tag:theconversation.com,2011:/au/topics/sports-history-30528/articlesSports history – The Conversation2024-03-28T12:51:38Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2263792024-03-28T12:51:38Z2024-03-28T12:51:38ZFor over a century, baseball’s scouts have been the backbone of America’s pastime – do they have a future?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/584862/original/file-20240327-28-o25sx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=952%2C15%2C4129%2C2834&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Texas Rangers scout Brian Williams takes notes at Roberto Clemente Stadium in Carolina, Puerto Rico.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">H. James Gilmore and Tracy Halcomb</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Former MLB executive <a href="https://baseballhall.org/hall-of-famers/gillick-pat">Pat Gillick</a> won three World Series titles and served as general manager of four baseball teams from the 1970s to 2000s. </p>
<p>But when we interviewed him for our documentary “<a href="https://filmfreeway.com/FieldingDreamsACelebrationofBaseballScouts183">Fielding Dreams: A Celebration of Baseball Scouts</a>,” he deflected praise.</p>
<p>“I wouldn’t be in the Hall of Fame if it wasn’t for the people in scouting,” he said. “Those are the people that deserve all the credit, not me.”</p>
<p>Even though they scour the world for talent, often working on year-to-year contracts and spending weeks away from their families, there are no scouts in the <a href="https://baseballhall.org/">National Baseball Hall of Fame</a>.</p>
<p>Their recent run of tough luck has also gone largely unnoticed. The profession has been under siege on a number of fronts, whether it’s facing competition and dismissal from analytics advocates, or experiencing <a href="https://www.bostonherald.com/2020/09/04/red-sox-lay-off-nine-employees-from-scouting-player-development-staffs/">mass</a> <a href="https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories/scouting-industry-endures-most-brutal-offseason-in-recent-memory/">layoffs</a> during the COVID-19 pandemic. </p>
<h2>A draft demands an army of evaluators</h2>
<p>In the first half of the 20th century, scouting was a free-for-all. </p>
<p>Team owners willing to spend the money could send scouts to go out and sign whomever they wanted, with contracts often written out by hand and players signing on the spot. When Iowa teen phenom Bob Feller was signed by Cleveland Indians scout <a href="https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/cy-slapnicka/">Cy Slapnicka</a> in 1935, Slapnicka simply took out a pen, wrote out a contract and had Feller and his father sign it, because Feller was underage.</p>
<p>The terms of the contract? <a href="https://case.edu/ech/articles/f/feller-robert">One dollar and an autographed ball</a>.</p>
<p>Major League Baseball <a href="https://sabr.org/journal/article/the-history-and-future-of-the-amateur-draft/">held its first draft in 1965</a>, in part to help level the playing field between wealthier teams, like the New York Yankees and St. Louis Cardinals, and everybody else.</p>
<p>The advent of the draft made scouts all the more important: Each team now had <a href="https://www.baseball-almanac.com/draft/baseball-draft.php?yr=1965">a massive pool of players</a> to interview, evaluate and rank.</p>
<p>The draft only includes U.S. amateur players. International players are not subject to the draft, so some teams have built training facilities in countries like <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-promise-and-peril-of-the-dominican-baseball-pipeline-113242">the Dominican Republic</a> and <a href="https://www.mlb.com/news/mlb-opens-new-academy-in-mexico-c215291168">Mexico</a>, where their international scouts find and sign promising young players. </p>
<h2>Strength in crunching the numbers?</h2>
<p>But since the turn of the century, some journalists and executives have questioned the value of scouts.</p>
<p>In 2003, author Michael Lewis published “<a href="https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393324815">Moneyball</a>,” in which he documented the success of the 2002 Oakland Athletics and the team’s <a href="https://sabr.org/sabermetrics">embrace of sabermetrics</a>, the statistical analysis of baseball data.</p>
<p>The Athletics were consistently winning with one of the lowest payrolls in baseball, and other team owners took notice. </p>
<p>Could data analytics exploit inefficiencies and produce better results than scouts? Could teams save money by trimming the ranks of old-school professionals and all of the human bias that they brought to evaluating talent?</p>
<p>The embrace of sabermetrics changed who got drafted. With raw data becoming increasingly important, college players – with a longer track record of statistics – became more attractive than high school athletes.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Middle-aged man sitting on a metal bench with his legs crossed as he tugs on the brim of his baseball cap." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/584559/original/file-20240326-16-7haf2s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/584559/original/file-20240326-16-7haf2s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/584559/original/file-20240326-16-7haf2s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/584559/original/file-20240326-16-7haf2s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/584559/original/file-20240326-16-7haf2s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=584&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/584559/original/file-20240326-16-7haf2s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=584&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/584559/original/file-20240326-16-7haf2s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=584&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Oakland Athletics General Manager Billy Beane ushered in an era that emphasized the use of analytics to evaluate talent and construct rosters.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/ATHLETICSSPRINGTRAINING/0fab9501d4e4da11af9f0014c2589dfb/photo?Query=billy%20beane&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:asc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=116&currentItemNo=5">AP Photo/Eric Risberg</a></span>
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<p>The shift to data-informed decision-making has had some unintended consequences. </p>
<p>In order for high school players to get recognized in today’s environment, <a href="https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2022/05/19/catholic-youth-sports-little-league-club-baseball-243016">they turn to travel teams</a>, an expensive option that allows a player to participate in more games and accumulate more experience, more footage of their play and more exposure. </p>
<p>Players from lower-income families often can’t afford to participate – and that includes young Black athletes, <a href="https://www.povertycenter.columbia.edu/news-internal/2022/black-white-child-poverty-gap">who are disproportionately more likely to grow up in poverty</a>. <a href="https://apnews.com/article/baseball-diversity-study-black-players-5d0d1766536f1385ee673c68be55d89a">A recent study</a> found that Black athletes represented just 6.2% of MLB players on 2023 opening day rosters, down from 18% in 1991. </p>
<p>As retired Black utility player <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/c/collilo01.shtml">Lou Collier</a> told us: “A kid like me, today, never would have had an opportunity. … If I wasn’t able to afford any of these events, you never would have heard of Lou Collier. But back when I was coming up, the scouts found the Lou Colliers.” </p>
<h2>‘Moneyball’ or makeup?</h2>
<p>Scouts will also tell you that analytics is nothing new.</p>
<p>“We evaluated the player,” says former Atlanta Braves scouting director <a href="https://www.mlb.com/royals/team/front-office/roy-clark">Roy Clark</a>. “And when our scouts said, ‘We think this guy can play in the big leagues,’ the next thing we did is we gathered all the information we could – analytics. But then we emphasized makeup.”</p>
<p>It is a grasp of this concept – “makeup,” or a player’s character, drive and grit – that scouts say differentiates their work from data-driven evaluations.</p>
<p>“It comes down to the people who have a really good head on their shoulders,” says Matt O’Brien, a scout for the Toronto Blue Jays. </p>
<p>And the scouts will tell you that there is both on-field and off-field makeup. </p>
<p>“You’ve got to talk to his school counselor, you’ve got to talk to his coach, you’ve got to talk to his teammates, you’ve got to try and talk to other students,” explains Gillick. “Is he a good baseball player, and is he a good human being?” </p>
<p>This personalized approach, one that focuses on a player’s heart and mind, has kept scouting relevant. Even with the rise of analytics, the number of MLB scouts had stayed remarkably consistent into the 21st century. It seemed as if the fear generated by “Moneyball” was unfounded. </p>
<p>That all changed in 2020.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Black and white photo of smiling man seated at a table. Behind him is another man standing next to a board with sheets of paper affixed to it." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/584514/original/file-20240326-18-7daslm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/584514/original/file-20240326-18-7daslm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/584514/original/file-20240326-18-7daslm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/584514/original/file-20240326-18-7daslm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/584514/original/file-20240326-18-7daslm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/584514/original/file-20240326-18-7daslm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/584514/original/file-20240326-18-7daslm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hall of Fame executive Pat Gillick during the 1983 MLB draft, when he served as vice president of baseball operations for the Toronto Blue Jays. Behind him is scout Bob Prentice.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/pat-gillick-right-blue-jays-vice-president-of-baseball-news-photo/502315001?adppopup=true">Jeff Goode/Toronto Star via Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>The costs of COVID-19</h2>
