against government watchdogs in public stadium funding battles.

However, the players have a tool they can use to try and reframe the protests, and keep the focus on their message: social media. With Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, they can communicate directly with fans and provide sports media observers nationwide with cogent and reasoned justifications for their actions.

Some players have already began to reframe the protests as a First Amendment issue, which current Philadelphia Eagles defensive lineman Chris Long did on May 23. In general, Americans support free speech and object to attempts to limit it – even in the workplace.

Other players have pointed out that having players stand on the field for the national anthem is a relatively new phenomenon in the NFL, dating from 2009. That point could also connect with a growing backlash against payments from the U.S. Department of Defense for overt displays of national pride on the football field, such as staged family reunions for soldiers returning from overseas.

There is no guarantee of success with either approach. The hyperpartisan nature of the current political environment may mean that public opinion won’t change. But NFL players have to try and seize control of the narrative, and social media provides a better platform than any other to attempt that.

Connecting directly with fans is important, and venues like Facebook and Snapchat provide that opportunity. It’s perhaps even more important to connect with media members across the country, because they can influence coverage and public discourse; Twitter gives players a direct line to reporters and columnists.

It seems unlikely that the public debate over the protests will disappear quietly, despite what the NFL owners want. For players who find themselves in an increasingly perilous public relations battle, it will be important to control the framing, using social media to assist them – and perhaps even bringing the discussion back to where it started, with police shootings of African-American men.

Galen Clavio is an Associate Professor of Sports Media and Director of the National Sports Journalism Center at Indiana University. His research focuses on the influence of electronic and new media on the interactions between sports media, sport organizations, and sport consumers. Some of the specific areas he investigates are sports journalism, online sport fan communities, sports blogs, sport video games, and social networking.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Muslim sportswomen are too often read and represented as the oppressed “other” needing saving from their backward culture/society. However, my research on the digital lives of Muslim sportswomen reveals the multiple and nuanced ways they are taking matters of representation into their own hands, and in so doing, are challenging dominant portrayals of Muslim women in the mass media. Mainstream media coverage of Muslim women tends to focus on the hijabi athlete, while other Muslim sportswomen are often overlooked. The overrepresentation of the “oppressed” hijabi athlete obscures the multiple ways that Muslim women are participating in sport, as well as the cultural differences and diversity within this group. For example, the image below of a beach volleyball match between teams from Egypt and Germany, dubbed by some as the “clash of civilizations,” was circulated widely on social media. Many of the conversations and images centred around the hijabi athlete and rarely mentioned her Egyptian teammate who did not wear the hijab.

Such depictions, through text (describing Muslim women as passive and oppressed) and/or images (focusing on the hijab/niqab), create narratives that adhere to the Orientalist view, which distorts non-Western cultures in comparison to European cultures, implying the “other” culture is backward, uncivilized, and exotic. This type of media discourse may continue to reinforce problematic and limited representations and understandings of the lives of Muslim women in the world today.

Over the past decade, researchers have increasingly explored the important role of social media in contemporary sport. Some feminist scholars have examined how sportswomen are using social media for self-branding and marketing, online self-representation, or digital activism. However, Muslim sportswomen are not necessarily using social media in the same ways. To better understand how Muslim sportswomen are using social media in their everyday lives, my PhD research draws upon the work of critical feminist digital media and sports scholars, applying an intersectional approach to consider the ways in which different aspects of participants’ identities (e.g., race, gender, religion) combine to influence their experiences. Specifically, I have conducted interviews with 20 Muslim sportswomen from around the world in an array of different sports (e.g., mountaineering, fencing, basketball, CrossFit, mixed martial arts) and different sporting backgrounds (elite, competitive, and recreational). Prior to interviewing the sportswomen, I conducted an eight-month digital ethnography. This involved overt observations (with permission from participants) of the online lives of 26 Muslim sportswomen’s social media accounts across four different platforms (SnapChat, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter). For the Muslim sportswomen in my research, rather than being stereotyped into mainstream media’s perspective of the oppressed “other,” they are subtly and at times overtly bringing in the complex nature of their offline lives into digital spaces and offering alternative representations of sportswomen.

