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.

In mass media and popular culture, sport is often presented as a level playing field where the most skilled and committed athletes rise to the top. The racial composition of American football is often presented as evidence of the supposed meritocracy of sport. While 13.2 percent of the U.S. population is black, 47.1 percent of NCAA Division I football players and 68.7 percent of National Football League (NFL) players are black. Thus, if black men are more commonly from poor and working-class backgrounds compared to white men, yet are overrepresented in football, one might conclude that factors such as race and social class play little to no role in player development and selection.

Research in sociology of sport, however, tells a different story. The cultural glorification of black athletes, racial bias and discrimination in social institutions like education, racial ideologies of black physical superiority, and strong social support for sport in families and communities may lead many black men to over-identify with sport. While just 1.6 percent of NCAA football players will play professionally, one study of Division I college football players found that 85 percent of black players and 39 percent of white players aspired to the NFL.

Player selection may also be influenced by racial ideologies. Some NFL coaches and scouts buy in to a “Friday Night Lights” myth where football is perceived to be “king” in small, rural towns that are often heavily black and working class. As a result, coaches and scouts may give greater consideration to players from these backgrounds.

Questions about the roles of race and social class are important to consider when examining the extent to which sport is meritocratic. Considering race and class also sheds light on several recent controversies in football, including college and professional leagues’ handling of injury and concussion protocols and protests of racial injustice and police violence. The consequences for players participating in protest, arguing for improved injury protocols, or leaving the sport altogether may be distinct across racial and socioeconomic lines.

Yet we know little about patterns that may exist with respect to the backgrounds of players and where, exactly, they come from. The places young people grow up are important in the opportunities they provide to develop athletic talent and in the social support they provide for sports participation. With my colleagues Adriene Davis and Raymond Barranco, I asked, what hometowns are most likely to pathways into elite football? Do black and white players come from similar or different backgrounds?

To answer these questions, we compiled data from ESPN’s top-ranked incoming college football recruits over the past 10 years. We included white and black athletes for a sample of 929 players. ESPN lists each athlete’s hometown as the city of the high school the athlete attended. For each recruit, we matched the listed hometown with data on the town’s socioeconomics and demographics from the 2000 U.S. Census.

We measured per capita income, median household income, median family income, percent of the population living in poverty, percent of persons 25 years of age and older with less than a high school education, percent of vacant houses, percent unemployed, total population, housing density, and the percent of white, black, and Latino residents. We considered these to be rough measures of cultural factors related to sports participation, such as familial and community support, and structural factors like opportunities and infrastructure. We compared hometown indicators by race first for the entire sample of incoming college players and then only for the 183 players who were drafted into the NFL. We also compared against national averages on each measure.

We found that black football players come from hometowns that are more socioeconomically disadvantaged than the national average and that have a higher percent of black residents. In contrast, white players’ hometowns are smaller, less dense, less socioeconomically disadvantaged, and less black and Latino than black players’ hometowns.

These patterns intensified when we compared players who were drafted into the NFL with those who were not. Drafted black players come from hometowns that are more black and socioeconomically disadvantaged than black players who were not drafted, while white drafted players come from hometowns that are less socioeconomically disadvantaged than white non-drafted players. In summary, hometown socioeconomic disadvantage and a higher proportion of black residents are associated with black men’s participation and selection into elite football, while less hometown socioeconomic disadvantage and a higher proportion of white residents are associated with white men’s participation and selection into elite football.

While we cannot definitively explain our findings, it is likely that player development and selection in football are shaped by both race and social class background. Places with more resources tend to have more opportunities and better facilities for sport. As we show, such places increase the likelihood of white men developing their athletic skills and making it to the top echelons of football. In contrast, socioeconomic disadvantage presents fewer and lower-quality opportunities and facilities to black men. Yet socioeconomic disadvantage also limits the number and quality of opportunities for education and employment. A lack of opportunities in these areas, combined with persistent racial bias and discrimination, may make certain sports, such as football, seem like the most likely pathway to upward mobility for some black men.

By implication, if black NFL players are disproportionately from poor and working class families and disadvantaged hometowns, the financial necessity of participation in the NFL is higher for black than white players. Recent debates in football over head injury protocols and protests of racial injustice, among other issues, cannot and should not be separate from consideration of the groups of players who have the most at stake.

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, Kicking Center: Gender and the Selling of Women’s Professional Soccer, is forthcoming with Rutgers University Press.

College sports fans probably weren’t surprised to learn that the University of North Carolina (UNC) had been engaged in academic fraud for decades. In this particular instance, students, predominately varsity athletes, were enrolled in classes with few (if any) academic requirements. They almost always received high grades.

The UNC scandal is just one of many recent examples where universities have prioritized athletic prowess over academic integrity.

And where was the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in all this? Amazingly, it essentially shrugged off the apparent transgressions, even after UNC admitted to them. Is the NCAA abdicating its oversight responsibilities?

Critics of the NCAA, such as Bloomberg News’ Joe Nocera, have long argued that the organization has zero credibility as a regulator of college sports. Nocera and others tend to view the NCAA as either hypocritical or corrupt.

But without appearing sympathetic to the NCAA, I believe it is not the prime offender in the UNC case. It is simply doing the bidding of a higher education system that has gone off the academic rails. If the NCAA is Oz’s projection on the wall, a profit-oriented higher education system is behind the curtain pulling the levers.

The athletic arms race

In my recent book, I link higher education’s misplaced priorities to the explosion of costs associated with intercollegiate athletics and youth sports.

This research, along with studies by the Knight Commission, the Drake Group and the Association of Research Libraries, shows that university spending on intercollegiate sports has vastly outpaced spending on instruction and research over the past two decades.

This spending spree has led to an arms race, or what sports sociologist Howard Nixon II calls an “athletic trap” that ensnares universities in incessant funding of high-visibility sports programs.