<p>COVID-19 didn’t just shorten the 2020 baseball season, winnowing it down from 162 games to 60. It also shrank baseball’s scouting ranks. </p>
<p>USA Today reported that <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/columnist/bob-nightengale/2021/03/11/baseball-scouts-return-covid-pandemic/4645174001/?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzRss&utm_campaign=usatodaycomsports-topstories">about 20% of scouts were laid off in 2020</a>. Many of them weren’t hired back. </p>
<p>“It was just the most uneasy feeling,” recalled MLB Scouting Bureau’s Christie Wood, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/29/sports/baseball/a-harder-look-at-female-scouts-shows-more-in-the-job-than-thought.html">one of the few female scouts in the game</a>.</p>
<p>According to the magazine Baseball America, by 2021 <a href="https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories/scouting-industry-endures-most-brutal-offseason-in-recent-memory/">seven teams had reduced their scouting staff by double digits</a>. </p>
<p>The Tampa Bay Rays and Milwaukee Brewers cut 10 scouts apiece. The Los Angeles Dodgers and San Francisco Giants had 13 fewer on their payrolls. The Chicago Cubs were down 20, while the Los Angeles Angels and Seattle Mariners each reduced their scouting ranks by 23. </p>
<p>At the beginning of the 2019 season, teams employed 1,909 scouts across their amateur, professional and international departments. By 2021, that number was down to 1,756. And most of the scouts that were laid off were older, more experienced scouts making higher salaries.</p>
<p>In June 2023, 17 former scouts <a href="https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/37893641/ex-scouts-file-age-discrimination-lawsuit-major-league-baseball">sued MLB for age discrimination</a>. They claimed that the league and its teams acted intentionally to prevent the employment of older scouts after the pandemic.</p>
<h2>A big win for the scouts</h2>
<p>The state of scouting today is a mixed bag.</p>
<p>Some teams seem to be prioritizing analytics. But other organizations – the Pittsburgh Pirates, Toronto Blue Jays, Houston Astros, Minnesota Twins and Texas Rangers – have actually added scouts to their payrolls since 2019.</p>
<p>The Rangers organization opened their doors to our documentary crew over the past four years, allowing us into the inner sanctum. We were able to see, firsthand, the organization’s emphasis on scouting, and witness the relationships the team’s scouts built with prospects and their families.</p>
<p>When the Rangers won the World Series in 2023, baseball scouts around the league rejoiced: The team’s success confirmed that an emphasis on personal touch and people could still pay off. </p>
<p>“I’m just proud of all the scouts that are here and who have worked so hard,” Texas Rangers scout Demond Smith told us during one playoff game. “At the end of the day, it’s baseball. It’s Little League from the beginning, and then you are dreaming. And here we are.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/226379/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Even with teams’ embrace of analytics, the number of scouts employed by MLB teams had stayed remarkably consistent. That all changed with the COVID-19 pandemic.H. James Gilmore, Visiting Filmmaker, Flagler CollegeTracy Halcomb, Professor of Communication, Flagler CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2243292024-02-29T13:41:06Z2024-02-29T13:41:06ZCaitlin Clark’s historic scoring record shines a spotlight on the history of the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578745/original/file-20240228-20-s0zoch.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C126%2C3091%2C1622&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">University of Iowa guard Caitlin Clark celebrates after making the game-winning shot against Michigan State on Jan. 2, 2024.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/iowaguard-caitlin-clark-of-the-iowa-hawkeyes-celebrates-news-photo/1895743985?adppopup=true">Matthew Holst/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When University of Iowa women’s basketball star Caitlin Clark <a href="https://www.espn.com/womens-college-basketball/recap/_/gameId/401601593">drained a 3-pointer</a> against the University of Michigan on Feb. 15, 2024, she secured the NCAA women’s scoring record.</p>
<p>Announcers noted that Clark had surpassed <a href="https://www.seattletimes.com/sports/uw-husky-basketball/remembering-kelsey-plums-historic-husky-career-as-caitlin-clark-closes-in-on-her-scoring-record/">Kelsey Plum’s 3,527 points</a>. But few added that there was still one more Division I women’s scoring title remaining.</p>
<p>That one belonged to guard <a href="https://www.lynettewoodard.com/">Lynette Woodard</a>, who scored 3,649 points while playing for the University of Kansas from 1978 to 1981. Her record was set before the NCAA offered women’s championships, when the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women, or AIAW, was in charge.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.espn.com/womens-college-basketball/recap/_/gameId/401601613">When Clark surpassed Woodard’s AIAW milestone</a> on Feb. 28, 2024, in the fourth quarter of a game against the University of Minnesota, it opened up another chance to revisit this buried piece of sport history.</p>
<p><a href="https://researchworks.oclc.org/archivegrid/collection/data/36723004">The AIAW</a> launched in 1972. Within a decade it was bigger than the NCAA, with nearly 1,000 member colleges and universities. It sponsored 19 sports in three divisions, was the sole organization for women’s intercollegiate athletics and the only one led by women. And the NCAA destroyed it through what SUNY Cortland sports management professor Lindsey Darvin described as a “<a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/women-college-sports-ncaa-aiaw-11617422325">hostile takeover</a>.”</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://iro.uiowa.edu/esploro/outputs/doctoral/Inside-the-AIAW-the-philosophy-people/9983949592502771">scholar of sport, gender and American culture</a>, I study the AIAW as a key moment in sports history that has been buried, and I’m currently writing a book exploring its philosophy, impact and legacy.</p>
<p>In any history of women’s sports in the U.S., you’ll hear a lot about <a href="https://www.womenssportsfoundation.org/advocacy/what-is-title-ix/">Title IX</a>, the federal law dictating that female college athletes must receive equal opportunities in sports.</p>
<p>But you’ll rarely hear about the AIAW, a sporting body led by women that fundamentally changed intercollegiate sports. Its student-centered governance model continues to resonate as college athletes chip away at the power of the NCAA, whether it’s through the <a href="https://www.cincinnati.com/story/sports/2023/12/04/what-is-ncaa-transfer-portal-what-to-know/71799335007/">transfer portal</a> or <a href="https://www.on3.com/nil/deals/">name, image and likeness deals</a>.</p>
<h2>Designed for women, by women</h2>
<p>Throughout the early part of the 20th century, female college students participated in physical education classes <a href="https://www.academia.edu/36681888/_Gendering_the_Gym_A_History_of_Women_in_Physical_Education">focused on health and wellness</a>. There were few opportunities for organized team sports.</p>
<p>By the 1960s, however, women students demanded school-sponsored intercollegiate teams and championships like the men had. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/women-college-sports-ncaa-aiaw-11617422325">Women professors of physical education agreed.</a>. But they had watched the NCAA commercial model of sport descend into exploitation and scandal under what historians have called the “<a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/20/20-512/171481/20210310124813181_20-512%20tsac%20Historian%20Amicus%20Br-final2-PDFA.pdf">cynical fiction</a>” of amateurism. As the NCAA remained exclusively male, there was an opportunity to create something different for women’s athletics. </p>
<p>The AIAW emerged from that momentum – an intercollegiate athletic governance organization designed for and by women, dedicated to creating high-level competition while maintaining focus on the well-being and education of student-athletes.</p>
<p>Under the AIAW, all teams and athletes were supported equally, not singled out for their ability to generate revenue. They had a right to due process, an appeals system and student representatives on local and national committees. The organization ran on dues from member schools and eventually some advertising and media contracts.</p>
<p>Women’s athletic programs were led by physical educators turned coaches and administrators. Some of the most famous coaches in women’s basketball got their start under the AIAW, including <a href="https://scarletknights.com/sports/womens-basketball/roster/coaches/c-vivian-stringer/2805">C. Vivian Stringer</a>, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/29/sports/ncaabasketball/pat-summitt-obituary.html">Pat Summit</a> and <a href="https://gostanford.com/sports/womens-basketball/roster/coaches/tara-vanderveer/4516">Tara VanDerveer</a>, who recently broke <a href="https://www.si.com/college/2024/01/22/tara-vanderveer-stanford-all-time-winningest-coach-idaho-career">the all-time record for college basketball wins</a>. </p>
