Cutler Case Proves Players Need to be Better Educated about Use of Social Media

National Football League players should now have a greater understanding of the impact of social media. Chicago Bears quarterback Jay Cutler certainly is aware of its effects.

In a story that has been well documented, Cutler suffered a knee injury in the second quarter of his team’s NFC Championship game against its long-time rival, the Green Bay Packers. Cutler started the third quarter but quickly exited and failed to play the remainder of the game.

Many of Cutler’s colleagues around the league watching the game on TV immediately grabbed their iPhones, iPads, and other devices and headed to Twitter, where they questioned his toughness, heart, desire, and just about everything else for not playing the rest of the game. Here’s a snippet of some of the tweets by NFL players:

“You dont not play in the NFC championship game cuz your knee hurt, only way I’d come out is if my knee is jus shattered” — Aaron Curry, Seattle Seahawks linebacker

“Hey I think the urban meyer rule is effect right now… When the going gets tough……..QUIT.” — Maurice Jones-Drew, Jacksonville Jaguars running back

“All I’m saying is that he can finish the game with a hurt knee… I played the whole season on one.” —Jones-Drew

“Cutler u little siSsy…how does it feel that ur back up’s backup is the only 1that can put pts on the board!I bet cutler comes back now!” — Raheem Brock, Seattle Seahawks defensive end

“Cutler…wut a sissy! This is the NFC Championship game! Guaranteed if it was brett farve..he would still be in the game!” —Brock

“If I’m on chicago team jay cutler has to wait till me and the team shower get dressed and leave before he comes in the locker room!” — Darnell Dockett, Arizona Cardinals defensive lineman

After receiving backlash about his Twitter posts, and after it was revealed Cutler sprained his MCL in his knee, Jones-Drew tried to backtrack on his tweets, insinuating that they were taken out of context, as if there really is “context” in which tweets should be viewed.

With the exploding popularity of social media, players at both the professional and collegiate level need to be schooled on the ramifications of the tweet-what-you-think mentality. Players standing in front of a group of sports reporters generally would never say many of the things they tweet, yet what they post on Twitter is distributed to just as wide an audience — and it’s distributed immediately without filter.

Brad Schultz, an associate professor in the School of Journalism and New Media at the University of Mississippi, editor of the Journal of Sports Media, and co-author of Media Relations in Sport, 3^rd Edition, believes that players, and everyone in general, need to be better educated about how they use social media.

“The one thing we’re seeing not just in sports, but in all of our culture, is a lack of recognition of the power and immediacy of the social media,” Schultz said. “People will tweet or post, believing that they are just ‘ranting’ to a few friends. In fact, their comments reach a potentially global audience and have a real sense of permanence.”

Perhaps even more education provided to players by sports information specialists, coaches, administrators, or front office personnel is needed to better educate players about the ramifications of their social media use. But some schools, teams, and leagues are taking it a step further, and supervising, regulating, and sometimes banning players’ use of social media.

“Look at the trouble the North Carolina football program got in last fall when several players were suspended for inappropriate tweets,” Schultz said. “The school now has a coach whose duties include monitoring each player’s social media site and Twitter account. Obviously, it’s a different story in professional leagues, and while the NFL does have a policy in place, the situation needs to be more firmly addressed by individual teams.”

Sports writing, Gay Talese, and the human drama: a review

[Braham Dabscheck is an industrial relations scholar, sports writer and enthusiast, and author of the upcoming title, Reading Baseball: Books, Biographies, and the Business of the Game, to be published this summer, 2011, by FiT. He has written extensively on many aspects of sport, and he continues with that tradition today by offering a review of The Silent Season of a Hero: The Sports Writing of Gay Talese, by Michael Rosenwald, 2010. Dabscheck is a man proper from Down Under, and out of respect for his Australian English, no edits have been made to his vernacular.]