Contrary to popular belief, very few college sports programs operate in the black. According to data from the NCAA and U.S. Department of Education, fewer than 25 of the more than 300 NCAA Division I programs earn more than they spend. Athletic department deficits at some schools run upwards of US$20 million per year.

Whenever athletic expenses exceed revenues, schools must make up the gap through other means.

At state schools, this could include more public funding, although that is becoming quite rare. More likely, schools will try to address the deficit through increasing tuition, implementing generic “student fees” or soliciting alumni for more money.

Paying for what, exactly?

On the surface, none of this seems logical. Why pour so many resources into athletic programs? If students end up bearing the financial burden and education programs suffer, where is the return on the investment?

More than 100 years ago, sociologist Thorstein Veblen first identified the “corporatization” of higher education, with university presidents as “captains of solvency” who focus their energies on “principles of spectacular publicity” that will impress current and future donors.

Not much has changed in the last century. Higher education has become more about cultivating a school’s “brand” than cultivating critical thinkers, more about alumni checkbooks than about student notebooks. Is it any wonder that college presidents are increasingly referred to as CEOs and are being recruited from the corporate world?

If we think about college sports as a marketing venture rather than an educational venture, all of this spending makes perfect sense. Think of players as walking advertisements – each branded with the school’s logo – who appear before millions of viewers on ESPN and ABC. Large schools are especially concerned with brand development and revenue streams, which come from a combination of dedicated alumni, fans and corporate sponsors. Meanwhile, smaller Division I schools and Division III schools use athletics not just for brand recognition but to manipulate their enrollment statistics and improve their “selectivity index.”

Generally, varsity athletes are admitted through an early decision process that operates somewhat independently from the regular admissions process. But only the regular process figures into calculations of a college’s acceptance rates. Athletes who are admitted early reduce the number of acceptances offered to the regular applicant pool. This lowers the school’s acceptance rate and raises its perceived selectivity – all without any substantive educational improvements.

Like their Division I counterparts, Division III schools also believe that visible and successful sports programs will spawn increased alumni contributions. The supporting data for this, however, are mixed. Most schools end up treading water (or slowly sinking) as increased spending doesn’t keep pace with increases in alumni contributions.

The empty ‘student-athlete’ slogan

Officially born in 1910, the NCAA has always had trouble balancing its dual mission of promoting and regulating intercollegiate sports. Part of this promotion has been cultivating the “amateur” status of college sports, and how it is “purer” than commercialized professional sports. Nothing represents that marketing scheme better than the “student-athlete” concept.

Former NCAA president Walter Byers first coined the term in the 1950s while fighting a worker’s compensation claim by the widow of a college football player who had died during a game. “Student-athlete” has since becoming something of a mantra among those who work at any level within intercollegiate sports.

As a result, the NCAA postures as a de facto defender of academic integrity, even while its bylaws state otherwise. Rules approved by the NCAA in 2016 state that colleges should set their own academic integrity standards, with the NCAA intervening only when those internal rules are violated.

In the UNC case, the NCAA is refusing to second-guess the school’s determination that no internal rules have been violated, despite what appears to be serious academic misconduct.

Following the NCAA’s statutory logic, universities would crack down on athletics-centered academic fraud if they really wanted to. Instead, as my research and the work of others show, schools have become organizationally and ideologically addicted to intercollegiate sports.

Universities are convinced that they only need one more “fix” to reach intercollegiate sports nirvana: just one more new facility, one more high-profile coach, one more no-work course and one more entertainment complex to attract top recruits. But the athletics arms race keeps spiraling, and higher education keeps moving farther away from its educational mission.

The NCAA is a convenient scapegoat, but the problem lies much deeper. Is “college education” itself becoming an oxymoron? Was long-time college sports critic Murray Sperber correct when he said that universities were more about “beer and circuses” than about teaching and research?

Perhaps Thorstein Veblen was also right when he originally subtitled his book on higher education “A Study in Total Depravity.”

Rick Eckstein, a professor of sociology at Villanova University, is a nationally recognized expert on the commercialization of youth sports and the economics of higher education. His recently published book, How Intercollegiate Athletics are Hurting Girls’ Sports: The Pay to Play Pipeline (Rowman and Littlefield), draws a causal connection between the corporatization of higher education and the rampant commercialization of youth sports. This relationship has detrimental impacts on college costs and the increasingly class-exclusive landscape of youth sports that systematically excludes poorer, darker, and non-suburban families. Families that can access the “pay to play youth sports to college pipeline” are regularly mislead about the chances of receiving athletic scholarships and admissions advantages. The American Library Association recommends this book for all readers, and the research has been regularly featured in the national media.

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

CrossFit, the popular group fitness regimen that members half-jokingly call a “cult,” is much more than the latest get-ripped-quick fad, according to a recent study my colleague Ted Butryn and I conducted out of San José State University. CrossFit’s massive growth from one gym in Northern California in the early 2000s to over 13,000 worldwide in 2017 has sparked fierce debate about the program’s safety and efficacy, and disrupted an industry that has for decades been built on selling the superficial aestheticism of bodybuilding and aerobics. Instead of wading into the ongoing debate about CrossFit’s methods, our study sought to understand the social significance of CrossFit in a moment when work is becoming increasingly sedentary and technologically dependent, especially in the Silicon Valley area where I spent five months as an ethnographer in two CrossFit gyms. Our results showed that CrossFit portends a deeper angst about the purpose of physical bodies in a world that is rapidly devaluing physical labor, particularly for a well-educated white-collar workforce.