<p>In addition to Woodard, other notable AIAW players include <a href="https://wbhof.com/famers/ann-meyers-drysdale/">Ann Meyers-Drysdale</a>, <a href="https://www.hoophall.com/hall-of-famers/nancy-lieberman/">Nancy Lieberman</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/20/sports/basketball/lusia-harris-dead.html">Lusia Harris</a>, who was recently the subject of an <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPFkcoTfr7g">Oscar-winning documentary</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Young woman with short hair poses while dribbling a basketball and wearing a red, white and blue Team USA jersey." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578090/original/file-20240226-24-tb725t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578090/original/file-20240226-24-tb725t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578090/original/file-20240226-24-tb725t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578090/original/file-20240226-24-tb725t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578090/original/file-20240226-24-tb725t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578090/original/file-20240226-24-tb725t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578090/original/file-20240226-24-tb725t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">After starring at the University of Kansas, Lynette Woodard went on to play for the Harlem Globetrotters, Team USA and the WNBA.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/lynette-woodard-point-guard-for-the-united-states-womens-news-photo/1224415230?adppopup=true">Tony Duffy/Allsport/Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>Title IX backlash</h2>
<p>There is no doubt that Title IX, which was <a href="https://www.justice.gov/crt/title-ix">signed into law in 1972</a>, had a big influence on the growth of women’s college sports, mandating that educational activities, including athletics, should be the same for men and women.</p>
<p>Congress passed Title IX just before the AIAW’s first championship season, and the law spurred calls for more equitable resources for women’s sports. </p>
<p>There was immediate backlash from male-dominated sporting organizations, including the NCAA, which saw the addition of women’s sports as a loss for men’s sports. Walter Byers, then the NCAA’s executive director, said, “<a href="https://www.latimes.com/sports/story/2019-10-02/college-athletics-reform-ncaa-doomsday-title-ix">The possible doom of college sports is near</a>.” One college football official <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/22/title-ix-anniversary-legacy/">told reporter Sally Jenkins</a> that women’s sports advocates were trying “to tear the shirts off our backs.” </p>
<p>Despite the fearmongering, college sports continued to thrive. Nonetheless, over the past 50 years, even though nearly all schools have been <a href="https://www.womenssportsfoundation.org/advocacy/what-is-title-ix/">out of athletic compliance with Title IX</a>, none has lost federal funding for violations. As Title IX scholar Sarah Fields <a href="https://scholarship.law.marquette.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1851&context=sportslaw">has written</a>, “Without punitive damages, the law is limited: it is toothless.”</p>
<p>All along, change has come not from the law’s mere existence but from students filing complaints and lawsuits, and the determination of administrators to use the law to carve out and protect athletic opportunities for women. During the 1970s, those administrators were almost all in the AIAW.</p>
<h2>The NCAA elbows its way in</h2>
<p>By the late 1970s, the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare had laid out clearer standards for athletic compliance with Title IX.</p>
<p>While the NCAA and AIAW were not subject to the law, their member institutions were, and the two organizations’ efforts to collaborate failed. Instead, the NCAA, which had long fought Title IX’s application in athletics, changed course and set its sights on taking control of women’s sports. </p>
<p>The NCAA offered women’s championships in all three divisions for the first time during the 1981-82 school year. Leveraging all of its presumed legitimacy and financial resources, the 75-year-old men’s athletic organization <a href="https://www.si.com/college/2022/06/14/aiaw-ncaa-womens-college-basketball-league-title-ix-daily-cover">offered all-expenses-paid women’s championships on the same weekends as the unpaid AIAW championships</a>.</p>
<p>The strategy worked. The AIAW lost significant members and ceased operations in mid-1982, despite the fact that women athletes, coaches and administrators <a href="https://andscape.com/features/forty-years-later-the-ncaas-takeover-from-the-aiaw-still-isnt-perfect/">preferred its educational model and leadership structure</a>. </p>
<p>The NCAA made vague promises to support women’s athletics but refused to give women more than token representation on its governance boards. Women student-athletes were, for the first time, led by a male-dominated governance organization.</p>
<p>To this day, <a href="https://ncaagenderequityreview.com/">institutional sexism remains entrenched in the NCAA</a>.</p>
<p>Women hold only <a href="https://www.ncaa.org/news/2022/6/23/media-center-title-ix-report-shows-gains-in-female-participation-though-rates-lag-increases-by-men.aspx">41.3% of head coaching positions for women’s teams and 23.9% of athletic director positions</a> – roles that were largely held by women under the AIAW. A recent gender equity review found that the organization <a href="https://kaplanhecker.app.box.com/s/y17pvxpap8lotzqajjan9vyye6zx8tmz">under-resourced nearly all of its women’s championships</a>, a result of <a href="https://kaplanhecker.app.box.com/s/xc1v5gjnmk4ndku1s2n2n1net4fwczeh">gender bias and its focus on making money</a>.</p>
<p>The NCAA and its corporate partners would like you to believe that their organization is the be-all and end-all of college sports. </p>
<p>But the story of the AIAW – created by and for women, rejecting the crass commercialism of the NCAA and empowering student-athletes to speak up – offers ideas for a more equitable future for college sports.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/224329/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Diane Williams does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Before being pushed aside by the NCAA, the AIAW, which was designed for and by women, governed women’s college athletics.Diane Williams, Assistant Professor of Kinesiology, McDaniel CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2223702024-02-08T13:39:16Z2024-02-08T13:39:16ZThe Super Bowl gets the Vegas treatment, with 1 in 4 American adults expected to gamble on the big game<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573295/original/file-20240204-21-h057fn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=499%2C7%2C3408%2C2468&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Billions of dollars are being bet on the matchup between the San Francisco 49ers and Kansas City Chiefs.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/signage-for-super-bowl-lviii-is-displayed-on-a-pedestrian-news-photo/1974137455?adppopup=true">Ethan Miller/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573875/original/file-20240206-22-1s0mgu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573875/original/file-20240206-22-1s0mgu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=255&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573875/original/file-20240206-22-1s0mgu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=255&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573875/original/file-20240206-22-1s0mgu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=255&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573875/original/file-20240206-22-1s0mgu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=321&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573875/original/file-20240206-22-1s0mgu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=321&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573875/original/file-20240206-22-1s0mgu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=321&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="attribution"><a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
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<p>A record 67.8 million American adults are expected to bet US$23.1 billion on Super Bowl LVIII, <a href="https://www.americangaming.org/new/record-68-million-americans-to-wager-23-1b-on-super-bowl-lviii/">according to a new survey conducted by Morning Consult for the American Gaming Association</a>. The estimated number of bettors has increased 35% from the previous Super Bowl, while the total amount being bet is estimated to have shot up from $16 billion in 2023. </p>
<p>Both figures would represent records – fitting for a Super Bowl held in Las Vegas, the gambling capital of the U.S.</p>
<p>For the NFL, partnering with sportsbooks <a href="https://www.espn.com/sports-betting/story/_/id/38338437/nearly-735m-american-adults-bet-nfl-season-survey-says">has been a boon for business</a>. The relationship appears to be a natural one: Though sports betting was illegal in most of the country until 2018, <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-gambling-built-baseball-and-then-almost-destroyed-it-123254">it’s always been a part of sports fandom</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=tcvNTxMAAAAJ&hl=en">But as a sports media scholar</a>, I find the league’s embrace of gambling so striking because for most of its history, the NFL had pushed the government for stricter regulations, not more lenient ones.</p>
<p>Particularly in its early days, the NFL wanted to avoid the stain of bookies, bets, fixed games and the gambling crises <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-gambling-built-baseball-and-then-almost-destroyed-it-123254">that had befallen other professional sports leagues</a>.</p>
<h2>Staunch opposition</h2>
<p>In 1963, just as the NFL was starting to become profitable <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NFL_on_television_in_the_1960s">thanks to broadcasting deals</a>, a gambling scandal threatened the league’s growing popularity. </p>
<p>Commissioner Pete Rozelle <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1963/04/18/archives/football-stars-banned-for-bets-hornung-and-karras-are-suspended-by.html">suspended two of the league’s stars</a>, the Green Bay Packers’ <a href="https://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/H/HornPa00.htm">Paul Hornung</a> and <a href="https://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/K/KarrAl00.htm">Alex Karras</a> of the Detroit Lions, for a full season after both players admitted to placing bets on NFL games.</p>