Michael Rosenwald (ed.), The Silent Season of a Hero: The Sports Writing of Gay Talese, Walker & Company, New York, 2010, ISBN 978-0-8027-7753-9, pp. viii + 308, US $16.00, paper.

Gay Talese is a leading American writer and journalist. He is now into his seventh decade of writing. Besides his journalism and The Silent Season of a Herohe has published eleven other books. They range over such matters as the Italian immigrant experience, American sexuality, a mafia family, New York, bridge building, a behind the scenes peek of the New York Times, portraits of leading American characters, musings on writing and an edited work of short stories.

In the Introduction to The Silent Season of a Hero Talese points to a mesmerising sentence penned by Carson McCullen, in a piece entitled The Jockey that appeared in the New Yorker on 23 August 1941. It reads, “If he eats a lamb chop, you can see the shape of it in his stomach a hour later”. He read this in 1956 when he was 24 and found himself fascinated by the imagery of the sentence. He goes on to say that in his writing he sought to apply the skills of fiction writing to non fiction (p. 3). He modelled himself on Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John O’Hara and Irwin Shaw, the latter two writers with theNew Yorker.

Talese came to writing by chance. Lorin Angevine, a customer of his father, who was a tailor in Ocean City, New Jersey, asked Talese to contribute articles to his weekly, the Sentinel-Ledger on “High School Highlights”. He also wrote a column called “Sportopics”. He was unsuccessful in his quest to find a college in his region after graduating from high school. Another friend of his father contacted his alma mater, the University of Alabama, who agreed to enrol Talese in a journalism course. By his junior year he was writing sports stories for the Crimson-White. After graduating he landed a job as a copyboy with the New York Times in 1953.

Michael Rosenwald, a staff writer with the Washington Post has brought together some of the best examples of Talese’s sports writing. Rosenwald tells us that Talese was an outsider at school and rejected the approach that his journalism teachers, of who-what-when-where-why, tried to drill into him (pp.17-19). There are also indications that Talese had more than a few battles with editors over his approach to writing. Talese from a young age had worked out how he wanted to write and held steadfast to his views. The proof of his pudding is in its eating.

Talese’s sports writing is really unconcerned with who won or lost. He is more concerned with the playing out of the human drama, of those who find themselves caught up in the spider’s web that is sport. Talese is interested in the oddball, or what others might regard or tangential matters associated with sport. There are three issues which feature in The Silent Season of a Hero. First, there are those persons who operate apart from or outside the gaze of the mainstream of sport; whether they be a boxing referee, the time-keeper of boxing matches at Madison Square Garden, a boxing trainer, a former bare-knuckle boxer, a female golfing star, a female roller derby veteran, a horseshoe maker, a barbell exponent, a mouth guard making dentist or a baseball (off the field) sports agent. Second, he is fascinated by losers; of how they respond to loss and coming to grips with the pressure of unrealised expectations; whether it be Floyd Paterson after being shown up twice by Sonny Liston or the female Chinese soccer player Liu Ying, who missed her kick in the penalty shoot out in the 1999 Female World Cup, which was won by America. Third, the pathos of former stars, such as Joe Louis, Joe DiMaggio and Muhammad Ali who, in different ways, find themselves trapped in a glorious life lived long, long ago.

The Silent Season of a Hero comprises 38 chapters. They range in length to little more than a page, pieces written for a newspaper, to longer pieces over 25 pages for magazines or other publications. Seventeen are devoted to boxing, four each to baseball and more general issues, three to golf, two to football and the rest are spread across a broad range of sports. One piece is pure whimsy where Talese gives full rein to his humour. He refers to a social anthropologist, a Dr. Ray Birdwhistell who devoted his life to studying athletes who perform “merely to provide Roman circuses for customers: (p. 200). Amongst other things, this chapter highlights the vulnerability of male athletes, who by stint of circumstances and the demands of monastic minded coaches are forced into all male environments, and “just never seemed to learn how to defend themselves against a marrying woman” (p. 188). The good Dr. also noted how those who can play baseball are subject to the revenge of those hopeless kids in sandlot games who were chosen last and forced to play right field who subsequently became sports writers or managers (p. 194). His more substantive point is that athletes who go to college should be given six year scholarships, so that those, the majority, who do not make it to the big time, can be given a real education to enable them to obtain a career and earn a decent living (p. 200).

