Deviance In Sport

Sports and Brands Today the sports industry is a multi-billion dollar business and everyone knows that with hard work and potential you could walk into a world where your next sponsoring deal is just around the corner, but where does this whole industry have its roots? Throwback to the 19th century: Sports like boxing or rowing had been around for decades. Professional boxing was even seen as a job but sports in general were not seen as serious as they are now. Amateurs and Professionals could take part in rowing championships.

When it comes to domestic violence and sports team’s players, the sports team does have an ethical responsibility to decide the player’s fate. The sports teams are put in an ethical dilemma as to whether it’d be better for the team to keep a player despite what they did or just lose them. This can be seen in the MLB right now with the Yankees, the Dodgers, and Aroldis Chapman. Chapman “has been the subject of domestic violence allegations” and so “the Dodgers reportedly passed on such a trade because of the allegations.” The Yankees did the opposite and acquired Chapman because of his record breaking 105 mph fastball.

Most people probably think that simply shaking the other team’s hands at the end of the game is sportsmanship, but that is not how people should view it. Webster’s Online Dictionary defines sportsmanship as, “conduct (such as fairness, respect for one's opponent, and graciousness in winning or losing) becoming to one participating in a sport,” (“Sportsmanship”). I loved playing sports and I loved watching sports when I was growing up and because of that I was able to see many great and many bad examples of sportsmanship.

Deviance can be defined as behavior that violates social expectations and norms. Deviance can be something small like dressing like a hippy or in gothic clothing, or something big like robbing a bank. Each society has laws and rules to keep one from committing deviant acts. Colin Kaepernick is going against NFL policies, going against his duty as an American citizen, and finally, he is disrespecting the men and women who fought and died for this country. I believe Colin Kaepernick is being deviant when kneeling to the flag.

Imagine yourself on the sidelines of The Peach Bowl as you watch your team in the final quarter of the game. The score is 28-24 with the lead going to the opposing team. The fans are screaming and your adrenaline is high. On the current play, you see the starting quarterback take a hard hit straight to his head. He walks off the field and the head coach points him in your direction.

Very often the athlete is put on trial by the public before all facts have been uncovered. However, as expected the athlete’s deviant behavior elicits a response from fans (Norms & Deviance, PP) Consequently, the leagues usually exact punishment to the extent of public uproar rather the extent of the misconduct. As results some athletes may be punished unfairly or given leniency based on public opinions.

Ethical issues in sports Sports in today’s world have gained a lot of importance and there have been a lot of additions to sports in the form of new rules, policies the way it is meant to be played etc. Though many stringent laws are framed, implemented and monitored there are always some sort of issues in the way the sports activities are carried out. Regardless of the level of participation some of the players resort to unethical ways of winning the event. The attitude towards the sportsmanship has changed significantly over the years.

The social theories that I have chosen to focus on are Conflict Theory and Feminist Theory. I have decided to study these concepts as they share both similar and contradictory ideas of sport participation and power in sport. I will also explore the topic of disability and sport in an attempt to illustrate the great need for integration of athletes with disabilities into mainstream clubs and teams. Finally, I will investigate the area of sexuality and sport, a subject which I believe has remained very much concealed until recent times. Conflict theory states that “social order is based on economic interests and the use of economic power to exploit labour”.

Sporting athletic leagues have been around since 1903, when New York City’s Public School Athletic League for Boys was established creating formal contests between kids and adults. Racism has been around since humans have diversified into different races, ethnicities, and religions and coming together and clashing. How has sports and racism interacted with each other to make such a social uproar? Personally, I believe in playing the game how it’s supposed to be played without politics being involved, regardless of the opponent’s skin color or religious beliefs. The media has portrayed the sporting world in such a negative light to gain more attention to the average viewer, while forgetting what the main aspect of sports is all about, winning.

According to Wikipedia, social norms can be defined as the accepted standards of conduct among various social groups. Social norms can affect most decisions a society makes including about parasports. People with impairments, especially those who are physically or mentally challenged, participate in activities known as parasports. With the steady emergence of different sports and sporting competitions specifically designed for athletes with different types of disabilities, there has come an opportunity to revise, update, and create entirely new social norms and standards to better accommodate these athletes. The standards these athletes face is both similar and unique to the standards faced by non-disabled athletes and therefore require equal amounts of unique and universal changes to better support athletes with different disabilities.

Although there are many positive aspects to sports participation, as a player or a spectator, but in today 's world of sports there are constant themes of aggression and violence in every athletic event, such as Basketball, Baseball, Soccer, and most of all Football which should be contained to a certain limit. Aggression in sports can be shown in many different ways. In baseball aggression can be throwing a pitch inside to a player or sliding into second base and taking the second baseman out. In basketball it can be a hard foul or setting a pick that blind sides a player. In soccer it can be a hard slide tackle possibly resulting in broken bone.

An ethical problem that is prevalent in our sports world today is gender inequality. Gender inequality has consistently shown up in sports performance and is a pervasive issue affecting many athletes, specifically female athletes. With social exclusion, limited opportunities, harassment and gender discrimination in sports at all levels of play, female athletes have to work much harder to be acknowledged and recognized for their athletic ability and skill over their male counterparts. Gender inequality in sports can lead to ethical dilemmas, such as when the governing body of a specific sports activity must decide whether to allocate its funding and time to female athletes with lower broadcasting or to the male counterpart athletes with more

Jonathon Mills Lauryn Kelly AIM 102 October 29, 2015 Instinct Violence is the exertion of physical force with an intent to injure a person, place, or thing, and a sport is an activity involving physical exertion and skill by an individual or group of individuals to compete. Contact sports become violent when they are taken to an extreme, so American football, ice hockey, rugby football, lacrosse, soccer, boxing, mixed martial arts, wrestling, and water polo are contact sports in which you should be able to control those extremities. Banning violent sports remains a highly debated topic in today’s society. Throughout history, sport and violence have been synonymous.

According to Dietl, Franck, Grossmann, & Lang (2009), “professional team sports is an interesting source of natural experiments” for contest theory due to its many different organizational structures and setups across the world. Some sports enjoy the luxury of having extensive databases, making them one of the most empirically tested areas in contest theory. Within sports economics, researchers often focus on risk taking and/or effort. The most prominent empirical tests in the case of effort revolve around incentives and heterogeneity. Researcher focusing on risk often additionally test the impact of gender and the number of competitors.

The success for athletes is based on the number of fans and sponsors a player has. Sports organizations rely on the records of the teams and not the player that work to death to make those wins. The athletes of a team don’t get paid enough from their team's commissioners so for their money they rely on their sponsors. To make sports famous the sports organization relies on sponsors and fan bases. The fan bases and sponsors invest in the sports organization instead of the teams.