Although CrossFit uses the same class-based structure of recent fitness trends such as Zumba and yoga, CrossFit does not adhere to any single type of exercise but rather achieves results – and a fiercely loyal membership base – by encouraging competition during each unique “workout of the day,” or WOD. These intense sessions, which may last as much as 45 minutes or as little as two, mix and match exercises from different athletic disciplines, including weightlifting, running, and gymnastics. Some of the more memorable WODs are even given feminine names (a practice CrossFit’s originator has likened to the weather service’s naming of severe storms), or named after fallen law enforcement officers and soldiers as a form of honor. For example, arguably the most infamous CrossFit WOD is called “Fran,” a deceptive workout composed of 45 total reps each of 95-pound barbell thrusters (a squat-press movement) and pull-ups, which may take a trained athlete only a few minutes to complete but perhaps an hour or more to recover from.

All WODs are timed or scored by accumulated repetitions, with some gyms even instituting penalties of extra exercise should members forget to count their reps or check the clock when finishing a WOD. Coaches record these scores publicly on whiteboards in the gym or on social media sites, providing members a real-time ranking of their performance across different classes in the same gym. Although the exercises here are not necessarily new to the fitness industry, they have been repackaged to capitalize on an emerging desire for exercise to produce something more meaningful than bulging biceps and toned buttocks.

For example, most CrossFit exercises typically embody what coaches call “functional movements”—whole body complex movements that mimic real-world actions. During my stint as a CrossFitter, the other participants and I performed “farmer’s carries,” tire flips, sledgehammer swings, and other movements that felt more like construction work than recreational exercise. Compounding this mimicry of manual labor was the fact that both gyms inhabited defunct industrial warehouses, and thus our faux work in the gym’s parking lot often impeded actual work—tow trucks and delivery vehicles trying to reach neighboring auto repair shops. Additionally, CrossFit shuns most technologies found in larger commercial gyms: exercise machines, mirrors, saunas, Pilates equipment, wearable activity trackers, and demarcated rooms for specific exercise methods.

However, one would be remiss to think these gyms’ neo-Luddite tendencies predict a similar disdain of consumerism; in 2010, CrossFit Inc. signed a long-term marketing deal with Reebok as part of the apparel company’s strategy to return to its fitness roots. At the gyms I visited, post-WOD conversations often gravitated toward the latest CrossFit gear, including camouflaged Reebok shoes, ball-bearing jump ropes, sophisticated training gloves, and other usually expensive must-haves. One of the coaches I met wore a shirt featuring a caricature of a person on an elliptical machine with a bolded “FAIL” written underneath. The implied failure was not that the elliptical is inherently dysfunctional, but that a mindless hour of television while gyrating on an exercise machine robbed the body of its own machine-like autonomy.

Participants I spoke to echoed these sentiments, labeling their previous experiences at bigger commercial gyms as pointless and boring, even though those gyms provided more amenities than did the CrossFit gym and at a fraction of CrossFit’s nearly $200/month cost. Participants explained that CrossFit gave exercise (and their bodies) a functional purpose beyond merely fitness and health. After CrossFit, participants felt their bodies could run, jump, and lift more effectively, even though they may never need that increased ability in the normal course of their life and work. The gym also provided daily accountability through shared suffering, as every participant in a class exercised together, regardless of gender, age, or ability. Thus, the real driver of achievement was not an authoritarian coach barking orders, but a sense of social coercion diffused among participants and reinforced daily by the gym’s leaderboard.

Our study relied on work by German sociologist and historian Henning Eichberg, who sadly died in April at the age of 74. In his many writings on sport, he argued that the adoption of new methods like those of CrossFit indicated an underlying shift in social behavior that precipitated the change. In other words, while CrossFit is a reactionary movement to the aestheticism of the 80s and 90s, it also manifests a deeper anxiety about the disappearing utility of the body in an increasingly technologized society.

The postindustrial CrossFit space allows for the reclamation of the body’s raw physical ability in a moment when individual physicality has never mattered less. Thus, once occupied by hard labor for economic gain, these gym spaces now peddle a surrogate industrial experience to a clientele who regularly avoid physical labor outside the gym.

Matt Crockett (matt.crockett@sjsu.edu) is a lecturer at San José State University, where he teaches physical fitness and nutrition, stress and health, and sport sociology.

Dr. Ted Butryn (theodore.butryn@sjsu.edu) is the Interim Director of the Institute for the Study of Sport, Society, and Social Change (ISSSSSC) at San José State University, where he is a Professor of sport sociology and psychology. He is also the Graduate Coordinator for the university’s Department of Kinesiology.

David beating Goliath is very exciting – unless you’re a fan of Goliath.

The United States has 330 million people and a massive youth soccer system, yet its men’s national soccer team just got bushwhacked by a team from Trinidad and Tobago, a country with 1.3 million residents.

How could this happen?

It’s not just about cultural norms. (Even if 90 percent of the U.S. population didn’t care about soccer, 33 million still would.) It’s not just about high school football teams siphoning off potential soccer talent. (There’s talent enough to go around when you have all those people.) It’s not just about U.S. soccer’s leadership and disorganization. (There are ineffective bureaucracies everywhere.) It’s not just about the unimaginative style of soccer played by U.S. teams. (Nobody criticizes the German team for its methodical style of play.)

Instead the problem is the American system of identifying and cultivating soccer talent – or, more accurately, not identifying this talent.

For the past six years I have been researching and writing about the commercialized youth sports industry, including a youth soccer system that excludes low-income and nonsuburban families from participating at the same rate as higher-income families.

U.S. kids don’t play soccer with bare feet on hardscrabble barrio fields where creativity dominates the action and with few grownups in sight.

Instead, too many American kids play soccer in high-tech cleats on manicured suburban fields, where they stand around quietly until an adult (often paid) runs them through repetitive drills – all to prepare for an expensive tournament three states away.

Commercial components permeate every aspect of the youth game. Research presented in my recent book on college and youth sports shows that family income is highly correlated with youth soccer participation. About 25 percent of American families have incomes over US$100,000 annually, yet they produce 35 percent of youth soccer players.