<p>“This sport has grown so quickly and gained so much of the approval of the American public,” <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/columnist/mike-freeman/2021/08/31/nfl-sportsbook-deals-decades-long-hypocrisy-gambling/5655252001/">Rozelle told Sports Illustrated at the time</a>, “that the only way it can be hurt is through gambling.” </p>
<p>But football and gambling eventually resumed their delicate dance. In 1976, CBS hired bookmaker and newspaper columnist James “Jimmy the Greek” Snyder <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1976/09/03/archives/a-star-is-born-by-8-points-sports-of-the-times.html">to join the cast of its flagship pregame program</a>, “The NFL Today.” CBS Sports president Bob Wussler knew that millions of viewers wanted to know the betting lines for upcoming games. It was Snyder’s job to communicate them. </p>
<p>The NFL’s leadership, however, remained adamantly opposed to its broadcasting partners explicitly encouraging gambling. So Snyder communicated the lines by predicting the final score, <a href="https://read.dukeupress.edu/radical-history-review/article/2016/125/159/22306/Race-Economics-and-the-Shifting-Politics-of-Sport">thereby allowing careful listeners to learn a point spread</a>. The routine lasted until 1988, when Snyder suggested that slavery had made Black players better athletes. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1988/01/17/jimmy-the-greek-fired-by-cbs-for-his-remarks/27536e46-3031-40c2-bb2b-f912ec518f80/">He was fired the next day</a>.</p>
<p>In 1992, the NFL and other major sports leagues <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/102nd-congress/senate-bill/474/text">lobbied for the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act</a>, which would severely restrict sports gambling, allowing it only in Nevada, Oregon, Delaware and Montana. Rozelle’s successor, Paul Tagliabue, testified in favor of the bill, telling Congress: “We do not want our games to be used as bait to sell gambling. We have to make it clear to the athletes, the fans and the public, gambling is not a part of sport, period.” The measure passed.</p>
<p>In 2017, current NFL commissioner Roger Goodell reiterated the league’s stance. Speaking in the wake of the owners’ decision to allow the Oakland Raiders to relocate to Las Vegas, <a href="https://www.nbcsports.com/nfl/profootballtalk/rumor-mill/news/goodell">he insisted</a>: “We still strongly oppose … legalized sports gambling. The integrity of our game is No. 1. We will not compromise on that.”</p>
<h2>More money, more problems?</h2>
<p>Everything changed a year later, when the Supreme Court <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/2018/05/14/supreme-court-sports-betting-paspa-law-new-jersey/440710002/">declared the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act unconstitutional</a>, which left the decision to allow sports gambling to the states. Since then, <a href="https://www.cbssports.com/general/news/u-s-sports-betting-here-is-where-all-50-states-currently-stand-on-legalizing-online-sports-betting-sites/">more than 30 states have legalized sports gambling</a>.</p>
<p>Despite its historical opposition to sports gambling, the NFL moved quickly to take advantage of the new legal landscape.</p>
<p>In 2021, <a href="https://www.sportspromedia.com/news/nfl-sports-betting-sponsorship-betmgm-pointsbet-wynnbet-tv-advertising/?zephr_sso_ott=6Qvsdy">the league announced seven companies</a>, including BetMGM, Draft Kings and Caesars, as the league’s official gambling partners. Two years later, ESPN, one of the league’s major partners – <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/society/espn-nfl-journalism/">and one in which the league may soon buy a stake</a> – announced the formation of <a href="https://www.espn.com/espn/betting/story/_/id/38897700/what-espn-bet-how-do-use-where-legal">ESPN BET</a>, a sportsbook partnership with Penn Entertainment. ESPN immediately began promoting its new venture on its television and web platforms. </p>
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<img alt="Caesar's Palace video screen advertising Super Bowl matchup between the San Francisco 49ers and the Kansas City Chiefs." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573296/original/file-20240204-19-nqnfp6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573296/original/file-20240204-19-nqnfp6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573296/original/file-20240204-19-nqnfp6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573296/original/file-20240204-19-nqnfp6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573296/original/file-20240204-19-nqnfp6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573296/original/file-20240204-19-nqnfp6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573296/original/file-20240204-19-nqnfp6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Gambling and football have become two peas in a pod.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-marquee-at-caesars-palace-displays-super-bowl-lviii-news-photo/1984286077?adppopup=true">Ethan Miller/Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>By embracing sports gambling, the NFL has unleashed new profit streams. Even casual fans can’t miss the surge in gambling advertisements that now air during the games, all of which buttress the value of media rights. Meanwhile, the NFL’s official sportsbook partners will fork over <a href="https://sports.yahoo.com/nfl-inks-nearly-1-billion-212312677.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAACW45R03fmohhc_B1ZlWpY7_zcvqe5EV5sh9G1SgB7Vt_g9Xpu0ghK4RC7rVNpXCRtLUe0jtLvMKCSXNafnOuM4ZlKFd1nD9s2zqyLhninUA3cFZQRqqA6ZAwHrOYhC27SJZ3rV7SjQLXzycbVwXxSCqKsLek1dHNpXL6ZzSro4t">more than $1 billion</a> to the league over the course of the five-year contract. </p>
<p>But this infusion of extra cash comes with a substantial social cost. Gambling addictions <a href="https://money.com/gambling-addiction-all-time-high/">are at an all-time high</a>, likely spurred by the ease with which people can place bets from their phones. <a href="https://theconversation.com/i-treat-people-with-gambling-disorder-and-im-starting-to-see-more-and-more-young-men-who-are-betting-on-sports-198285">Young men seem to be especially vulnerable</a>.</p>
<p>Ten NFL players <a href="https://apnews.com/article/nfl-gambling-suspensions-0c31c118f637efa159fad75e7b949418">have been suspended for gambling on sports</a> since 2022. Several former athletes have come forward <a href="https://www.theplayerstribune.com/posts/calvin-ridley-nfl-football-jacksonville-jaguars">to share stories of their struggles with sports betting</a>.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, the league continues to promote gambling sites to its fan base. The gambling prohibitions for players have not substantially changed, but the environment in which they work and live <a href="https://www.mlive.com/sports/2024/01/nfl-wide-receiver-accused-of-making-thousands-of-illegal-bets-while-starring-at-lsu.html">has made the temptation far more difficult to avoid</a>.</p>
<p>Goodell has cast the league’s partnerships with sportsbooks as a no-brainer for the bottom line: “We have to be in that space,” <a href="https://www.nbcsports.com/nfl/profootballtalk/rumor-mill/news/goodell">he plainly stated in a September 2023 interview</a>.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the potential costs – for the league and for its fans – are a bit harder to see, at least right away. But to anti-gambling advocates, they’re no less pernicious.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222370/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Thomas Oates does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>What makes the NFL’s embrace of gambling so striking is that for most of its history, the league had pushed the government for stricter regulations – not more lenient ones.Thomas Oates, Associate Professor of Sport Media, University of IowaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2210572024-01-18T13:27:31Z2024-01-18T13:27:31ZBill Belichick’s hidden playbook – the 19th century origins of ‘The Patriot Way’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569590/original/file-20240116-15-uaomih.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=5%2C224%2C1429%2C936&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Bill Belichick during his last game as head coach of the New England Patriots.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/new-england-patriots-head-coach-bill-belichick-looks-on-in-news-photo/1915226241?adppopup=true">Winslow Townson/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>To the New England Patriots fans enrolled in my <a href="https://www.coursicle.com/qu/courses/SPS/362/">Story of Football</a> class at <a href="https://www.qu.edu/">Quinnipiac University</a>, <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Education_of_a_Coach.html?id=7a92PwAACAAJ">Bill Belichick</a> is the only Patriots coach they’ve ever known.</p>
<p>The 71-year-old coach and team owner <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kraft">Robert Kraft</a> amicably parted ways after 24 years on Jan. 11, 2024, following the end of a dreary season. </p>
<p>Despite my students’ familiarity with the image of Belichick stalking the sidelines, the coach’s world – at least, as far as technology goes – has had little, if anything, in common with theirs. </p>
<p>When he began coaching the Patriots in 2000, and for years afterward, Belichick seemed to ignore the digital revolution erupting around him. He’d joke about a reporter being on “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7U2ew9nMxo">Snapface</a>,” or he’d call Facebook “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GPemM8FAfo.">Your Face</a>.”</p>