The chapters included here range from pieces written by Talese as a school boy and then college reporter to his early professional writing where he established his reputation, through to his more mature years. His skill is in his combination of character and narrative. Talese is able to pull readers into the scene, drama and the various persons he is writing about. Especially with his portrayal of his “out of sight” characters I had the feeling that I could see them, knew how they walked, how they dressed, even what they ate for lunch. His most poignant pieces are those of the stars of yesterday: Joe Louis filling in time in his good natured way; Joe DiMaggio’s loneliness in not knowing what to do with the rest of his life; and the awkwardness of the meeting between Muhammad Ali’s meeting with Fidel Castro in Havana in 1996, when “The Greatest” presented a photo of himself and Malcolm X taken on 1963. El Presidente had many skills, but one of them was not one unscripted small talk.

My favourite chapter is “The Loser” on Floyd Paterson, which was first published in 1964, as he seeks to come to terms with his second loss to Sonny Liston. Amongst other things the chapter demonstrates Paterson’s inability to stand up to school boys who are teasing his daughter. There is something in Talese that enables him to obtain the confidence of those who he finds interesting. Paterson opens up to him and explains how in boxing he found a way to escape the poverty of his family circumstances and his sense of inferiority and self loathing. Paterson told Talese

When you’re hungry, you’re not choosy, and so I chose the thing that was closest to me. That was boxing. One day I just wandered into a gymnasium and boxed a boy. And I beat him. Then I boxed another boy. I beat him too. Then I kept boxing. And winning. And I said, “Here, finally, is something I can do!” (pp. 162-3).

Michael Rosenwald tells us that Gay Talese wrote 37 articles on Floyd Paterson (p. 111). Why so many? While the circumstances of Paterson’s and Talese’s early years are radically different, they had in common the problem of finding something to do. They both turned to “the thing that was closest to” them. In Paterson’s case it was boxing, something which he found himself; for Talese it was the pen; something which his father’s acquaintances found for him. Being an outsider Talese was fascinated by and never lost his compassion for other outsiders and those who struggled against overwhelming odds; whether themselves, the fickle finger of fate or the negotiation of the long and sad descent into irrelevance. This is what gave Gay Talese his edge and propelled him to the centre stage of American writing and journalism.

© Braham Dabscheck

Faculty of Law

University of Melbourne

 

Martin Luther King: The Measure of Man (and sport)

In recent months we, the staff at Fitness Information Technology, have had the privilege of publishing (or are preparing to publish) some fine books that have examined the history, culture, and defining roles of African-Americans in sport. These books, together with yesterday’s celebration of what would have been Martin Luther King, Jr.’s 82^nd birthday, has helped our office gain considerable introspect to the dynamics of the sporting arena, and how it has shaped the lives of not only the African-American community, but the national and global community of sport as a whole. We have found that while much focus has been brought to the triumphs of African-Americans in sport, there exists a parallel side—a bleaker side—that shows we still have much to change. Yet we still have much to be thankful for.

The realm of sport in America is a complicated one. Throughout America’s history, the role of the black athlete has been severely limited; many athletes suffered mightily through poor wages, hostile crowds, and even saboteurs and cheating. In the upcoming Sport, Race, and Ethnicity, edited by Daryl Adair, author and scholar Andrew Ritchie brings new focus to Major Taylor, an African-American cyclist who resorted to racing in white Australia to escape the horrors of racing at home. At the time, white Australia was very intolerant towards Aborigines and blacks, yet they observed the champion cyclist with a sort of wondrous enthusiasm as explained by Taylor when he first arrived:

I could not restrain my tears as I looked over the side of the liner and saw hundreds of boats . . . decked out with American flags with their whistles tooting and men and women aboard them with megaphones greeting me with this salutation, ‘Taylor, Taylor! Welcome Major Taylor!’