As an example, a participant in my research, Dina (name changed for anonymity) is a 30-year-old mountaineer from the Middle East and North Africa. Dina, who does not wear the hijab in her day-to-day life, stated: “I like to give the mysterious element on Instagram that maybe I am covered or maybe I am not.” The control of her social media posts is not just for the “mysterious” element, but to get local sponsors (keeping in mind cultural norms of her society) and importantly influence other girls/women to take up mountaineering. In other words, she is strategic and conscious with her posts so she can share a different narrative about herself, her sport, and her society.

Muslim sportswomen are more diverse and their lives are more complex than typically depicted in mainstream media. For the Muslim women in my study, their identities do not rest solely on religion, gender, race, or nationality, but rather on individual interpretations and experiences at the intersection of such identities in relation to sport. For example, some participants didn’t want to be known as the first woman to compete in a particular sport from a Muslim country; rather, they wished to be recognized for their skills as athletes. In sum, social media allows the Muslim sportswomen in my research opportunities to reimagine and promote counternarratives to dominant media representations, as well as adding further complexity to understandings of digital embodiment.

Nida Ahmad (na105@students.waikato.ac.nz) is a PhD Student in the Faculty of Health, Sport and Human Performance at the University of Waikato, in New Zealand. She also is on the executive board of the Muslim Women in Sport Network, which launched in 2018. Her research focuses on Muslim sportswomen’s uses of social media. She has published in the International Journal of the Sociology of Sport, Routledge Handbook of Youth Sport, Routledge Handbook of Sport for Development and Peace, and International Journal of Communication. You can follow her on Twitter: @NAicha11

For most of January 2018, one of the worst sexual abuse scandals ever in sports dominated the news cycle, as former USA Gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar was sentenced to life in prison. During the trial, more than 100 sexual abuse victims testified about the predatory environment Nassar had created. Olympic gymnast Aly Raisman delivered an awe-inspiring 13-minute testimony that received national praise. Raisman, who identified herself as a powerful voice and advocate for all victims of sexual abuse, embodied the persona of feminist advocate and champion for abuse victims. However, Raisman’s credibility as a feminist advocate has come into scrutiny in light of her decision to pose – for the second time – for the 2018 Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. This case raises several questions: Can Raisman still be considered a feminist advocate in light of her choice to pose for a sexist, white, heteronormative, and objectifying magazine feature? Where is the line between empowerment and objectification? As a rhetoric scholar, I am interested in how both Raisman’s traditional form of activism (public address) and her embodied rhetoric are compatible feminist discourses. My purpose is to explain Raisman’s multi-modal activism through the lens of feminist rhetorical criticism – highlighting the concept of “power feminism” – in order to complicate what feminist sports scholars and hosts of the Burn It All Down podcast call the “Sports Illustrated swimsuit conundrum.”

Modes of (Feminist) Rhetorical Activism and Power Feminism

Feminist rhetorical activism takes many forms. Traditionally, rhetorical activism has been defined as “public protest,” “confrontation,” or other forms of verbal, deliberative discourse.  However, communication scholars Sowards and Renegar advance a more pluralist view of rhetorical activism. In addition to public address, they argue, feminist rhetorical action may manifest as creating grassroots models of leadership; using strategic humor; building feminist identity both on- and off-line; sharing stories; resisting stereotypes and labels; and other visual or embodied forms of protest. Such forms of protest have been used for centuries. Images of women cycling in nineteenth century magazines functioned to resist dominant cultural frames of the “frail” female body whose reproductive parts needed to be preserved. In the twentieth century, second-wave feminism introduced consciousness-raising activities where women could gather to share, listen, and organize. Finally, in our current century, SlutWalks have attempted to reclaim the kinds of clothing traditionally associated with “promiscuity” and resist the rape culture logic that blames assault victims. Such victim-blaming discourse proliferated after the release of Raisman’s Sports Illustrated feature, as exemplified by a tweet directed at Raisman reading, “How can you complain that you were molested?”