<p>Meanwhile, <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Education_of_a_Coach.html?id=7a92PwAACAAJ">Belichick’s moments of social media virality</a> have been rare – and usually limited to <a href="https://www.engadget.com/2016/10/18/bill-belichick-patriots-coach-hates-tablets/?sr_source=Twitter">his abuse</a> <a href="https://www.nfl.com/videos/bill-belichick-throws-tablet-on-sideline-after-chiefs-late-td-401238">of the blue Microsoft Surface tablets</a> NFL coaches and players use on the sidelines to study instant replays. </p>
<p>Most of the time, though, he exudes stoicism – some might say arrogance – offering little words of value to the fans and the media.</p>
<p>Yet his legendary terseness and his rejection of the latest technology belie a wealth of knowledge about the game and its history. If there ever were a living historian-coach, it was Belichick.</p>
<h2>Historian at the lectern</h2>
<p>Most reporters covering the Patriots learned the drill during Belichick’s news conferences: ask him about next week’s starters, and you’d get a vague retort, perhaps followed by a snort or a sneer.</p>
<p>But prompt him on football history, and he’d respond like a scholar. </p>
<p>During a 2021 new conference, he delivered a 1,500-word soliloquy on the history of the <a href="https://www.nbcsports.com/nfl/profootballtalk/rumor-mill/news/bill-belichick-offers-1500-word-discourse-on-long-snappers-off-the-top-of-his-head">long snapper</a>, which is perhaps the most specialized, obscure position on a football team – a player tasked with snapping the football during punts and field goal attempts. Before a 2020 game against the Denver Broncos, <a href="https://nesn.com/2023/12/watch-bill-belichick-give-history-lesson-on-3-4-defense-1978-broncos/">Belichick analyzed the evolution</a> of a defensive formation consisting of three linemen and four linebackers, known as the “<a href="https://footballtoolbox.net/3-4-defense">3-4 defense</a>,” which he learned in 1978 during his one year as an assistant to Broncos defensive coordinator <a href="https://denvergazette.com/sports/denver-broncos/legendary-broncos-defensive-coordinator-joe-collier-looks-back-at-an-incredible-career/article_8e291b8c-1393-11ee-bed4-df445c0a2fd6.html">Joe Collier</a>.</p>
<p>Sports Illustrated senior writer Greg Bishop <a href="https://www.si.com/nfl/2024/01/11/bill-belichick-unparalleled-legacy-new-england">described Belichick as</a> “part librarian in addition to all coach,” and the more than <a href="https://www.si.com/nfl/2015/01/28/bill-belichick-library-steve-belichick-naval-academy">400 football books</a> that the coach donated to the Naval Academy Athletic Association in 2006 reflect his lifelong love of the game’s history. </p>
<p>That passion was spurred on by <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/21/sports/football/steve-belichick-coach-who-wrote-the-book-on-scouting-dies.html">his father, Steve</a>, who started collecting the works after World War II. The elder Belichick even published a book himself in 1962: “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=9pkjHN2C4tUC&printsec=frontcover&dq=steve+belichick&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi7i5adz-KDAxV7rYkEHbppBSkQ6AF6BAgEEAI#v=onepage&q=steve%20belichick&f=false">Football Scouting Methods</a>,” a respected primer on how to properly assess opponents by observing their games and detecting tendencies and patterns of play.</p>
<h2>The father of football informs ‘The Patriot Way’</h2>
<p>The oldest book in the donated collection is “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=-vS_ZugKGTcC&pg=PP9#v=onepage&q&f=false">American Football</a>,” written in 1891 by Yale football coach Walter Camp, who’s credited with inventing rules, such as <a href="https://operations.nfl.com/learn-the-game/nfl-basics/terms-glossary/glossary-terms-list/line-of-scrimmage/">the line of scrimmage</a>, which made the game distinct from rugby. </p>
<p>In the book, Camp also detailed the physical requirements and roles of each position, such as guard and quarterback, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=-vS_ZugKGTcC&vq=specator&pg=PA165#v=snippet&q=specator&f=false">and included a chapter</a> for spectators to teach the game to the growing number of fans. </p>
<p>In 1896, Camp updated the book, this time with a co-writer in Harvard coach Lorin Deland. They simplified the title to “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=z4soAAAAYAAJ&pg=PR1#v=onepage&q&f=false">Football</a>.”</p>
<p>One chapter, titled “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=z4soAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA180#v=onepage&q=don&f=false">Football Don'ts</a>,” lists 40 tips to help coaches and players win. Belichick never used the expression “<a href="https://www.theplayerstribune.com/articles/kevin-faulk-patriots-way">The Patriot Way</a>,” the phrase the New England sports media used to describe the Patriots’ team-first culture and disciplined approach under Belichick. But a sampling of the “Football Don'ts” reveals that The Patriot Way has 19th century origins. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Black and white photo of mustached man wearing heavy winter coat and a fedora." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569581/original/file-20240116-25-yz6xu1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569581/original/file-20240116-25-yz6xu1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569581/original/file-20240116-25-yz6xu1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569581/original/file-20240116-25-yz6xu1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569581/original/file-20240116-25-yz6xu1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=532&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569581/original/file-20240116-25-yz6xu1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=532&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569581/original/file-20240116-25-yz6xu1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=532&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Walter Camp is known as the ‘Father of American Football.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/walter-camp-father-of-american-football-1925-news-photo/106500770?adppopup=true">Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“Don’t answer back to a coach upon the field, even if you know him to be wrong. Do exactly what he tells you to do, so far as you are able, and remember that strict obedience is the first requirement of a player.”</p>
<p>In short, “<a href="https://nesn.com/2017/01/bill-belichicks-do-your-job-mantra-goes-way-back-as-this-2000-interview-shows/">Do Your Job</a>” – the mantra that Belichick drilled into his players to remind them that he’s given them each a specific task to accomplish. Everything else is noise. </p>
<p>“Don’t fail to play a fast game. Line up instantly after each down. Your game is twice as effective if there are no delays.”</p>
<p>In 2012, the Patriots ran <a href="https://www.pro-football-reference.com/teams/nwe/2012.htm#all_team_stats">1,191 plays</a>, the second-most ever at the time. </p>
<p>“Don’t be satisfied with a superficial knowledge of the rules. Master every detail.”</p>
<p>“Players say Belichick is constantly plucking obscure penalty situations from across the league and showing his players tape every week,” wrote <a href="https://www.theringer.com/nfl/2018/2/1/16958718/super-bowl-new-england-patriots-bill-belichick-rules-penalties-study">The Ringer’s Kevin Clark in February 2018</a>.</p>
<p>“Don’t be an automaton. Thoroughly master each principle, and then vary your play as emergencies arise.”</p>
<p>In 2019, in the two weeks before Super Bowl LIII against the high-scoring Los Angeles Rams, Belichick <a href="https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/25920798/how-patriots-defense-stymied-sean-mcvay-super-bowl-liii">overhauled the Patriots’ defensive line formation and pass coverage</a>. </p>
<p>The Patriots <a href="https://www.espn.com/nfl/game/_/gameId/401038115/patriots-rams">held the Rams to three points</a> en route to Belichick’s sixth Super Bowl title as a head coach.</p>
<h2>On to the next challenge</h2>
<p>Belichick routinely credits other coaches for his success: <a href="https://www.nbcsports.com/nfl/profootballtalk/rumor-mill/news/belichick-credits-parcells-after-using-the-wind-to-patriots-advantage">Bill Parcells</a>, whom he worked under for the New York Giants and Patriots, and Paul Brown, the co-founder and first coach of the Cleveland Browns, a franchise that still bears his name.</p>
<p>Brown was the first coach to use a playbook and the first to suggest that coaches and players communicate via headsets.</p>
<p>“It was very insightful to see how far ahead of his time he was. What a great, great football mind,” <a href="https://www.bengals.com/news/six-degrees-for-bengals-pats-17880223">Belichick said in a 2016 interview</a>.</p>
<p>“Everything I do today, Paul Brown did. It all started with Paul Brown,” <a href="https://www.nbcsports.com/nfl/profootballtalk/rumor-mill/news/bill-belichick-proclaims-paul-brown-the-greatest-coach-in-pro-football-history">Belichick added in 2019</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Black and white photo of man wearing fedora and long overcoat patrolling the football field with his hands in his jacket pockets." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569582/original/file-20240116-21-s6m6tc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569582/original/file-20240116-21-s6m6tc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569582/original/file-20240116-21-s6m6tc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569582/original/file-20240116-21-s6m6tc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569582/original/file-20240116-21-s6m6tc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569582/original/file-20240116-21-s6m6tc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569582/original/file-20240116-21-s6m6tc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Cleveland Browns were named after Paul Brown, their co-founder and first coach.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/photo-shows-paul-brown-head-coach-of-the-cleveland-browns-news-photo/514968198?adppopup=true">Bettmann/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Even the deflection and praise seem to be an intentional part of Belichick’s approach to the game.</p>
