Contexts

Last May, when former San Diego Chargers linebacker Junior Seau, who had suffered from numerous concussions, committed suicide, fans and pundits called for the improvement of helmets, suggesting they would reduce the risk of concussion. But safer helmets could exacerbate violence in sports such as football and ice hockey.

In their 1999 book chapter, Rock Climbers and Rugby Players: Identity Construction and Confirmation, sport sociologists Peter Donnelly and Kevin Young discuss the idea of a macho culture in sports that encourages players to play aggressively and be reckless. Players often fear that if they do not conform to this culture they will be ridiculed by peers, jeered by fans, and punished by coaches. By providing players with the impression that they can play more aggressively, with less fear of getting hurt, safer helmets may exacerbate the risks in this aggressive sports culture.

Rather than improve safety technology, football and hockey leagues need to address the underlying aggressive sports culture. Some are already doing so, enforcing rules about head contact and emphasizing in-game penalties instead of exclusively using fines or suspensions—changes designed to make players slow down and think about their actions, and avoid in-game penalties that hurt the entire team—versus fines or suspensions, which target an individual. These changes are more likely to promote safer play.

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When people watch football, they tend to focus on their favorite team. But this season the NFL referees’ lockout has shifted attention to the men in stripes.

Fans complained that replacement referees took too long to announce basic penalties, that they didn’t know which way to face to address the crowd, and that they couldn’t keep up with the pace of the game. But fans rarely complain about the home-team advantage that regular referees give teams, according to economist Tobias Moskowitz and sports journalist L. Jon Wertheim in their 2011 book, Scorecasting.

In a 2000 article in the European Journal of Social Psychology, social psychologists Michael Lupfer, Kelly Weeks and colleagues showed that most people judge fairness on the basis of consistency and predictability. Even though fans prefer good decisions, they may see bad or incorrect decisions as fair if referees are consistent. Fans get less upset when referees favor the home team because that’s something every home team counts on.

When fans saw replacement referees’ decision-making as inconsistent, unreliable, and biased, it made them feel cheated. For the duration of the lockout, their anger resonated throughout Twitter and Facebook. A controversial, last-second touchdown call that gave Seattle a win over Green Bay led to particularly scathing comments about the referees. One meme, for example, pictured Stevie Wonder next to the caption “Roses are Black, Violets are Black, Everything is Black, Touchdown Seahaws.”

Once the lockout ended last September, fans finally went back to the time-honored tradition of calling the referees blind–every other game.

Sociologist D. Randall Smith argues that a segment of big-time college sports has embraced the corporate model and this has led to a steady increase in the revenue gap between the “haves” and “have nots.”

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Girls and women have more opportunities since Title IX, but the playing field is still far from level. Cheryl Cooky and Nicole M. Lavoi explore how major inequities remain, especially in terms of media attention, distribution of institutional resources and opportunities to coach and lead in the world of sport.

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A closer look at Malcolm Gladwell’s “iron law of Canadian Hockey” reveals that birthday cut-offs in pee-wee leagues do not, in fact, predict eventual hockey stardom. The authors find that the Gladwell’s supposed bias levels out once players reach the major leagues.

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Because disability sports are segregated from able-bodied sports, they’re typically relegated to second-class status, as if only “natural” bodies play natural sports and “unnatural” bodies play unnatural sports. A closer look at the sport of wheelchair basketball suggests new conceptions of sport and bodies may be in order.

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Conventional wisdom suggests the younger generation will suffer long-term social and psychological consequences from too much structured time. But a hard look at national data reveals our children are neither over-programmed nor suffering any harmful effects from participating in organized activities. To the contrary, organized activity benefits children’s social and intellectual development.

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