Contemporary rhetorical activism is not limited to one of these forms; rather, most activist discourse is multi-modal as well as multiply-mediated. Further, there are competing forms of feminist thought. I argue that Raisman’s rhetorical action is in line with “power feminism,” which focuses on working within the system or “using the master ‘s tools” to affect  change in society. Media studies scholar Rebecca Hains has criticized “power feminism” in her analysis of television content, which revealed that “power feminist” characters adhere to normative standards of femininity, making them successful commodities in the marketplace. While such criticisms are indeed necessary, I argue that “power feminist” rhetorical action is still important, even if it is imperfect.

Aly Raisman as “Power Feminist” and Multi-Modal Advocate

During Raisman’s testimony, she said, “I have both power and voice and I am only beginning to just use them.” I argue that both her verbal testimony and her Sports Illustrated swimsuit feature are complementary forms of feminist rhetorical activism. Both demonstrate Raisman’s transformation from a passive victim into an active agent in the form of a survivor/advocate. In her testimony, she chronicled the story of her objectification and abuse. Her direct confrontation (“Larry, it’s your turn to listen to me”) demonstrated Raisman’s reclaimed voice and agency. In the case of her embodied rhetoric in Sports Illustrated – both the traditional poses and the “In Her Own Words” feature – Rasiman displays, rather than hides, her body. She transforms from victim to survivor. This is a “power” move, which stands in contrast to what Naomi Wolf called “victim feminism.”

It is still important to maintain critiques of the patriarchal media landscape we inhabit. Sports Illustrated’s Swimsuit Issue is certainly not the epitome of women’s empowerment or feminist discourse; it is unfortunately one of the only times women appear in Sports Illustrated at all. Further, “power feminism” is not without its criticisms. As radical feminists have argued, “the master’s tools will not dismantle the master’s house.” However, this does not undermine Raisman’s feminist activism, and we should not revert to ideals of purity that demand women be passive and modest. In Raisman’s own words (written on her naked body), “Women do not need to be modest to be respected.” That simple assertion says so much. Aly Raisman is no victim – she is a powerful survivor. Raisman’s multi-modal activism depicts a survivor who has claimed her body, her power, her agency, and her voice. For Raisman, both speaking and posing make her a “power feminist” because she both acknowledges the power she has as a woman and a high-profile athlete (the role-model persona), and she participates in an institution (the swimsuit issue) that caters to patriarchal and heteronormative ideals. However, her public testimony and her embodied rhetoric should be viewed as compatible and complementary forms of activism. Rhetorical action can be simultaneously progressive and regressive. Advocacy – and any communication, really – is never just an either/or. It can be, and usually is, both/and.

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

A substantial body of research has demonstrated that media coverage of the Olympics often perpetuates nationalistic and ethnocentric ideas. While the Olympics are popularly touted for “bringing people together,” Olympic media coverage may also reinforce and naturalize problematic ideas about gender, race, nation and culture. With these concerns in mind, one storyline to be mindful of is the qualification of a women’s bobsled team from Nigeria, the first from the African continent to appear in the Olympics.

In my book, The Black Migrant Athlete, I argue that the simplistic ways in which these athletes are discussed work to obscure the immigrant experience and keep black immigrant communities invisible in the United States. These shortcomings, for the Nigerian women’s bobsled team, are highlighted when we come to learn that each member the three-person team (Seun Adigun, Ngozi Onwumere, and Akuoma Omeoga) was actually born, raised, and educated in the United States. This fact is not obvious from much of the coverage so far, as it is often stated that they are simply “from Nigeria.” This description tends to be a feature in coverage of “African” athletes—even if they are born in or naturalized to Western citizenship, they are rooted firmly in Africa by Western media and thus rendered exterior to the West. If black African athletes are often kept foreign by the media, what else might we expect to see in the coverage of the Nigerian women’s bobsled team?