In another chapter by Randy Roberts, the iconic, prize-fighting white brawler, John L. Sullivan, is showcased against another icon of American masculinity—the legendary black fighter Jack Johnson. Roberts writes how Sullivan declined to fight black boxers in 1892—although there were several great contenders within the ranks–and,

In one stroke, Sullivan banned black boxers from the empire of American masculinity. He set a precedent—Jim Crowing the most important athletic title at a time when ‘separate but equal’ was becoming the law of the land.

But we need not look too far back to realize that African-Americans in modern sport are still facing troublesome times, even though great changes have been made in terms of equality. Richard Lapchick, director of the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport and author of 100 Pioneers: African Americans Who Broke Color Barriers in Sport, shared some of his thoughts:

In the 1970s, African-American student-athletes were graduating at rates hovering around 25 percent and were not employed in any significant way in college athletic departments, professional franchises, or league offices. It was easy to conclude that African-American athletes were being used and exploited at that period of time. Students would come to our colleges and universities dreaming that they would become a pro or at least have a college degree and go home to their communities with neither and seem to be double losers.

After many years of pressure and studies, the disparity between blacks and whites in the hiring practices has certainly changed. Now all of the major professional sports leagues that we cover in the Racial and Gender Report Cards receive A’s in their racial hiring practices and B’s for gender hiring practices.

The sad exception is college sport, where issues of unfair hiring practices or lack of opportunity for African-Americans are still too evident. Women still coach less than half of the women’s teams in college sport. In terms of the graduation rates, the rates of African-Americans have increased dramatically. The greatest remaining problem in that area is that the disparity between the graduation rates for African-Americans and whites is still too significant. More pressure is needed, as exerted by organizations like the Black Coaches and Administrators.

Braham Dabscheck, industrial relations scholar, sporting aficionado, and author of the upcoming Reading Baseball: Books, Biographies, and the Business of the Game, explores, within parts of his book, complicated labor intricacies and how they have been applied to racial divides. Dabscheck wrote about the different worlds Babe Ruth and Satchel Paige—“The Darling of Whiteball and the Epicentre of Blackball”—lived and competed in. He compared the men as being at the top of their game—in hitting and pitching, respectively—and they both had rambunctious nocturnal lives, yet, “The real difference between Paige and Ruth, of course, is that they lived in two different United States of Americas . . . during his prime, Paige was denied the chance to display his talents in the ‘big-time’ because of the color of his skin.”

But Dabscheck was among those who celebrated the inroads that Martin Luther King created within the spectacle and culture of sport, writing to us:

[Dr. King] had a dream that his children would ‘live up in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.’

Sport is one such arena where African-American athletes have demonstrated again and again that they are equal to any of the ‘great stars’ who have dazzled us with their skills and daring. Sport, in its celebration of excellence, is intolerant of arrangements or ‘gentlemen’s agreements’ which discriminate on the basis of race, color, or creed.

In terms of the long march of African-Americans towards equality, Jackie Robinson—who broke the color barrier in ‘The National Pastime’ when he turned out for his first game with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947—has assumed an important role as an exemplar of Martin Luther King’s dream. He was just one of many such athletes, in baseball and other sports, who have demonstrated the equality of opportunity, not so-called racial or other characteristics, is the key to success and performance.

Here, at FiT, we are proud to help promote the academic and cultural backgrounds of sport—the raw beginnings of social change, the overtures of hope, the spirit of pure competition, and the endurance of the spirit. We thank our authors, readers, and colleagues for their assistance in improving our world to one in which we can be proud of, and we thank Dr. King for providing a great foundation of ideals in which we can follow and invoke.