Conversely, the 25 percent of families with incomes below $25,000 account for only 13 percent of youth soccer players. Forty percent of youth soccer players will leave the sport between ages 13 and 18.

Many leave for financial reasons. Kids interested in playing soccer must increasingly pay for apparel, equipment, team fees, coaches, trainers, tournament travel and field space. It’s not unusual for families to spend over $10,000 per child per year to play organized youth soccer.

The result is a system more attuned to identifying the best payers than the best players.

Those remaining in what I call the pay-to-play soccer system increasingly sign up for high-cost tournaments like the annual Disney Boys’ Soccer Showcase, with the idea that it’ll increase their chances of being identified by the national team or college recruiters who frequent the expensive tournaments.

What would have become of Cristiano Ronaldo or Marta had they grown up in the U.S. pay-to-play system?

Talent isn’t being found in overgrown weed patches stuffed between urban row houses and rural farms. Nor is it being found among the 630,000 kids playing in the American Youth Soccer Organization programs, which adhere to the philosophy that youth sports should be fun in and of itself, not an expensive pathway to some “next level.”

U.S. international dominance in men’s basketball provides a good contrast to soccer. Sure, there’s a significant commercial element to youth basketball, most notably reflected in the Amateur Athletic Union circuit.

But this isn’t the only place where talent is identified. There’s a robust network of recruiters who still go to cramped high school gyms and neighborhood playgrounds teeming with skilled players. Low-income boys are 50 percent more likely to participate in basketball than in soccer, with participation rates identical between blacks and Latinos (despite cultural stereotypes that assume Latinos are more likely to play soccer).

There might be a reason for this: There are low-cost options for playing basketball (and being noticed), unlike in soccer. The U.S. men’s national basketball team does not systematically exclude an enormous swath of the population merely because it is poor. A bigger talent pool equals better teams.

Men’s soccer will never be able to compete internationally as long as it is enmeshed in a class-restrictive youth sports system. As for the U.S. women’s comparative international success in soccer, that’s a different dilemma. Many other countries don’t fund and cultivate women’s soccer players as well as the U.S., which gives the Americans an advantage.

My prediction, though, is that these same economic restrictions will soon kick U.S. women’s soccer in the collective shin guards as other countries eventually compensate for the Title IX-based advantages afforded to American girls and women for the past 44 years.

Rick Eckstein, a professor of sociology at Villanova University, is a nationally recognized expert on the commercialization of youth sports and the economics of higher education. His recently published book, How Intercollegiate Athletics are Hurting Girls’ Sports: The Pay to Play Pipeline (Rowman and Littlefield), draws a causal connection between the corporatization of higher education and the rampant commercialization of youth sports. This relationship has detrimental impacts on college costs and the increasingly class-exclusive landscape of youth sports that systematically excludes poorer, darker, and non-suburban families. Families that can access the “pay to play youth sports to college pipeline” are regularly mislead about the chances of receiving athletic scholarships and admissions advantages. The American Library Association recommends this book for all readers, and the research has been regularly featured in the national media.

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

As we enter the heart of another college football season in the U.S., millions of fans flock to stadiums and gather around televisions each Saturday. Sometimes forgotten in the hype and excitement that surrounds the sport is the fact that the players on the field not only are athletes, but also students who must devote a substantial portion of their time throughout the week to academics. As stated in the tagline of a memorable National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) branding campaign, “there are over 380,000 student-athletes, and most of us go pro in something other than sports.” In football, only about 1.5% of college players will go on to the NFL. Given this reality, it’s important for college athletes to gain meaningful value from their education to help them succeed in careers beyond sport. In fact, the NCAA’s rhetoric often reinforces the idea that the academic experience is of first and foremost importance for college athletes.

However, as anyone having a basic familiarity with college sports probably knows, numerous factors make it difficult for college athletes to take full advantage of their educational opportunities. For instance, college athletes are often placed under substantial time demands, as football players spend a median of 42 hours per week on their sport according to the NCAA’s own data. Additionally, at many universities, athletes are given special consideration in the admissions process, meaning that athletes often enter universities with academic qualifications well below those of the typical member of the student body. Following an academic probe that led to several football players being dismissed for cheating at the University of Notre Dame, Head Coach Brian Kelly commented that few of his players would be able to gain admission to the university if it were not for their athletic talents:

I think we recognized that all of my football players are [academically] at risk. All of them, really. Honestly, I don’t know that any of our players would get into the school by themselves right now, with the academic standards the way they are. Maybe one or two of our players that are on scholarship.

As a result of such conditions, a substantial body of research has found that college athletes are often “clustered” into certain academic majors. Former NBA and Duke University basketball star Shane Battier recently suggested it’s “hardly a secret” that college athletes are often guided toward “easy” classes in the least demanding majors. For instance, 58 out of 74 scholarship football players at the University of Michigan who identified an academic major were in “general studies” during the 2004 season, and 87 of the 176 total students enrolled in general studies were Michigan athletes. Traditionally, researchers have defined such “clustering” to exist when 25% of more of the members of a particular team are pursuing the same academic major. Prior research has found clustering to be rather commonplace in football, men’s basketball, and women’s basketball (see here for a recent summary).

Building on this research, my colleagues Jim Watkins, Seungmo Kim, and I sought to investigate the extent to which college football players are not only overrepresented (aka “clustered”) in certain academic majors, but also identify majors in which they are underrepresented in comparison to the student body as a whole. Additionally, given the practice of special admissions for athletes mentioned earlier, we also compared universities with highly-selective admissions standards to those with less selective standards. In our study, which was recently published in the Journal of Issues in Intercollegiate Athletics, we found that football players were most frequently overrepresented in majors in the areas of “social sciences”, “communication, journalism, & related programs”, “parks, recreation, leisure, and fitness studies”, “liberal arts and sciences, general studies, and humanities”, and “multi/interdisciplinary studies”. In contrast, compared to the general student body, players were most frequently underrepresented in engineering majors. Ideally, being aware of the academic areas in which college athletes are over- and underrepresented can help administrators and other decision makers think about the constraints that may prevent athletes from having a more fully meaningful educational experience. For example, if the time demands of athletics prevent college athletes from pursuing majors in fields like engineering, this could inform efforts to reform college sports. On the other hand, if scheduling conflicts are causing difficulties (i.e., certain courses are only available during practice times), university officials might work with athletic administrators in an effort to address such conflicts.

