Sport management is a young field that is built on a foundation of business and other professional fields
Sport management is a young field that is built on a foundation of business and other professional fields. The discourse of sport management is the same vocabulary as other professional fields. Its history is not very extensive, and the curriculum is still very young. Although the field is young, there are great resources available to advance the curriculum. The ability to manage a staff and effectively communicate to the staff is crucial to the success of a sport administrator. And while APA is the citing resource for sport management, MLA is one of the other citing resources that are very common in professional and educational settings. Overall, sport management is an emerging field that will flourish in the future. Discourse of Sport and Recreation Management
When engaged in conversation with another human being, it is important to listen and follow along with the conversation. It is also keen to speak with proper tone and the appropriate language of the topic discussed. Language of a discussion is referred to as discourse. Copley said it best when describing discourse: “Imagine someone new to sports initiating a conversation with long-time sports fans: ‘So what do you think the Raiders will wear in their next game? (Copley, 2006)” This is better than any definition that a dictionary could ever provide simply because her discourse is easily understood by the readers of the document. Sports management is one of the highest requested majors for incoming freshman in the United States (Mahoney, 2008). While the degree is one of the highest requested majors, it is also one of the most understaffed and underappreciated by universities around the nation (Mahoney, 2008). The discourse, or discourses for sports management are very broad and are interdisciplinary with other fields of study. These fields include law, business, physical education, communications, and psychology. Throughout the paper, these fields of study will be discussed in correlation with sports management; along with their purpose in academia.
The first and most important topic of discussion in sports management is business. Business is a strong cornerstone in sports management, as the word management is quite often associated with training and facilitating in business. The business aspects of sports management consist of marketing, and management, with specific focus on individuals, teams, facilities, and organizations. To start off, there are the two main ways to market sports: First is marketing a product through a sport, and secondly marketing of a sport. Marketing through a sport tends to bring companies a higher revenue then regular advertisements (Gladden & Sutton, 2005). A good example of marketing through sport is Budwesier. They like to market during the football season with beer drinkers (usually young men) playing or enjoying a football game with a fictitious background story, that subsequently features beautiful women, glamorizing drinking, to market the product (Gladden & Sutton, 2005). The best example for marketing of a sport is a television commercial for Monday night football, or Sunday night baseball on ESPN. The network is trying to get people to watch the game, so they in-turn advertise and if the viewer watches the game they have successfully marketed. Generally though, business is all about profits and losses. The numbers don’t lie and they can tell whether a business is doing well or if it is not. Therefore, the unofficial language or discourse of business is accounting (Warren, Reeve & Duchac, 2007). Accounting is the backbone of business because again, the numbers don’t lie. If a business is failing, a balance sheet can tell you why. And from there, a business can make a decision to raise their numbers by making cuts or taking out loans and collecting interest payments from stockholders. Accounting has a language of its own, similar to economics. But a good business man and woman should have a firm, and comprehensive knowledge of accounting to understand the language and concepts of business (Warren, Reeve & Duchac, 2007).
The second comprehensive field in sports management is law. Law is most commonly associated with the rights and wrongs in our American government. However, it also deals with contracts, property, negligence, statutes, and upholds regulations by other companies (Cotten & Wolohan, 2007). The most well known practice of sport law comes in the form of contract negotiations by agents and sports teams. Throughout most of the United States, it is required for sports agents to hold a law degree so that they have a complete grasp of how contract negotiations are supposed to work and ensures they follow all the proper channels that it must go through to become an official contract (Cotten & Wolohan, 2007). It is very important in law, to understand what every sentence or article says because one word can change the complete meaning of a very closely worded law. Therefore, an extensive knowledge of the American language, and numerous legal terms is required to be involved in such practice. Extensive knowledge of the American Constitution is needed for a career in law as well. The Constitution is the first form of precedence in the United States (Cotten & Wolohan, 2007). If a law can be traced back to the constitution, it is a powerful tool and a great advantage to have over your legal opponent.
The third major discourse of sports management is kinesiology, better known as physical education. It is a good thing to know how the human body works and what makes it function properly. It is also good know how it reacts under stress, and how it works at rest. Sports management and kinesiology are at first often confused for the same thing; when in fact, they two completely different fields. Practical use of kinesiologic discourse is mainly used marketing and in media relations. In marketing, a company might say “improve your vertical leap by training your fast twitch muscles.” This would be a correct statement and would directly correlate to the discourse of kinesiology as fast twitch muscle control sudden quick movements such as jumping as high as you can (Jeukendrup & Gleeson, 2004). Of course, if no one knew what a fast twitch muscle was they probably would not be interested. In an instance like that, a consumer would probably be more inclined to purchase because they recognize the scientific word used in the advertisement (Duncan, 2005). In media relations, terms of kinesiology are used less frequently and come from more of a medical standpoint for example if an athlete was injured in a game (Nichols, Moynahan, Hall, & Taylor, 2002. “Brett Favre suffered a pulled hamstring yesterday in practice. Brett said ‘it was a little tender after it happened, but the doctor said it was minor enough so I could play Sunday.” Obviously, this is a general discourse statement. But, it is related to kinesiology because you need to have an understanding of where the hamstring is located on the body and what happens to the muscle when it is pulled (Jeukendrup & Gleeson, 2004). Again, Kinesiology is not nearly as closely related as sports management as people believe and as shown so far, does not scratch the surface what the heart and soul of sports management really is (Mahoney, 2008).