A few indications are captured in a recent article by Dennis Dodd on cbssports.com entitled, “How culture, passion and genetics are fueling a Nigerian takeover of U.S. sports.” Per the title, Dodd argues that the success of Nigerian athletes can be attributed to culture, passion, and genetics. Certainly, the number of athletes with Nigerian backgrounds in the U.S. has increased over the years, but simplistic explanations, such as those offered by Dodd, do little to help us understand their success.

First, let us take the assertion that Nigerian success is a matter of “culture.” Without seeming to realize it, the article collapses first generation immigrants (those born in Nigeria) and second generation immigrants (those born in the U.S.) in a simple fashion. There is little recognition of how these different immigration statuses bear on the experiences of the respective groups. It is assumed that the “Nigerian culture,” something which is never clearly described, is transported easily and effortlessly into the receiving communities of Nigerian immigration.

Even putting aside the difficulties first generation immigrants often face, the second generation immigrant experience can be drastically different from their immigrant parent(s), as they must grow up navigating their host culture from childhood. For example, their experiences of being black in the U.S., but not African American, comes with their own negotiations of identity that are not easily captured by “Nigerian culture.” While many second generation African immigrants profess strong country of origin identities, we rarely receive any analysis as to why that is so. Often it is assumed to be more or less a matter of “natural” affinity and not the result of feeling like an outsider.

With culture not being adequately explained, we are left to assume that the heart of “culture-as-success” lies in Dodd’s second assertion—“passion.”  Dodd sees this passion on full display for Nigerians in the realm of education. However, that an immigrant population puts effort into education is nothing new, as many immigrant groups to the U.S./West have stressed education to some degree. The problem that Dodd runs into is in assuming that Nigerians are somehow unique in this aim or do not have certain advantages, such as higher levels of cultural capital, that other groups might not have. Articles like Dodd’s position Nigerian immigrants as a “model minority,” portraying them as highly motivated, successful, and worthy of social advancement.

The problem is that model minorities in the United States, whatever their race or national origin, have long been positioned against African Americans in various ways. The reasoning goes that if “Nigerians” are able to succeed in sport and gain high levels of education via athletic scholarships, then certainly African Americans can as well. This state of affairs ignores the fact that black immigrants often present to white Americans as a “model minority” because they do not immediately reflect the country’s history of racist oppression back at itself. In this way, the position of black Africans in the U.S. is sustainable in so far as black Africans adhere to the standard of the model minority—meaning that, most importantly, they do not question the racial order or their place in society.

The final assertion by Dodd for the success of Nigerians is the most overtly racist—“genetics.” Arguments about black athletes having genetic or biological advantages have been discredited at least since Montague Cobb in the 1930s, and even more recent claims, such as “fast twitch” muscles or “speed genes,” do not pass scrutiny. What is more telling of the operation of race in the U.S. is that black African immigrants seem to be limited to sports (football, basketball, athletics) dominated by African Americans instead of being represented in a wider range of sports.

If Dodd’s article is any indication, we should expect the Nigerian women’s bobsled team to receive simplistic media coverage emphasizing their Nigerian culture or identity, ignoring the presence of Nigerian communities in the U.S., and perpetuating stereotypical assumptions of genetic or biological athleticism. Instead of an opportunity to reflect about how immigration and sport can challenge national borders and the racial hierarchies they maintain, we will likely be presented the opposite. The Olympics and accompanying media coverage offer a version of sport that hides the very real complexities of identity, belonging, culture, and diaspora. That some nations/races/cultures are thought to have particular natural/genetic/biological predispositions to certain athletic qualities or playing styles reinforces white supremacy, as, historically, ideas about racial differentiation have been used to maintain the place of whiteness atop the racial hierarchy. We deserve better.

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, and an upcoming anthology on sport in Africa (Routledge, 2018). His research broadly focuses on the intersections of race, immigration, and sport.