<p>In “Football,” Camp also discussed coaching, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=z4soAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA194#v=onepage&q=thoughtful&f=false">delivering a lesson</a> about the importance of coaches’ keeping a low profile.</p>
<p>He wrote: “The thoughtful man who finds himself appointed to such a position will make his influence felt in all important matters, but he will himself be rarely. His power is well-nigh paramount, but the public display of his exercise of that power might easily become intolerable.”</p>
<p>Belichick has certainly heeded Camp’s advice in his refusal to make himself the story. After losses, there are no excuses, no second guesses, no calling out individual players. Instead, he’ll often reiterate that he has to do a better job – that everyone has to do a better job.</p>
<p>After a brutal <a href="https://www.espn.com/nfl/game/_/gameId/400554325/patriots-chiefs">41-14 loss</a> to the Kansas City Chiefs in 2014, Belichick infamously responded to a barrage of questions from reporters with the same phrase, repeated ad nauseam: “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GaUO67FYok">We’re on to Cincinnati</a>,” the team’s next opponent. <a href="https://www.cincinnati.com/story/sports/nfl/bengals/2024/01/11/bill-belichick-on-to-cincinnati-interview/72191389007/">One reporter</a> noted that Belichick used the word “Cincinnati” 15 times.</p>
<p>Now, Belichick will stalk the sidelines <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/11/style/bill-belichick-hoodie-patriots.html">in his trademark hoodie</a> somewhere else.</p>
<p>If not to Cincinnati, Belichick will almost certainly coach again. He has interviewed with the Atlanta Falcons. Other teams are also rumored to be in the mix. </p>
<p>Maybe the interviewers should add a question about long snappers. That way, they can see how they’ll be getting more than just a coach.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/221057/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rich Hanley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The coach’s legendary terseness and his rejection of technological trends belie a wealth of knowledge about the game and its history.Rich Hanley, Professor Emeritus of Journalism, Quinnipiac UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2024022023-03-28T13:59:22Z2023-03-28T13:59:22ZThe South African Council on Sport at 50: the fight for sports development is still relevant today<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517892/original/file-20230328-3015-yxtdpj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Richard Drury/Getty Images</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s 50 years since the <a href="https://search.informit.org/doi/abs/10.3316/informit.817068754613985">official formation</a> of the South African Council on Sport (Sacos). Sacos was the sport wing of the anti-<a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa">apartheid</a> liberation movement. It was established in 1973 and disbanded in 2005. It’s main <a href="https://search.informit.org/doi/abs/10.3316/informit.817068754613985">aim</a>, at the time, was to lay the ground for all national sport federations to be able to compete in international competition – and not just the teams of the white-minority apartheid state.</p>
<p>As a remembrance campaign, regional committees were established in various South African cities to commemorate this nearly forgotten but historically important organisation. It’s important to remember Sacos because its ideals of a non-racial sport society have still not been realised in 2023.</p>
<p>Instead, South African sport has regressed to <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/349590114_A_Critique_of_Neoliberalism_in_Sport_Towards_Optimistic_Sport_in_the_Wake_of_the_COVID-19_Pandemic">elitism</a>, uncontrollable <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/Sport.html?id=L35jxQEACAAJ&redir_esc=y">corruption</a>, over-professionalism, nepotism and exclusion.</p>
<p>The Remembering Sacos Campaign, begun on 17 March 2023, consists of seminars, exhibitions and sport activities. It is an ongoing drive, aiming to make the majority of South Africans aware of their present-day marginalisation from sports structures. Simply put, it is a reactivation of the Sacos slogan:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>No normal sport in an abnormal society.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The slogan meant that sport cannot be divorced from broader social issues. It was a very unpopular idea among establishment sport circles in the 1970s, who spread a message that sport and politics do not mix.</p>
<p>Sports historians have <a href="https://search.informit.org/doi/abs/10.3316/informit.817068754613985">contributed</a> sparse but <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/Sport_and_Liberation_in_South_Africa.html?id=baGfAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y">important</a> <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/Sport_and_Liberation_in_South_Africa.html?id=baGfAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y">research</a> <a href="https://ujcontent.uj.ac.za/esploro/outputs/doctoral/Opposing-apartheid-through-sport-the-role/9911673007691?skipUsageReporting=true&skipUsageReporting=true&recordUsage=false&recordUsage=false&institution=27UOJ_INST">works</a> that reveals the huge contribution Sacos made to sport development in South Africa up until 2005.</p>
<p>These histories, combined with information from archives at local and overseas universities, show how sport development was used to unite oppressed communities, unlike the false unity of today. Administrators were able to develop sport programmes from community to national level without government and corporate support. They were united around issues such as organising fixtures, agitating for facilities, seeking out sponsorships and others. This was enabled by self-sacrificing leaders, committed to non-racialism – such as 1980s Sacos leader <a href="https://www.sun.ac.za/english/Lists/Events/DispForm.aspx?ID=5445&RootFolder=%2Fenglish%2FLists%2FEvents&Source=https%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Esun%2Eac%2Eza%2Fenglish%2FPages%2Fdefault%2Easpx">Willie Adams</a>.</p>
<p>The history of Sacos offers insights into how to craft new narratives that could advance sport development in marginalised communities today.</p>
<h2>Remembering Willie Adams</h2>
<p>Willie Adams (1951-2012) was the subject of one <a href="https://www.sun.ac.za/english/Lists/Events/DispForm.aspx?ID=5445&RootFolder=%2Fenglish%2FLists%2FEvents&Source=https%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Esun%2Eac%2Eza%2Fenglish%2FPages%2Fdefault%2Easpx">symposium</a> marking the 50th anniversary. Adams personified what Sacos leadership represented during apartheid and what potential it holds for a future sport leadership. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517891/original/file-20230328-490-8f7acl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A black and white photograph of a row of six men and a woman standing posing, the men wearing jackets and ties" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517891/original/file-20230328-490-8f7acl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517891/original/file-20230328-490-8f7acl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=282&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517891/original/file-20230328-490-8f7acl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=282&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517891/original/file-20230328-490-8f7acl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=282&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517891/original/file-20230328-490-8f7acl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=354&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517891/original/file-20230328-490-8f7acl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=354&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517891/original/file-20230328-490-8f7acl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=354&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sacos members. From left to right: Michael Titus, Stan Gumede, Dallas Haynes, Reginald Feldman, Hilton Adonis, Willie Adams and Basil Brown.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Stellenbosch University Library/Willie Adams Collection</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This activist and intellectual sport leader realised the importance of a politically non-aligned resistance sport movement that worked towards an equal and open society. Even after the first steps to dismantle the country’s apartheid structures, Adams and a small band of former Sacos comrades remained true to this principle. They successfully waged a “Stop the Olympic bid committee” campaign in the 1990s. They argued that development must take precedence over hosting high profile events, especially in a society struggling to recover from decades of oppression under white minority rule.</p>
<p>Adams also continuously warned of the pitfalls of a hastily concocted sport unification in the 1990s. He based his sport-political project firmly on Sacos principles of No Normal Sport in an Abnormal Society.</p>
<h2>A history of Sacos</h2>
