A Critical Eye on the Sports Industrial Complex

24 Jan

One of the skills I want you to develop is to be able to translate theory to real-world situations. Consider the following: Some scholars argue that sports is the ideal democracy because individuals are rewarded strictly based on ability. In thinking about college and professional sports, do you think that this is true? If you do, what evidence is there that it is true? If you do not, where is the racism located?

2 Replies to “A Critical Eye on the Sports Industrial Complex

  1. In sports today racism does exist one clear example that comes to mind is in the NFL. The NFL is mostly an African American league with 75% of the athletes being African American and only 5 out of the 32 head coaches are African American coaches. Many former player pursue coaching. just by looking at the statistics it would be obvious that there would be more African American coaches than there are now.

  2. I realize that this is a very late response but, sports are only partially based on ability everything else is based on looks. In sports today every coach has an “ideal” image of what they want their players to look like, must be this tall, this muscular, broad shoulders, long arms, he must meet x, y, and z. Sports have moved from ability to potential. What can a coach do with a guy who may not have the talent as someone else but has the body type they want. It is hard to justify this with numbers and evidence other than personal connotations from the experiences that my father and myself have experienced while trying to get kids to college and myself to college. Its hard for me to express that because of this “build” that a coach has for the type of player in terms of race, size, or body type where the Racism lies. But what I can say is that coaches have these “ideal players” and race plays a part.

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