While a record number of countries and athletes are expected to participate in the 2018 Olympic Games in PyeongChang, South Korea, the Winter edition of the Olympics remains an exclusive event. South Korea will be just the 12th country that has ever hosted the Winter Olympics, a quadrennial event that was inaugurated in France in 1924. Only a few countries have the geographic and economic conditions to host the event, which accounts for the fact that only 6 percent of the 206 recognized National Olympic Committees have ever done so. Further, a majority of countries still do not participate in the Winter Olympic Games. At the 2014 Sochi Games, 89 countries participated. This number increases to 92 in PyeongChang (plus the “Olympic Athlete from Russia” category), which still leaves 55 percent of countries out of the Games. According to the organizing committee website, 31 nations are participating with just one athlete (18 countries) or two athletes (13 countries). Seven of the eight participating African countries will send only one or two athletes to PyeongChang, while Nigeria has the largest African delegation with three athletes. For comparison, the United States of America is participating with 242 athletes.

Many developing countries participate with athletes who grew up abroad, which distracts from the fact that there is little winter sport infrastructure in the country they are representing. For example, Bolivia will return to the Winter Olympics after not participating since 1992. This return is happening at a time when Bolivia’s only ski resort is significantly affected by global warming. One Bolivian participant will be Simon Breitfuss Kammerlander, an alpine ski racer who grew up in Austria. The other will be Finnish-born cross-country skier Timo Gronlund.

Once the Winter Olympic Games have started, the media attention, which is currently focusing on the joint Korean team and the doping allegations against Russian athletes, will shift to the question “Which country will win the Olympic Games?”, with medal rankings published in media outlets around the world as an indicator of success and failure. In all of its history, only 45 nation-states have won a medal at the Winter Games – about 22 per cent of all National Olympic Committees. For sports such as curling, ice hockey, and skating, the necessary infrastructure could potentially be established in countries without favorable winter sport conditions, but this requires costly investments that are not possible in many nations.

In Sochi 2014, 26 countries won a medal – about 30 percent of participating countries – and of these, 19 (representing 73%) were from European nations, reflecting the prevalent Eurocentrism of the Winter Olympics. The concentration of success among such a small number of nations has meant that numerous events at the Winter Games have little competition. This is the result of a strategic approach by countries, as I have argued in my recent book Success and Failure of Countries at the Olympic Games (Routledge 2016). Focusing on medal-promising sports has become a key strategy in Olympic policies around the world, and countries that do not introduce such a targeted approach are often left behind in the medal rankings. Countries usually specialize either by promoting sports where they have a historical comparative advantage or by heavily supporting new sports that were recently added to the Olympic program. An interesting example is speed skating in the Netherlands. In four speed skating events in Sochi, the Netherlands won all of the available gold, silver and bronze medals. The country also leads the all-time Winter Olympics speed skating ranking.

Since it is very difficult to compete with the Netherlands in speed skating, 2018 Winter Olympic host South Korea has successfully focused on the short track skating events. Whereas speed skating has been part of the Olympic program since 1960, short track was added in 1992. As a relatively new winter sport nation, South Korea (similar to China) has decided to focus on short track speed skating, and has so far been very successful, winning 21 of the 48 gold medals in short track since it became a medal sport (China has won 9 gold medals).

Germany, meanwhile, has largely dominated the sport of luge. About 58 percent of all medals in luge have been won by German athletes (including East Germany, West Germany, and the reunified Germany). If one includes Austria, 73 percent of all Olympic luge medals have been won by German speaking countries. Moreover, since the Italian luge team is usually recruited from South Tyrol, a majority German-speaking province in Italy, Olympic medal winning in luge is nearly an entirely ethnic German domain. Germany’s dominance, however, should not give the impression that luge is popular in the country. According to the BSD,  the association responsible for luge, bobsleigh, and skeleton sports in Germany, the association has only 6,500 members in around 100 clubs in a country with a population of more than 82 million inhabitants. Hence, even within Winter Olympic powerhouses, medal events with limited global spread, such as luge, remain exclusive sports.

Danyel Reiche is an Associate Professor for Comparative Politics at the American University of Beirut in Lebanon. His research examines sport policy and politics from a comparative perspective, with recent publications on the role of developing countries in international sport, the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar, and the Arab sporting boycott of Israel. His current research is on the regulation of athletic citizenship in international sports. His work has been published in journals such as International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics, The International Journal of the History of Sport, and European Sport Management Quarterly. His book Success and Failure of Countries at the Olympic Games was published with Routledge in 2016.