<p>Sacos was established in 1973 by a small group of sport administrators, representing nine federations from oppressed communities. This was to formulate a response to the government’s apartheid practices, which promoted separate development for different racially classified communities.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-colonial-history-shaped-bodies-and-sport-at-the-edges-of-empire-166192">How colonial history shaped bodies and sport at the edges of empire</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>In 1970, the apartheid government <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/The_South_African_Game.html?id=lXeBAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y">introduced</a> a new multinational sport policy. It was an attempt to trick the international community into believing it was making significant reforms of its segregation practices. This was a time when South Africa was <a href="https://olympics.com/en/news/why-south-africa-barred-from-the-olympics-apartheid">expelled</a> from the International Olympic Committee and an <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/354971367_Non-Racial_Sport_in_South_Africa_A_Documentary_Analysis_of_the_Struggle_for_International_Recognition_1946-1971">increasing number</a> of international sport federations. Absurd as it may seem today, the new policy allowed people from different, racially classified, communities to play sport together – provided they apply for a permit. But apartheid laws remained firmly intact.</p>
<p>Initiated by the non-racial South African Soccer Federation, a <a href="https://search.informit.org/doi/abs/10.3316/informit.817068754613985">meeting</a> was held under the name The First Conference of National Non-Racial Sports Organisations (commonly referred to as “the ad hoc committee”). It took place at the Himalaya Hotel in Durban on 6 September 1970. The committee had meagre funds at its disposal and no permanent administrative staff. Meetings were held after work hours in private offices. </p>
<p>The meeting may be regarded as the first step towards the formation of Sacos. It revolved around the presentation of two papers: Problems Confronting our Sports Administrators and Sportsmen of our Country by Morgan Naidoo and International Sport by M.N. Pather. These papers have unfortunately not been preserved but the <a href="https://search.informit.org/doi/abs/10.3316/informit.817068754613985">minutes</a> of the meeting indicate that discussions revolved around the lack of opportunity for oppressed communities to participate in international sport. These issues remain unresolved in a society with huge <a href="https://theconversation.com/democracy-loses-its-glow-for-south-africans-amid-persistent-inequality-181489">inequalities</a> and rampant <a href="https://theconversation.com/zumas-disastrous-rule-goes-on-as-a-corrupt-elite-robs-south-africa-blind-68185">corruption</a>.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-story-of-milo-pillay-the-strongman-who-lifted-a-bar-for-south-african-sports-161915">The story of Milo Pillay, the strongman who lifted a bar for South African sports</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>After a series of formal meetings for the next three years, Sacos was established on 17 March 1973 at the Himalaya Hotel. Guest speakers included <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/chief-mangosuthu-gatsha-buthelezi">Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi</a> from the Inkhata Party and journalist <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2006-07-21-journalist-barry-streek-passes-away/">Barry Streek</a> representing the banned student leader, <a href="https://www.news24.com/news24/opinions/analysis/paul-pretorius-guiding-sa-through-the-morass-of-corruption-20190131">Paul Pretorius</a>. Sacos was to prepare the ground for oppressed national sporting bodies to achieve international recognition. Apartheid sport federations ignored its overtures, resulting in a hardening of Sacos attitudes, especially after the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/june-16-soweto-youth-uprising">Soweto 1976 uprising</a>. </p>
<p>When Adams entered the Sacos leadership in the 1980s, the organisation had changed. It envisaged a new sporting world for South Africa’s oppressed masses, beyond just international participation. Again, the apartheid government rejected its call. As did the new, post-apartheid sport regime under the ruling African National Congress’s short-lived National Sports Congress. The Sacos call, this time, was for development first – before international participation. This lack of recognition by the state led to the eventual demise of Sacos in 2005. </p>
<p>For those in search of a new sport world of equal opportunity for all South Africans, it is worth remembering Sacos and its fight for sport development.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/202402/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Francois Cleophas does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Fifty years ago the council was created to fight for marginalised communities to participate fairly in sports. Their dream remains unfulfilled.Francois Cleophas, Senior Lecturer in Sport History, Stellenbosch UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1930062022-10-27T12:27:53Z2022-10-27T12:27:53ZThe first televised World Series spurred America’s television boom, 75 years ago<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491965/original/file-20221026-21-k03uax.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=47%2C59%2C3898%2C2780&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">An estimated 3.5 million Americans viewed the first televised World Series at bars, restaurants and storefronts.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/crowd-watching-world-series-game-on-tv-set-in-window-of-news-photo/515248870?phrase=crowd gazing in window at television new york&adppopup=true">Bettmann/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Boston Red Sox catcher Carlton Fisk <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WRi6iZAl-I">desperately waving at his home run to stay in play</a>. Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder Kirk Gibson <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZzGkoXlaTM">pumping his arms</a> as he hobbles around second base after muscling a home run off Dennis Eckersley, the Oakland A’s dominant closer. The ground ball hit by New York Mets outfielder Mookie Wilson <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpyJjecJnuI">skipping through the legs</a> of Red Sox first baseman Bill Buckner. </p>
<p>Some of the most dramatic images in World Series history are ingrained in the minds of baseball fans thanks to television coverage. This year’s World Series between the Philadelphia Phillies and Houston Astros will surely bring another timeless highlight to the <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/03/2021-world-series-ratings-braves-astros-game-6-draws-14point3-million.html">12 million or so viewers</a> expected to watch. </p>
<p>Yet the first 43 World Series weren’t televised at all. It wasn’t until the 1947 series between the New York Yankees and Brooklyn Dodgers – 75 years ago – that fans could watch their favorite players duke it out on screen. </p>
<p>As I detail in my book “<a href="https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/bison-original/9780803248250/">Center Field Shot: A History of Baseball on Television</a>,” which I co-authored with Robert Bellamy, the telecasts became a sensation. They drew millions of Americans to a new medium at a time when there were no national networks, only a handful of stations and somewhere between 50,000 and 60,000 TVs in the entire country.</p>
<h2>Negotiations go down to the wire</h2>
<p>In August 1947, the television industry anticipated a possible all-New York World Series: The Yankees had a huge lead in the American League, while the Dodgers also held a substantial one in the National League. </p>
<p>If the two teams met in October, New York’s three television stations – run by NBC ABC, and the now-extinct <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/DuMont-Television-Network">DuMont</a> – decided they wanted to cover the games.</p>
<p>But the rights to televise the games were held by the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Mutual-Broadcasting-System">Mutual Broadcasting System</a>, a radio network that had no television division. Thus, Mutual would need to farm out the coverage to one or more New York stations. </p>
<p>Although no national television network existed at the time, NBC, DuMont and CBS did have the means to link stations on the Eastern Seaboard through a combination of coaxial cable, microwave and over-the-air broadcast transmissions, expanding the potential audience for the World Series. The Series would air on eight stations in four markets: New York City, Philadelphia, Washington and Schenectady, New York.</p>
<p>While the Yankees-Dodgers series materialized, the televising of the Series almost didn’t. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Boy hawking souvenir programs." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491966/original/file-20221026-21-dnupqt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491966/original/file-20221026-21-dnupqt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491966/original/file-20221026-21-dnupqt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491966/original/file-20221026-21-dnupqt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491966/original/file-20221026-21-dnupqt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=567&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491966/original/file-20221026-21-dnupqt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=567&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491966/original/file-20221026-21-dnupqt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=567&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Broadcasters got their wish when the New York Yankees faced the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1947 World Series.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/new-york-ny-yankee-and-dodger-fans-are-jamming-the-yankee-news-photo/515585048?phrase=boy%20selling%20souvenir%20programs&adppopup=true">Bettmann/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The predictable stumbling block was money. Baseball commissioner <a href="https://baseballhall.org/hall-of-famers/chandler-happy">Albert B. “Happy” Chandler</a> wanted $100,000 for the television rights to the Series. Gillette, the sponsor of the radio coverage on the Mutual Broadcasting System, balked at the steep price given television’s limited penetration – only 50,000 to 60,000 U.S. households owned TVs at the time. The radio rights to reach the nation’s 29 million homes with radios had cost Mutual only $175,000. </p>