With respect to admissions standards, we found that the distribution of academic majors for football players differed from that of the general student body at almost all institutions. However, the frequency of discrepancies between football players and general students was greater at institutions with more highly-selective admissions standards. The fact that particular academic challenges might arise at more highly-selective institutions is not surprising given the aforementioned situation described by Notre Dame Coach Brian Kelly. If a university admits athletes with qualifications that are below those of typical students at the university, then places substantial sport-related time demands upon those athletes, it seems likely they may face unique challenges in their academic pursuits.

Ultimately, the results of this research lead us to suggest that many college athletes may not be gaining a full, meaningful educational experience that is comparable to that of their non-athlete peers. Notably, this may be a particular concern at more highly-selective institutions with big-time football programs. To the extent that sports participation prevents or discourages athletes from pursuing the full range of academic programs offered at a university, this raises important questions for athletics administrators and university officials to consider.

Adam Love is an assistant professor in the Department of Kinesiology, Recreation, and Sport Studies at the University of Tennessee. His research examines ways in which sport programs and organizations can operate in a more ethical, just, open, democratic, and accessible way. You can find him on Twitter @AdamWLove

To a legion of Harry Potter fans, quidditch is a magical sport involving flying wizards and witches, fierce competition, friendship, and fun. Following this spirit, a modified version of the game (minus magic) emerged at a U.S. college in 2005 and is now practiced in more than 25 countries on 6 continents. In its real-life version, quidditch is a 7v7 mixed contact sport with elements from rugby, dodgeball, and tag. True to its origins, it features terminology such as “bludgers” (dodgeballs), “quaffles” (deflated volleyballs), and “snitches” (humans draped in yellow clothing with a tennis ball hanging from a belt), along with the mandatory rule of running with a broom between one’s legs at all times (learn more about quidditch’s gameplay here).

The International Quidditch Association (also real) is responsible for the governance of the sport, with the unusual mission of “improving gender education across all sports and communities, promoting equality and diversity, and fostering a love of reading across all ages”. If the association between sport and literature may sound odd, even more so is the commitment to gender “literacy” and its implications for the regulation of the game. Relatedly, the sport introduces a groundbreaking approach to team composition; in accordance with its “Gender Maximum Rule”, each team is allowed to have a maximum of four players from the same gender in active play on the field at the same time.

In order to fully appreciate what makes quidditch’s norms particularly thought-provoking, we have to keep in mind that sex segregation is a central and largely unquestioned feature in the organisation of mainstream sport. Resting on late Victorian notions of biological determinism, athletes (and all human beings) are assumed to fit, by nature, into opposite and mutually attracted categories of “female” and “male” (i.e., sex). These apparently natural differences are underpinned by the cultural system of gender (the socially constructed ideals of men as masculine, and women as feminine) that dictates the appropriateness of certain behaviours, and even sports, for each. Thus, sports that either affirm the dominant versions of physically superior, stoic masculinity (football, rugby), or of a more passive, lithe femininity (gymnastics, synchronized swimming) are selectively (yet not equally) promoted and celebrated.

Some challenges to this “gender order” have taken place in recent decades– for example, men playing netball or women playing soccer–but at large, sport remains a site that steadfastly reinforces the sexual binary, often privileges narrow versions of gender and (hetero) sexuality, and systematically excludes all those who fail or refuse to conform. The historical link between gender and sport, sadly, cannot be magically swept away by the flick of a wand. But could it be subject to a transformation spell? By this logic, and unlike other sports, the classification of team members in quidditch is not based on (supposedly pre-existing) biological grounds, but on gender self-identification as male, female, or “other”.

Now take a few seconds to visualize the champion team of the Quidditch World Cup 2018 (yes, real). Do you fear that it might comprise seven men, half of them “claiming” to be women for the mere purpose of winning? If so, you share our very own immediate and deeply ingrained assumptions. First, that victory is all that matters in sport, downplaying other potential values such as camaraderie, diversity, inclusion, and ultimately, ethics. Second, that males are inherently better than females at quidditch–even if we have never watched a match. And third, that people do in fact neatly fall into binary sex categories relevant for the practice of quidditch–or any other sport. By introducing the Gender Maximum Rule, which a priori may seem like another case of positive action and gender quotas, the quidditch community proclaims that any aspect of sex, gender and/or sexuality cannot be taken for granted or societally determined. This leads us to question the common understanding of what constitutes an opposite and the attachment to binary categories, embracing instead the idea that human biology, desire, social behaviour, and even sport performance are all overlapping, variable and fluid.

As fair and liberating as this may sound, it cannot be ignored, for example, that women’s and men’s world records in several sporting events are separated by persistent gaps (elite men’s running times are about 10% faster than women’s, with even larger differences in jumping and throwing). But is athletic performance simply a product of physical difference? What about other factors such as emotional, financial and political support? Coaching, discipline, and mental toughness? What about decades of marginalization, stigmatization, and neglect that have prevented women from fully engaging in sports, particularly in those traditionally associated with men? And how does biology help to explain the even greater gender gap in terms of sport governance, where men hold a startling 93% of leadership roles?