Man is man because he is free to operate within the framework of his destiny. He is free to deliberate, to make decisions, and to choose between alternatives. He is distinguished from animals by his freedom to do evil or to do good and to walk the high road of beauty or tread the low road of ugly degeneracy. – From the speech, “The Measures of Man,” 1959. (In memoriam, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., 2011)

***

Daryl Adair is an associate professor of sport management at the University of Technology in Sydney, Australia. He is the editor of an upcoming collection of essays, titled Sport, Race, and Ethnicity: Narratives of Difference and Diversity, to be published by Fitness Information Technology this summer, 2011.

Richard Lapchick is a pioneer in social change and racial equality in sport. He is chair of the DeVos Sport Business Management Program at the University of Central Florida. He is also the director for both the Institute for Diversity and Ethics and Sport and the National Consortium for Academics and Sports. He has written extensively on race, gender, diversity, and hope in sport, including the titles 100 Pioneers: African Americans Who Broke the Color Barrier, 100 Campeones: Latino Groundbreakers Who Paved the Way in Sport, 100 Trailblazers: Great Women Athletes Who Opened Doors for Future Generations, and150 Heroes: People in Sport Who Make This a Better World, published by FiT.

Braham Dabscheck is an industrial relations scholar, sports writer and enthusiast, and author of the upcoming title, Reading Baseball: Books, Biographies, and the Business of the Game, to be published this summer, 2011, by FiT.

Quantitative Analysis of How to Win H-O-R-S-E … Seriously?

As the production editor of the International Journal of Sport Finance during all of its five years of existence, I have grown to appreciate the quantitative research and analysis that permeates the journal. Even though my brain functions primarily in a qualitative mode (what do you expect from an editor who works daily with words?), I have been enlightened and seen the importance of such analysis relating to sport topics such as stadium finance, uncertainty of outcome, ticket pricing, salaries, state appropriates, donations, and even gambling.

That’s why I was so excited when I saw a post on the Harvard Sports Analysis Collective blog titled “Optimal H-O-R-S-E Strategy.” I thought to myself, “Sweet! I can learn some secret tips that will help me dominate my opponents when we play H-O-R-S-E on my driveway basketball hoop.” After all, my son is nearly 5 years old and is growing stronger and taller daily, and my daughter, nearly 3, can already dribble a basketball. I desperately need some tips or else they’ll soon start defeating their old man in our games of H-O-R-S-E.

I read through the post, concentrating as best as I could in order to grasp the meaning of the equations and all of the letters such as p, n, and k. Math was always my strongest subject in school, but after changing my major from engineering to journalism, I think the portion of my brain that comprehended statistical analysis went into permanent hibernation.

Anyway, the statistical analysis in the blog post wasn’t really difficult to comprehend. But to be honest, the end of the article left me feeling a bit duped. Sure, it was interesting to learn when to take higher percentage field goal attempts and when to take more risky shots (like my favorite from behind the goal and over the backboard). But I felt a bit deflated when I read the following:

“The bad news is if you’re a weaker shot than your opponent it can be very difficult to win even when you use superior strategy. While it will help if you call your shots based on these calculations, at the end of the day the best way to improve your H-O-R-S-E odds is to become more familiar with a basketball and not just with a calculator.”

Upon reading that, I felt crushed. My dreams of being a dominant H-O-R-S-E player by implementing the findings of the article were just dashed. When the snow melts away, the temperatures rise, and winter gives way to spring, it appears my calculator and all my newly acquired knowledge about the statistical analysis of shot selection in the game of H-O-R-S-E won’t really compensate for my utter lack of shooting prowess.

Former MLB Exec Offers Insight Into Sport Sponsorship

Prior to John Brody leaving his position as the senior vice president of corporate sales and marketing for Major League Baseball, Sport Marketing Quarterly Industry Insider section editor Jim Kadlecek interviewed Brody, now with Wasserman Media Group, about a variety of topics. The full interview appears in the December 2010 issue (Vol. 19, No. 4) of Sport Marketing Quarterly.

