Monthly Archive for September, 2011

The Problem with the Indian Media and Why You Should Care

Published on September 28, 2011 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

Hartosh Singh Bal, 3 Quarks Daily

In 1977 an Australian media tycoon changed the world of cricket. His name was Kerry Packer, but in his approach to life and business there was little to separate him from Rupert Murdoch. Before Packer intervened, a game of cricket lasted five days, was played by players wearing white and required a level of athleticism that would not shame a Chess or Scrabble champion.

Packer’s intervention was the result of a tussle with the Australian Cricket Board over TV rights for his Channel Nine operations in Australia. He set up a league of his own outside the control of International Cricket Council, a coterie of largely English gentlemen who had run the game internationally as their fiefdom. Packer paid out large sums of money to attract the best players across the world, dressed them in colored clothes, reduced the duration of the game to a day or sometimes a night when it was played under floodlights. By the time of his reconciliation with the ICC a couple of years later, he had changed the game forever.

Thirty years later, as the power and wealth of the Board of Control for Cricket in India increased thanks to a growing economy and India’s success in the very form of the game promoted by Packer, the ICC already under siege, ceded a large measure of power to the Indian body which launched another league of its own, the Indian Premier League (IPL). Unlike the Packer League, the IPL, which is as avowedly commercial in its motivations, has done little to change or improve cricket. Rather, in bringing together Indian corporate interests and politicians looking for both money and power through their association with the game, the game as organized by the IPL has come to resemble a bout organized by the World Wrestling Federation. In the process IPL has actually managed to make Packer look like a visionary saint.

To Read More…

Those Guys Have All The Cash

Published on September 20, 2011 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

By Eli S. Evans, N+1 Magazine

A Review of Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN by James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales.  Little, Brown, May 2011.

I would guess that nearly every American sports fan born between, say, 1940 and 1985 has some come-to-Jesus story about ESPN—one that ends with the network occupying the spiritual center of his or her personal sports and entertainment universe. In their new oral history of the network, James Miller and Tom Shales do their best to, as they put it, tell “the story of ESPN.” Those Guys Have All the Fun is structured as a sequence of artfully excerpted interviews with scores of the thousands of people who have worked at, with, or against ESPN during its more than thirty-year history. Divided by epoch into eight chapters, from “1978–1979” to “2009 and Beyond,” this story is, despite the book’s heft (745 pages, to be precise), simple and iconic: a classic rags-to-riches tale takes the reader from the boiling hot Mazda with a broken air conditioner where the father-and-son team of Scott and Bill Rasmussen cooked up the idea for a twenty-four-hour sports network to what Miller and Shales describe, repeatedly and almost rapturously, as “world dominance.”

By and large, Those Guys reads like a book about to be made into a movie. Crucial moments in the story—charging cable providers per subscriber, generating the highly coveted “dual revenue stream,” hiring veteran Rolling Stone editor (and legally blind albino) John Walsh to run SportsCenter, giving the program sturdier journalistic bones while its best anchors were coming into their improvisational and irreverent own—might not sound exhilarating, but by shrewdly arranging the interview excerpts into often tense dialogic relationships and always emphasizing the precariousness of ESPN’s maturation, Miller and Shales succeed in creating the sort of high-stakes conflicts that drive your typical Hollywood thrill ride. These conflicts are brought to life by an obligingly colorful cast of characters: not only the famously mercurial “talent” (in one particularly energetic moment, former college basketball coach and current ESPN analyst Bob Knight describes ESPN reporter Jeremy Schaap, whose father he once counted among his friends, as a “chicken**** little **********”), but also an even more motley group of insecure, bombastic, at times vitriolic misanthropes from the business and production side of things—men and women (but mostly just men) for whom no success seems sufficient unless accompanied by the failure of others.

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Sport and Society Journal Volume 2, Issue 2 now available

Published on September 19, 2011 in Journal and Newsletter. 0 Comments

sport_frontThe second issue of Volume 2 of The International Journal of Sport and Society is now available.

Volume 2, Issue 2 contains:

 

 

 

 

 

Call for Journal Editor

Published on September 7, 2011 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

The International Journal of Sport and Society seeks an editor, or team of editors, for a one-year term. This is an opportunity to make a significant contribution to what we believe will become one of the leading journals in its field, the journal’s associated conference and, more broadly, the knowledge-community which the journal and conference seek to serve.

The roles of the editor are to:

  • write an introduction for the Journal volume which would be included in the first issue for the year, and possibly on the website, the newsletter and other appropriate places or for the purposes of marketing and promotion.
  • collate papers addressing a theme of the editor’s choosing into a book, to be launched at the conference at the completion of the editor’s term. The chapters may be drawn from submissions to the journal during this or recent years, and other material as considered appropriate.
  • actively solicit manuscripts for the Journal from well-known and notable members of the community—these would could be refereed if the author wished, or regarded as ‘invited papers’.
  • assist the Commissioning Editor with suggestions of supplementary peer reviewers for specific papers (and this will never be burdensome – note that the Commissioning Editor of the Journal finalizes a majority of the peer reviewer requirements based on thematic matching and ‘mutual obligation’ principles in which all author requested to review up to three other papers).
  • promote the journal throughout their network and other associated networks.
  • maintain regular communications with the community via periodical blog posts to the community website (which feeds automatically to our email newsletter, Facebook and Twitter).

The editor will be offered a complimentary electronic subscription to the Journal, free copies of the book which they edit, an electronic subscription to the book series as well as complimentary registrations to attend the conferences at the beginning and end of their term.

Qualifications

The Editor of the Journal must possess the following attributes:

  • They will have successfully obtained higher degree, and have academic teaching and scholarly research experience in an area related to the subject matter of the Journal.
  • They will have published in this or other comparable scholarly journals.

Applicants are asked to send:

  1. a cover letter outlining their interest and relevant experience, and the ways in which you would propose to enhance the profile of the journal
  2. a curriculum vitae
  3. a special theme outline: a title with paragraph explanation.

Please send applications and supporting documentation to journals@sportandsociety.com.

The deadline for applications is 26 September 2011.

Sustainability and Sport

Published on September 2, 2011 in Book and Newsletter. 0 Comments

Sustainability and Sport edited by Jill Savery and Keith Gilbert is now available as part of the  Sport and Society series.

Dr Keith Gilbert will be joining us for the 2012 Sport and Society Conference in London.

Dr. Keith Gilbert is a Professor in the School of Health & Bioscience at the University of East London and Director of the Centre for Disability, Sport & Health. He researches in the area of sport sociology [which includes opening up many areas of research innovation] and disability of sport and has a strong interest in qualitative, interpretive and narrative research methodologies. He has numerous publications and has edited several books in the broad areas of sport, sociology, cultural studies, environment and disability.

Dr. Gilbert has written over 55 published research articles. He has been an Executive Board Member of the International Council of Sports Science and Physical Education (ICSSPE) and is currently on the publications Board of (ICSSPE). He has won university awards for teaching and also professional development and given numerous keynote conference presentations. Dr. Gilbert has several PhD students working across different areas of sport and society. His own current research interests include the exploration of the sociological dimensions of sport, sport and the environment, legacy and Paralympic research. Professor Gilbert is chief editor of the International Journal of Sport in Society and he has two book series one in the area of Disability and Sport and the other in the broad area of Sport in Society. Professor Gilbert was also the organiser and chair of a conference on Sport in Society with the University of British Columbia in Vancouver in March 2010 between the Winter Olympics and Paralympics and will continue the Sport and Society conferences in Kolkata 2011 and Cambridge 2012.