In North American professional sports culture, parades are typically organized by cities and organizations after a major team accomplishment, such as winning a league championship. On Saturday, January 6, 2018, however, thousands of Cleveland Browns fans, in response to their team’s failure to register a win during the National Football League’s (NFL) 2017 regular season, congregated near FirstEnergy Stadium in Cleveland, Ohio to “celebrate” the Browns’ “perfect season” record of 0-16. The fans braved frigid January temperatures, creating satirical floats, signs, and costumes to publicly mock team owner Jimmy Haslam—CEO of the Pilot Flying J truck stop chain, a company embroiled in an FBI investigation concerning rebate fraud—and the team’s consistent lack of success in the NFL. Parade organizer Chris McNeill described the event as a protest expressed through “macabre-humor”: “I think we have every right,” McNeill said, “after this organization has given us nothing now for how many years.” The parade, thankfully, benefitted the local community in ways other than creative celebration, as event promoters raised over $17,000 and collected perishable food donations, all of which were subsequently donated to the Greater Cleveland Food Bank.

The parade was met with disdain from other local fans, journalists, and Browns players, unsurprising given the centrality of competitiveness and virtues of “winning” in modern American sporting ideology. Multiple Browns players publicly expressed their opposition to the parade, with defensive lineman Emmanuel Ogbah declaring on Twitter, “That parade is a joke don’t call yourself a true Browns fan if you go to that thing!” Local fans buttressed Ogbah’s scorn, with their perceptions of fandom implicitly separating the parade goers from “true fans” who presumably devote their full financial and emotional support to the professional franchise regardless of outcome. Cleveland Plain Dealer editorial board member Ted Diadiun criticized the parade’s objective via a subtle jab at fans who associate the success of professional sports team with their sense of identity: “[U]nlike a lot of folks who were out there, I don’t measure my sense of self-worth in accordance with whether the team on the field…wins or loses.” Others sided with the parade goers as part of a condemnation of the team’s overall performance, with Cleveland.com columnist Bud Shaw declaring “if people who’ve had so little to smile about want to get together as a community and protest a team that has offered them so little to cheer about since 1999, I get it.”

Whether in support and condemnation, local media commentary on the parade defined Browns fandom in relation to athletic and team success. Thus, the discussion centered on whether parade goers should protest the lack of cultural status or “compensation” the fans have received from supporting the Browns, and whether such protesting was indicative of being a “true fan.” Is a true Browns fan one who gets angry at the franchise’s management, impatient for team success? Or is a true fan one who has an undying financial, social, and emotional support for the team and its players? Both definitions, however, assumed an individual’s productive loyalty to the team brand, whether in anger or support.

Lost in the coverage was how the parade served as a locally meaningful, creative form of fan expression and celebration—a potential method of crafting a sporting social identity that expresses team loyalty, yet mocks team owners and operates peripheral to corporate and league-sanctioned business. Alternative forms of expression are more common within European and global sports fan (sub)cultures, but are relatively rare in North American pro sports where consumerism and fan identity are increasingly interwoven. In Cleveland, however, fans organized a parade unaffiliated and disassociated with the Browns organization, congregating in each other’s company for reasons unrelated to the NFL’s revenue generation streams. No tickets or officially sanctioned fan apparel was needed, only a fan’s ability to parody Browns ownership. This is not to romanticize the parade as a radical form of fan expression challenging the hegemony of the NFL or the Browns organization—the organizers were not seeking to boycott or end their support of the team, and many were still season ticket holders and consumers of Browns-related products. Moreover, the event reproduced the gender and sexual politics prevalent within American sports by holding a contest for a parade queen.

Yet, by openly mocking team ownership through a locally organized event disconnected from the team’s and NFL’s methods of revenue generation, parade-goers re-shaped their definitions of Browns fandom in a way that allowed them to have a locally meaningful expression of their sporting identity while publicly parodying team owners and management.