Against this background, the legislatively mandated equality established by quidditch’s Gender Maximum Rule may serve as a useful means of promoting gender equity, at least for now. As per the “self-identified” gender policy, which may appear as odd as the game it regulates, it might actually reflect more sensitivity and progressive thinking from the code than most of its centenarian counterparts. By challenging the notion of biological reductionism and associated dualism, the analogous assumptions about gender and even sexuality lose their anchor. If sex is actually overlapping and fluid, what does it mean to be male/female? masculine/feminine? hetero/homosexual? And ultimately, what does it mean to be an athlete? Looking forward, however, as quidditch becomes more popular, and potentially more competitive, it will be interesting to examine the impact this may have not only on team composition, but the ethos of the sport itself. For us “muggles” (non-magical people), seeing is believing…

Lourdes Turconi is a doctoral researcher in the School of Physical Education, Sport and Exercise Sciences at the University of Otago, New Zealand. Her work examines heteronormativity in sport organisations’ efforts to develop anti-homophobia policies.

Dr Sally Shaw is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Physical Education, Sport and Exercise Sciences at the University of Otago. Her research focuses on governance, gender, and sexuality in sport organisations.

Dr Mark Falcous is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Physical Education, Sport and Exercise Sciences at the University of Otago. His research, teaching and supervision are broadly within the area of the sociology of sport.

Beth Mowins became only the second woman to serve as a play-by-play announcer for a regular season National Football League (NFL) game when she called the Monday Night Football (MNF) broadcast of the Chargers-Broncos game on Sept. 11, 2017. Mowins has called games for ESPN since 1994, and her repertoire spans college football, college basketball, and, for 23 years, the softball world series. As Chris Finn noted on boston.com, “[Mowins] confirmed again to little surprise that she’s a steady and often superb broadcasting pro, no pronoun qualifier necessary.” However, that Finn even needed the pronoun reference indicates why Mowins is significant for the proverbial hill she climbed to reach the MNF booth despite having the credentials to merit the opportunity years before.

From an “arduous struggle” to the NFL broadcast booth, the long trek for female sportscasters has centered on access, credibility, sustained opportunity, and pay. Gender and racial stereotypes for sportscasters have persisted for decades with women relegated to sideline reporter roles and people of color as analysts and sideline reporters, while (mostly white) males maintain the coveted play-by-play positions. The minimized place for female announcers represents workplace segregation and exemplifies an imbalance between women’s sports participation and fandom, which is incongruent with the small portion of females covering sports. Historically and socially, sport and media are averse to gender and racial equity in the broadcast booth.

Before Mowins, 30 years passed since Gayle Sierens broke the NFL broadcasting gender barrier when she called the Seahawks-Chiefs game in the 1987 regular season finale on NBC. I have known Sierens for more than a decade since we worked at competing stations in the Tampa television market and had the opportunity to interview her the day after Mowins’ MNF debut. Sierens said it is a “blur” about what she remembers from her pioneering moment for female sportscasters but did not think it would be three decades before another woman repeated the feat. Sierens exchanged text messages before the Monday night game with Mowins and sent flowers to the broadcast booth.

“I was so proud of her and just thrilled to see her because she is a true professional,” Sierens said. “She is so good at her craft.”

Mowins was paired with former New York Jets and Buffalo Bills head coach turned rookie broadcaster Rex Ryan. Ryan’s debut as a game analyst, which the New York Post described as a “surprising ESPN disaster,” provides another gendered stereotype in broadcasting that assumes a former coach or player can seamlessly transition into the booth, especially in men’s sports, without years of practice like Mowins. Sierens felt Mowins handled the challenge of calling an NFL game better than she did and echoed a San Diego Union-Tribune recap that Mowins “provided needed polish” to make up for Ryan’s mistakes.

“I truly would have loved to have seen her with someone that was a little bit better than Rex Ryan in the broadcast because I think she just so far outshined him,” Sierens said. “I thought she blew it out of the water.”

Sierens is surprised it took 30 years for another woman to call an NFL game but does wonder how many female sportscasters are interested in doing play-by-play. Sierens had opportunities to call future games for NBC but ultimately decided, along with a strong nudge from her bosses, to remain at WFLA as the station’s news anchor. After 38 years at the Tampa station, Sierens retired in 2015 with her NFL connection among her most momentous professional achievements. Then pregnant with her first child in 1987, Sierens faced a gendered workplace debate of motherhood versus profession. She chose the “secure, stable thing” that resulted in an Emmy award-winning broadcast career. However, the trailblazing moment remains relevant, especially in the wake of Mowins’ achievement, and raises some questions.

“I don’t have any regrets,” Sierens said. “You just have the what ifs. What if I had done it? What might that have been like [to call more games]? And would it have opened these doors for women a long time ago? That’s the only thing I ever kind of feel guilty about.”

Women breaking through to broadcast booths in perceived masculine sports (baseball, basketball, football, hockey) are not nonexistent but also not abundant. Gayle Gardner paved the way in MLB play-by-play in 1989, but few women have followed. Before Mowins started calling college football in 2005, Pam Ward broke that barrier in 2000 and provided play-by-play for ESPN for 11 years, but not without gendered criticism before she was let go in 2012. Doris Burke began covering the NBA in 2003 as a sideline reporter before switching to the analyst role. Burke made waves early in 2017 when she stepped away from her 20-year run covering the WNBA to focus solely on the NBA. The move did not conform to the gendered ideology that women should only cover women’s sports and aspire to “meet male standards” when afforded to sparingly enter the male domain. That is part of the larger societal issue at play.

Then there is the gender-role socialization factor of motherhood where travel for work can place strain on home and family. Cassie Campbell discussed the role of motherhood six years after becoming the first female analyst in 2006 for Hockey Night in Canada, which rarely, if ever, engages in discourse about fatherhood surrounding male broadcasters. Jessica Mendoza told The Atlantic that she faced a similar family decision as Sierens before becoming the first full-time female analyst in Major League Baseball in 2016 when she debuted with ESPN. Mendoza then received scrutiny on social media despite her All-American and Olympic softball playing career that should clearly legitimize her ability to break down the game. Mendoza and Sierens each mentioned a desire to not “screw it up” for fear of doors closing for other aspiring female announcers.