Q: As a league it seems you have intentionally not sliced categories up but instead have focused on fewer, bigger, and more comprehensive deals that make it a greater value for your partners. Has that been a deliberate approach?

Brody: It is deliberate. Another one of our philosophies is less is more. We don’t have a number. It could be five partners, it could be 30 partners. But if you are truly able to support the all-in philosophy, if you are a best in breed, and we are, then you can be very selective. We are stewards of this great American brand known as Major League Baseball. If we are going to tie our brand into another intellectual property, we want to make sure we do our research. The companies that we are tied to are also best in breed. There is a reason why we are with who we are with. It is not just about finding the right partner who can spend the right amount of money. It is finding the right partner who markets their brand in a way that we want to market ours and also embraces and understands the all-in philosophy.

We have been successful in adding partners strategically but it has always been about less is more; having fewer partners doing more. We believe this is a better philosophy over the long term than expansion of the business in any way, shape, or form that will allow us to get revenue in the short term. We think you do better by having a consistent approach and having the best in breed partners doing more.

Q: Can you tell us about your relationship with Holiday Inn? They seem to have done a very good job of leveraging their relationship with baseball.

Brody: This is an example of what we try to do for brands. Last year they re-launched the Holiday Inn brand in America. Intercontinental Hotels Group, the parent to Holiday Inn, is the largest hotel chain in the world. Holiday Inn is one of those golden brands in America and to change the brand as significantly as they did is a tremendous undertaking. We worked with them for the better part of two years to re-launch the Holiday Inn brand. The first real execution tied to the re-launch of the Holiday Inn brand was around the 2009 Major League Baseball All-Star Game for a few reasons. The simplest reason is the media strength of the All-Star game, using the ability that we had to plan and orchestrate a complete solution on how they would go to market through media and different executions tied to the re-launch of their brand. They knew that they had a big event coming in 2009 and we executed it for them. They have been successful as they looked to 2010 as the first year that this new brand launched. A lot of it had to do with how we unveiled it during All-Star week last year.

Q: With respect to Major League Baseball, can you talk about the role of technology and its impact in the world of sport marketing?

Brody: Technology is, in its simplest form, an enabler to allow people to have greater access to the sport in different ways. If you go back 50 years you needed either to be near a Major League Baseball ballpark or you needed rabbit ears on your television or radio so you could actually hear the game broadcast. Technology has impacted the way that people can enjoy sports, whether you want to instantly find a score update on your PDA or watch a game online on MLB.com even if you are out of the country. I am certainly not the one to predict what the next iPhone application will be, because I am not a technology expert. We have experts here at baseball through our Internet company and our network.

Our job on this side of the business is to try to find more access points for baseball and sports in general. I think technology will continue to find incredibly innovative ways to deliver content. Sports content and baseball content in particular is something that people crave. That is why MLB.com launched at the turn of the century. That is why MLB Network launched this past year and it is the largest launch in the history of cable television—not in cable sports television, but in cable television vs. the likes of MSNBC and OXYGEN and CNBC, FOX Business. We are in more than 54 million homes. That is about access and I think technology will continue to evolve as great minds throughout the country and the world find new ways to integrate technology into customers’ consumption of media and content.

Generally, as a sport and as a property we embrace technology to make the fan experience better. It may be in other forms of media that I talked about or along the lines of what we did with our partner at MasterCard. When you go to the hot dog stand to get your hot dog and a Pepsi you can just swipe your MasterCard rather than having to fumble for cash. We think that is technology being an enabler for improving the customer experience. All of those different forms of technology really help make the experience better. This is a small example, but instant replay began in a limited way in our sport in August of 2008. We looked to our technology partner Sharp to provide the LCD televisions for all 30 Major League ballparks after the commissioner made the decision to allow instant replay in limited forms. Those are just a couple of examples of technology.