By focusing on questions of what constitutes a “true Browns fan,” much of the media coverage prevented a more critical conversation on how such events illuminate the common interests between fan and player, and the irony that team owners continue to accumulate enormous wealth regardless of team performance. “Owners got fat checks from the league’s television revenue sharing plan,” Cleveland columnist Mark Naymik wrote. “Fans got…an 0-16 season.” Moreover, as Browns players criticized the parade as a “joke”, they inadvertently reinforced a definition of “true fandom” based on brand loyalty and seeing athletic labor as a sporting commodity. Meanwhile, the NFL and its teams continue to poorly protect players from head trauma (despite continual revisions to concussion “protocol”), and oppose player activism and social justice efforts.

We should remember that player protests were booed by stadiums of fans, illuminating the enduring racial tension between largely white fan bases and national sporting pastimes predominated by African American athletes. We should not romanticize the values of fan bases and conflicts between the owners and consumers of sporting capital without close attention to the racial, gender, and social politics involved. Nonetheless, the path towards a more inclusive, equitable, and humane national sporting culture requires the ability for fans to construct alternative forms of sporting identity that do not necessarily reproduce the values and logic of consumer capitalism. We should encourage fan bases to find locally significant ways of mocking the owners of professional sports and use those moments to foster critical conversations on the politics of professional sporting fandom and common interests between fan and player.

Samuel M Clevenger earned his PhD in Physical Cultural Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park. His research focuses on the colonial politics of modern sport in American history, as well as the cultural and environment politics of modern urban planning. His research has been published in Urban Planning, Rethinking History: The Journal of Theory and Practice, and Sport, Education and Society.

For our book Doping in Elite Sports: Voices of French Sportspeople and Their Doctors, 1950-2010 (Routledge, 2018), Christophe Brissonneau interviewed 55 former dopers who competed in a variety of different Olympic sports. At the end of one interview, “Pascal” concluded with a story illustrating the life of an elite cyclist. As he told the story, his face lit up with an expansive smile. One morning during training, Pascal woke up as usual, except he could not move. He was paralyzed. He could not even get out of bed to call his father for help. The next day, Pascal’s father checked in on him and Pascal was still paralyzed in bed. Brissonneau asked what had happened. Through a peel of laughter, Pascal confessed that he had injected himself with a drug a friend gave him, but it turns out the drug was meant for snakes! After the interview, Brissonneau wrote in his research journal that Pascal’s story was extraordinary. Who in their right mind injects themselves with snake medicine they got surreptitiously from a friend and then laughs about almost dying from it?

Brissonneau realized that he and Pascal lived in different worlds. How does an intelligent person come to see something so irrational as injecting yourself with snake medicine as reasonable and even good? Doping in Elite Sports attempts to answer that question by looking at the social process through which top amateur athletes join the elite ranks of sport and the medicalized training regimes they must embrace in order to succeed there. Ultimately, this social process produces professionalized athletes who consider taking a range of pharmacological products that will increase their physical performance as a normal, everyday aspect of “doing the job”. We also discovered that sports medicine’s mission to constantly push the frontiers of human performance has led to the development of performance technologies with applications not only for sports, but also for civilian and military uses.

To understand the process by which people become elite athletes, we draw on the sequential model of deviance employed by Howard Becker (1963) in his classic study of marijuana smokers. Becker theorized a succession of phases through which people adjust their behaviour in relation to changes in their self-perception as users. Similarly, we identified five phases in elite athletes’ professional careers. Their careers begin as amateurs in what we call the “ordinary world” since it is a social space that makes up the lived reality of most people. From the ordinary world, athletes advance to the professional ranks that form an “extraordinary world,” a sort of bubble, disconnected from the social reality that most people share. In each phase, the time that is dedicated to domestic and academic activities decreases in equal proportion to increased time allotted to the exclusive practice of the sport. Primary group actors (families, classmates) become less central to the athlete’s life as those bound to performance (other athletes, sports directors, doctors) become more central.