Mowins is a glowing sign of progress and has been tapped to call at least three more NFL games in 2017 for CBS, but female announcers still face challenges from network executives in a male dominated landscape. A full-time play-by-play gig is the next major step for female sportscasters. On this front, Sierens sees an opportunity for a long-term shift if those male suits are willing to break traditional stereotypical ranks.

“The only advice I would have is don’t put any blinders on to who should be allowed to do these kinds of events,” Sierens said, “because of Beth’s performance (on MNF) and for years frankly… that is a conversation that people will be having a lot more than they used to.”

Travis R. Bell is a multimedia journalism instructor at the University of South Florida. He has published in the International Journal of Sport Communication and Communication & Sport and has forthcoming book chapters about hyper-sexualization of female tennis players and racialized identity in football recruiting. Bell was a sports broadcast journalist from 2000-2012. You can read more on his website www.travisrbell.com.

I am golfer, and people often ask, “since when?,” or “for how long?” I can’t answer that accurately, and my response is generally, “since my aunt took me out on early summer mornings when I was a youngster.” Seven years old? Maybe nine or ten—I’m not sure. But I do recall my Red Ball Jets being thoroughly saturated by the morning dew. My aunt loved to play, and I loved it too. The etiquette, she reminded me often, was what really mattered. Little did I realize back then just how much that etiquette, especially as it relates to being a “lady,” would speak to my place in the larger world.

On the cover of Sara Ahmed’s new book, Living a Feminist Life (2017), bell hooks is quoted as stating, “[e]veryone should read this….” And while this piece is not a book review, nor an epistle on the merits of feminism, Ahmed’s work offers us additional insight to what lies at the core of gender and the game of golf.

I’ll get back to Ahmed’s work shortly, but in the interim you—the reader—will have to engage a passion of a game I hope to play for a lifetime. Golf, a symbol of elitism and arguably one of the culture’s most racist, sexist and classist of sports still garners wide-spread social appeal. A major sport in terms of socioeconomic impact, the classical sociological thinker Thorstein Veblen would likely find it a fitting example of his notion of “conspicuous consumption”—the idea that (golf as a form of) leisure marks one’s social status. As a critic of capitalism, Veblen would likely ally this leisurely practice with the notion of waste.

Still, in golf’s wasteland lie a trove of stories as the history of the game supports a rich body of literature. Yet when reading deeply through that history, the stories yield little on women in comparison to men. As a woman who has played since childhood when my sexed body mattered less, I have ensconced myself into its field of play, and it is from that vantage point that I want to describe, rather re-describe its everydayness—from the greeting at the pro shop, to the labeling on the card, to playing the “forward” tees. Golf, in all of its pretense and associated vogue, could use some diversity training, and a retreat through a feminist lens might help.

Here, I would like to draw attention to the gendered assumptions, the judgments embedded in the games’ social constitution. Out of this vocabulary is the game’s need for the “ladies.” The more culturally sensitive or perhaps astute (read: classed) venues, may offer the equivalent “gentlemen” and perhaps “seniors” or “juniors”, but more often than not, the golfing literature and venues writ large prefer the designation of women as “ladies.” So embedded in the rhetoric of golf is the term that it constitutes nothing less than institutionalized sexism. “Ladies” who golf are simply not—nor arguably are they intended to be—the social equivalent of the men who play.

Almost immediately upon entering a golfing venue—we, Simone de Beauvoir’s “second sex”—are identified accordingly with the greeting, “Good morning, ladies!” The scorecard—a necessary accouterment to play, bills a woman’s standing in similar ways. Generally, men are assumed to play the white tees and “ladies” the red tees. To rationalize the seeming respect shown to women who play golf by affirming their “lady-ness,” is to cater to the point. An interpreted overly sensitive (a.k.a., feminist) response to this disruption expresses the problem of labels. Pointing to such labels is to call consciousness to the game’s unreflexive expectations and outcomes. Even when peers upon approaching the green suggest in golf’s most affirming hopes, just a “chip and a putt, ladies,” my gut moves to unrest.

The media’s commentary on golf is no less absent the vernacular. Consider a recent NBC commentary at Kingsbarns Golf Links of Scotland, host to the 2017 Ricoh Women’s (thank you) British Open. On discussing the old links style of course, the female commentator described it as a “modern links” while the male commentator added that, “the guy who designed the course the ladies played … the men played … last week ….” [sic.] Emphasis mine.

It is here that Ahmad’s work aptly applies to golf’s everydayness. “Through feminism,” she writes, “you make sense of wrongs; you realize that you are not in the wrong. But when you speak of something as being wrong, you end up being in the wrong all over again. The sensation of being wronged can thus end up magnified: you feel wronged by being perceived as in the wrong just for pointing out something is wrong. It’s frustrating” (p. 38).

Golf can be frustrating enough without the every-hole-reminder of my lady-ness—the unreflective point that I am not quite enough for this game, that I don’t fully belong to the club. To this end, I am happy to accept Ahmad’s notion that I am—by virtue of this simple narrative—a feminist killjoy. I have leapt into the socially unconscious golfer’s mind and stepped on their buzz. I am fully aware that it is preferred of those speaking on oppressions (as seemingly minor as this) that we ignore such matters (and they will go away). While those more privileged and uninterested in hearing the label—benefit by taking no notice. But in an effort to understand such underlying meanings, paying attention matters.