Fourth, related field of sports management is communications. Communications play an integral part in collegiate and professional athletics (Nichols et al. 2002) as most organizations have multiple staff members who market and publicize their respective university or team. These people are often referred to as Sports Information Directors. Their job duties, in most cases, are as follows: Writing press releases about or for organizational events and athletes, taking statistics of athletic events, statistical research, designing school athletic brochures, writing and publishing media guides, web publishing, and grammatical editing (Nichols et al. 2002). Sports Information Directors, like most people who work in communications for a company have certain ethical obligations like always writing positive about the university that they represent. The basic guidelines are as follows: Honesty, truthfulness, respect, compassion, fairness, accuracy, professional distance, and ethical models (Nichols et al. 2002). At the same time, these writers need to find a way to entertain in their press releases so that fans and consumers will read their writing. Often, the directors use common slang terms that the average sport fan would understand in their writing. For example, if a press release says “Jean-Sébastien Giguère played great between the pipes tonight, saving all 31 shots for the shutout,” this would easily be translated by a sports fan as “Giguère played great in front of the goal, as he stopped all of the opponent’s shots to win the game tonight.” The slang terms allow the reader to engage with the release; and if the reader was not at the game, they could recapture a sense of the excitement that took place during the game (Nichols et al. 2002). As most people see athletes getting in trouble off the field, naturally damage control is a current trend in professional athletics. The directors want to minimize harm to the athlete’s image and to the organizations reputation. When it comes time to write a press release or release a statement at a press conference about the situation, it is of the utmost importance that “hot” words or catch phrases are not included in the statement (Nichols et al. 2002). Any words that would allude to any wrong doing are never good for other reporters to hear. Like a profession in law, sports information directors need an extensive knowledge of grammar and language as their job relies heavily on writing.
Finally, sports management deals in psychology. If the common nomenclature says that “playing a sport is twenty percent physical, and eighty percent mental,” then sports psychology will prove that. Life is what you perceive it to be, and the same can be applied to sport (Plotnik, 2005). If someone believes that they are performing badly, then they probably are performing badly. The discourse of the field is no different than that of a regular discussion about psychology. The main trend that seems to follow in sports psychology however, is motivation. If a person has a hard time working out, why is it that they do not want to work out? Are they self-conscious? Are they just that lazy? Or is that they are not physically able? Sports psychology applies the principals of psychology to sport, and hence psychology of sport is born (Plotnik, 2005). Sport psychology does apply its own kind twist however. As in most cases discussed in the textbook, the questions are more directed towards how you could remedy any psychological situations, as a manager or a coach would do; a standpoint towards the reader that they are always in control of their destiny.
The proverbial cookie jar that is sports management is a big jar that is filled with all different varieties of “cookies” that do have a similar taste at times, but are unique in their own way. Business of course being the most popular choice or widely used discourse as all business conducted will always rely on numbers to provide the evidence. Sports law is a least popular variety that no one can escape, because someone will always need someone to talk for them to get more money or to get them out of trouble. Kinesiology is a standard choice, “the chocolate chip” of discourse as sport is in the title of sports management. However, at the end of the day, is a completely different field of study. Communications is the underground of sports management that keeps the wheels spinning and allows people that were not at the game to experience the excitement. While psychology is everything in the field: Being able to understand situations that may arise and the motivation to do things for the betterment of a team or individually. Instead of focusing on one specific area of discourse, it is clearly beneficial to have a broad understanding of all the discourses in sports management. It is a big broad business, and its foundations are deep.
Albert Spalding to Earle Ziegler: Foundations of Sport Management
Since the beginning of civilization, it has been in the nature of humans to compete with another. In ancient Greece, the citizens trained in gymnasiums or “naked places” to perfect their wrestling or boxing technique (Sweet, 1987). “Athletics were more important to the Greeks than us today” according to Sweet; like the current American society, cheating was looked down upon in ancient times. Cheating was looked at as sacrilegious; a disgrace to Zeus (Sweet, 1987). Today cheating is not looked at as a sacrilegious act to a god, but as a shameful act of cheating. Today there are entities in place that ensure all athletes have the same competitive advantage. The act of managing sport can level a playing field, negotiate a salary, relocate an athlete, advise an organization, run a facility, or teach others the topics in sport management in a college setting. The modern field of sport management is a fairly young field that is constantly adapting to the demands required. The curriculum of sport management also adheres to the same principles of business, but is even younger than the practice of sport management. Through history, sport and sport management has shown its progressive tendencies and ideals that were ahead of common American society at the turn of the 20th century. This leads to the five significant events and the influential minds behind the events in sport management, which will be the topic of this paper. They are certainly not all the people and events that had significant contribution, but simply the top five that are deemed worthy for this assignment.