As athletes advance in their careers, they change doctors in each phase. As amateurs, athletes see a general practitioner to treat pain and injuries (1st phase). But as they advance in their sports, athletes will need more advanced and specialized medical services, so they begin to see a sports doctor (2nd phase), followed by a performance-physiologist (3rd phase), and finally a specialist in biology or biotechnology (4th phase). The cycle concludes with retirement (5th phase) in which athletes may begin to see addiction specialists to help manage their drug use.

As athletes progress through the phases, the norms that guide their beliefs and actions change through contact with other athletes, trainers, and doctors. An understanding of health conceived of as the absence of illness gradually begins to fade as a conception of health synonymous with performance emerges. As athletes move across the career phases and their training intensifies, they begin to use more and stronger medicine. In the first phase when starting their athletic careers, athletes do not use any substances. When they progress into the second phase, athletes start using legal products (vitamins and iron) taken as intramuscular injections. In the third phase, they use corticoids and anabolic steroids “to look after” their hormonal imbalance and “to do their job.” Athletes that reach the fourth phase and decide to break away from the pack in an attempt to become champions begin using peptide hormones, such as erythropoietin (EPO) and human growth hormones (HGH), under the direction of a biotechnologist.

It is not through only the physical but also the mental transformation of the athletes that we can understand the phases of an athlete’s career. Throughout the phases, athletes gradually revise the standards of ethics used to assess their actions. What remains constant throughout is the sport’s scale of values, which includes an expectation of training long, hard hours and enduring tremendous suffering. The products used during the third phase, such as anabolic steroids, are not considered cheating by elite athletes since they are consistent with sports’ scale of values. Anabolic steroids speed up recovery and thus allow an athlete to work harder and suffer more. The products used in the fourth phase, peptide hormones, are far more powerful. Athletes that use these drugs are considered cheaters since they do not respect sports’ scale of values. Peptide hormones endow athletes with performance gains even if they do not work for them and they force other athletes to use those potentially deadly products to remain competitive.

Our key takeaway from Brissonneau’s more than 10 years of ethnographic research is that doping describes a set of practices governed by the logic of the workplace; elite sport. This produces profound misunderstandings for journalists, sponsors, fans, sport governing bodies, and sports doctors, who often frame doping as a moral issue. However, most athletes who are labelled dopers (and their doctors) do not see themselves as cheaters. They see themselves as competitors doing what is a necessary and normal component of their job. Their bodies are machines built for maximal performance. Increased regulation of athletes’ bodies and sanctions can limit doping, but will not remove doping from contemporary medicalized sport. As long as sport is guided by the logic of elite performances and winning, the medical model and pharmacology will remain.

We also conclude from an extensive study of medical talks, scientific articles, and medical symposiums that what has driven research on doping since the 1960s is the development of a new stage in medical research: a medicine of human enhancement. By creating and developing the concept of doping, physicians gained access to the elite sports world. They conducted studies to understand how bodies could be improved, the pathological phenomena that limit the body’s functioning, and they developed new repair techniques. There is then a transfer of medical knowledge between the sports world, the ordinary world, and the military. The sports world provides medical knowledge for the ordinary world on obesity, cardiovascular dysfunction, and cancer, while it provides the military world with knowledge on how to create, as one exercise physiologist told us, “a super soldier who can walk 40 km, with 40 kg on his shoulders, in 40 °c [104 °f] for seven days without sleeping in Afghanistan” as well as how to support human life in space. Ultimately, we agree with other researchers concerned with the “weaponization” of sports knowledge and call for more research into this important topic.

Christophe Brissonneau is a researcher in the sociology department of the University of Paris Descartes, France. His research interests include sociological theory, socialization, deviance, health, and ethics. His recent work has focused on elite sport, its medicalization, and different types of doping careers in France from 1950 to 2000.

Jeffrey Montez de Oca is an Associate Professor in the sociology department at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs, USA. His current research focuses on NFL marketing. His monograph Discipline and Indulgence: College Football, Media, and the American Way of Life During the Cold War won the 2014 North American Society for the Sociology of Sport Outstanding Book Award.