In spite of my vantage point, I find the game pleasurable, pleasing, enjoyable, delightful really. My pleasure. The term pleasure itself appeals to the “ladies” as by definition such women are cast to please, to give pleasure, to be approved (of). But it is the natural elements of the humanly constituted landscape offering pastoral images that I prefer—the shadows, sunsets, dew, wildlife, water. The sounds. And nowhere as a woman can I find acres of space—often to myself—as I might on a golf course. In the game and its settings, I find a turn toward beauty.

Still, when its sexist, racist and pretentious inklings enter its environs, my pleasure retreats. My joy has been killed. Call me overly sensitive, call me wrong—but please don’t call me a “lady.” It’s endless really. Just look and listen carefully, that’s all it takes, and then maybe another other can help make it go away. Or just maybe, we could wo-“man up” and take it even one step further.

Jane Stangl, Ph.D. is a sociologist of sport and currently serves as the dean of the first year class at Smith College in Northampton, MA. She is an avid golfer and a professional instructor of the game working with JBC Golf, Inc.

The racist and historically problematic myth of the “savage” lives on within contemporary North American discourse. A prominent example of this is found in the rising popularity of adventure races, such as Savage Race, Tough Mudder and Warrior Dash, in which sporting companies reproduce traditional notions of masculinity and comradery through environmental and obstacle conquest. In at least one of the events, a historically racist term like “savage” is frequently employed to sell customers an opportunity to push themselves to their physical, mental, and emotional limits by running a purposefully rural, physically-taxing course filled with predesigned obstacles and stressful natural environments (running through mud and near dangerous elements like fire and barbed wire, for example). It is symptomatic of the enduring ubiquity of racial ideals within American society that, through a company like Savage Race, customers pay for a chance to be physically active, have fun and “get savage.”

Scholars, such as cultural anthropologist Lee Baker, have examined the history of “savage” as a racial classification created by Western, imperial powers to characterize indigenous and non-Western peoples. By labelling them as savages, Euroamerican powers defined indigenous groups through ethnocentric, exaggerated, idealized “traits” in order to naturalize their intellectual and cultural inferiority within the dominant Western racial hierarchy. In some cases, more benevolent Western observers called indigenous peoples “noble savages,” expanding the racial stereotype to imply the spiritual and ecological superiority of the primitive. This racist myth has existed in the United States since the country’s founding and has long been used to justify American programs to Christianize, civilize, conquer and murder indigenous societies.

In other words, “savage” has deep roots as an invented term employed to serve the interests of those in positions of power. As scholars who study the historical effects of Western colonialism tell us, European imperialism and conquest resulted in the forced classification of peoples according to the constructed social categories of race and gender. People may use the term to mean different, contextually specific things in their everyday vernacular, but the use of “savage” by an American commercial sporting business within mainstream public discourse inevitably recalls and supports this historical narrative of imperial conquest, racial classification, and human oppression.

Judging by the language and imagery of the Savage Race website, the company has a clear idea of what they think “savage” means: a masculine individual who encounters and overcomes treacherous “wilderness” and natural elements. As a modern sporting practice designed to rationalize and structure the supposed “savage” elements of “pre-modern” life into a commercial, regulated form, Savage Race by its very nature reinforces the myth of the savage as someone primitive, primordial, and instinctual. The planned course obstacles are described in terms of their physical intensity, danger and conquest, and are designed to “push your limits farther than you ever have before.” Just as savage peoples seemingly did physically challenging, “wild” and “primitive” things in their everyday lives, the logic follows, now people can enjoy a similar, physically taxing experience, but in a safe, regulated environment provided by a modern American business. The company’s logo is an overtly masculine figure running with a primitive hatchet, reinforcing a vision of a savage’s physical struggles with natural wilderness. By completing a Savage Race event, participants get to do something they don’t normally do for a day: be a “savage,” get muddy, encounter fire and other natural elements, overcome difficult obstacles and scenarios, and push themselves to their physical and mental limits.

It is unclear from their website whether the company founders understand the term’s deep historical and racial roots. Viewing their video promotions, they seem to think “being savage” is a culturally benign, evocative phrase: a catch-all for conjuring imagery of “adventure” and physical toughness against “natural” and primal elements. However, people do not express their words and concepts in a historical and cultural vacuum, and we cannot easily sever a concept like “savage” from its racially-charged, imperialist history. Like the demeaning caricatures of American Indians reinforced by some professional sports mascots, the name Savage Race reproduces a racist myth deeply rooted in the history of American racial imperialism and the colonial classification of indigenous peoples.

Savage Race is just one of the latest in a legacy of institutions co-opting indigenous cultural practices for the purposes of “playing Indian”—what historian Philip Deloria calls the appropriation of Indian ideas, culture and practices in the shaping of American national identity. The Boy Scouts, the Camp Fire Girls, the mascots of professional sports teams, and now Savage Race provide a few poignant examples of white Americans “playing Indian,” by idealizing, caricaturing and dehumanizing Indian peoples and their customs for the fashioning of white American identity. Now, with Savage Race, Americans can pay a race registration fee and “pretend” for a day that they too are back in a treacherous wilderness where they must overcome trying obstacles and harsh natural elements.

Clearly, within the complicated cultural politics of national identity, people and organizations continue to construct versions of Americanness in opposition to an invented “Other,” a racially classified, primitive, conquered counterpart to American civilization. As such, the issue cannot be remedied simply by changing a company’s name or a sports team’s mascot, for they are only symptomatic of the deeper, embedded issues within the structures of American thought. Such issues are reminders that we have yet to learn from the history of indigenous colonization, and that we still have a long way to go in deconstructing the accompanying racial stereotypes within American society and sporting culture.

Samuel M Clevenger is a PhD candidate in Kinesiology, focusing on Physical Cultural Studies, at the University of Maryland, College Park. His doctoral research focuses on the cultural and environmental biopolitics of international garden city movement planning. He recently explored the significance of decolonial thinking for deconstructing modern and Western constructs in sport history, published in the journal Rethinking History: The Journal of Theory and Practice.