<p>Initial negotiations produced an offer of $60,000 from two sponsors: Gillette and the Ford Motor Company. New York’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Liebmann">Liebmann Breweries</a> offered to meet Chandler’s $100,000 demand, but the commissioner refused because he did not want beer ads when youngsters would be prominent members of the audience.</p>
<p>Even before a coverage deal had been finalized, bars, restaurants, television dealers, department stores, automobile dealerships and movie theaters started advertising the event, urging customers to come by to watch the World Series on television. And in the days and weeks leading up to the Fall Classic, the demand for television sets spiked. </p>
<p>The excitement pressured Chandler and the sponsors to reach a compromise. </p>
<p>Finally, on Sept. 26, just four days before Game 1 at Yankee Stadium, Chandler, Gillette and Ford <a href="https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-BC/BC-1947/1947-10-06-BC.pdf">agreed to $65,000 for the rights to televise the World Series</a>. Production costs added another $35,000 to the sponsors’ bill. Mutual, Gillette and Ford also agreed to allow all three New York TV stations and those connected to them to broadcast the game, providing the widest possible exposure.</p>
<h2>An unexpectedly strong response</h2>
<p>Initial industry estimates had the Series reaching between 600,000 and 700,000 viewers, many of them located in the bars and restaurants where a substantial number of the nation’s first television receivers were located. </p>
<p>But that forecast ended up being conservative. Although home viewing for the seven games was substantial – 450,000 in a <a href="https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-All-Music/Billboard/40s/1947/BB-1947-10-18.pdf">Hooper rating survey commissioned by Billboard</a> – the out-of-home viewing numbers were extraordinary: Another 3.5 million were estimated to have viewed the World Series in public locales. </p>
<p>Hooper’s survey found that an average of 82 customers showed up at each of these public locations to watch at least some of the World Series. Variety reported that bar owners saw a 500% increase in patrons during the Series, with some offering reservations to their regulars for a choice location near the TV set.</p>
<p>What viewers from those choice seats saw was primitive by today’s standards. The screen was usually small – 12 diagonal inches or less. The low-definition images were black and white and came from just a few cameras. No extreme close-ups were possible. There was no instant replay, so fans had to pay attention or the moment was lost. </p>
<p>But for the first time, they were seeing the World Series live, and for free.</p>
<h2>The TV industry’s World Series bump</h2>
<p>The audience liked what they saw. <a href="https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-All-Music/Billboard/40s/1947/BB-1947-10-11.pdf">Billboard</a>, quoting The Newark Evening News, reported that TV “audiences hung on every turn of the video cameras and the ‘oohs and aahs’ at a slide or strikeout were something radio broadcasters would give their eye teeth to hear.” </p>
<p>It didn’t hurt that <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/postseason/1947_WS.shtml">the 1947 World Series</a> ended up being so dramatic. The Yankees prevailed in seven games, but Brooklyn owned the two greatest moments.</p>
<p>In the bottom of the ninth inning of Game 4, Dodgers pitch hitter <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWjpOAy5zCM">Cookie Lavagetto ended Yankee starter Bill Biven’s no-hit bid</a> with a two-out hit, driving in two runs and sending the Dodgers to a 3-2 win. Then, in Game 6, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SrtxVs8uMI">Al Gionfriddo’s stunning catch of Joe DiMaggio’s deep drive to left field</a> helped preserve an 8-6 Dodgers victory, leading legendary Dodgers broadcaster <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Red_Barber.html?id=lWhgEAAAQBAJ">Red Barber</a> to exclaim, “Oh, Doctor!”</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/oWjpOAy5zCM?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Cookie Lavagetto’s double won the game for the Brooklyn Dodgers in Game 4.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Washington broadcasts even reached the White House, where President Harry S. Truman, his staff and the D.C. press corps watched some of the contests. The <a href="https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-Televiser/Televiser-1947-09-10.pdf">industry magazine Televiser</a> reported an enthusiastic response from the White House viewers: “If TV can do as good a job as that on perhaps the most difficult of all subjects to televise, then it really has arrived.” </p>
<p>The public’s embrace of the World Series on television, along with the generous coverage of the telecasts by the press, provided an important boost to the nascent television industry. The Sporting News reported that the first televised World Series increased sales for new receivers in New York to levels not seen since the early days of radio. Similar reports came from dealers in Washington and Philadelphia.</p>
<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Sarnoff">David Sarnoff</a>, chairman of RCA – which owed NBC and was a leading manufacturer of receivers – regarded television’s coverage of baseball and its crowning event, the World Series, as one of the most important factors in triggering the growth of the new medium. </p>
<p>Television makers, <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Center_Field_Shot.html?id=6kPQhpS-X8YC">he concluded</a>, “had to have baseball games and if [baseball owners] had demanded millions for the rights, we would have had to give it to them.” </p>
<p>The television industry eventually did pay millions and then billions for those rights. <a href="https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Daily/Issues/2018/11/15/Media/MLB-Fox.aspx">Fox’s latest seven-year contract</a>, including rights to the World Series, pays Major League Baseball $5.1 billion. </p>
<p>Happy Chandler’s 1947 demand for a $100,000 seems like quite a bargain today.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/193006/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Walker does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Just five days before the first pitch of the 1947 World Series, a deal was struck to air the Series on television.James Walker, Emeritus Professor of Communication, Saint Xavier UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1597372021-04-28T10:53:51Z2021-04-28T10:53:51ZA thousand runs in May – can cricket’s mystical milestone be reached once more?<p>For most old-school cricket traditionalists the new competition being foisted on them this summer – The Hundred – has only one redeeming feature. To make space for the new game, the season has been front-loaded with more traditional four-day county championship games, meaning a hectic schedule of first-class cricket in April and May before the shorter-form matches. Consequently, this year fans might see something not seen for over three decades – a batsman scoring 1,000 first-class runs before the end of May.</p>
<p>The cricket world likes to mark achievements in multiples of fives and tens: five wickets in an innings or ten wickets in a match, for example, are marks of bowling quality, while zero or 100 will spell triumph or disaster for batsmen. </p>
<p>More broadly, while the best batsmen in county cricket might routinely expect to score 1,000 runs in a season (excluding any scored in one-day cricket), these days bowlers rarely take 100 wickets. Kent’s Alfred “Tich” Freeman took more than 200 wickets in every season between 1928 to 1935, but such days are gone. In 22 years Freeman averaged about 26 first-class games a season; in a career only a little shorter, England’s Jimmy Anderson averages about half that number. In the last pre-COVID season of 2019, Simon Harmer from Essex came closest with 83 from only 14 first-class games, as cricketing calendars are increasingly filled with one-day cricket.</p>
<p>Chunkier bats and smaller boundaries are only two reasons why the modern game is felt by many to favour batsmen, and the ultimate indicator of a storming start to any season is to score 1,000 runs before May has ended. </p>
<h2>Weather permitting</h2>
<p>In reality, “1,000 runs in May” means all of May and a large chunk of April, but even so, this cricketing milestone, <a href="https://wisdenblog.wordpress.com/2018/06/07/a-grand-day-out/">notes cricket journalist Richard Whitehead</a>, has acquired mystic properties “simply because it has been done so infrequently”. And that’s because, as the Telegraph’s cricket correspondent Scyld Berry <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cricket/2021/04/26/race-score-1000-runs-may-remains-mystique-cricket/">suggests</a>, “like the annual race to be the first clipper to bring tea from China to London” or “like the race to sail through the Northwest Passage”, conditions are unforgiving and prohibitive.</p>
<p>Early in the season, in a contest between bat and ball, the ball often prevails. Batsmen are still blinking to acclimatise to natural light after a winter indoors, while bowlers at their friskiest are helped by damp pitches that haven’t yet hardened under prolonged sunshine and where the ball is more likely to behave unexpectedly.</p>
<p>The weather, indeed, might mean that matches will be affected by the rain; or, like this year, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/sport/live/2021/apr/10/cricket-county-championship-yorkshire-glamorgan-lancashire-sussex-live">even delayed because of snow</a>. Cricket writer Martin Johnson – who died in March – <a href="https://www.thecricketpaper.com/features-and-columns/1529/martin-johnson-column-1000-runs-in-may-no-just-1000-goose-pimples/">noted</a> that while 1,000 runs before the end of May is unlikely, “1,000 goose pimples before the end of April is pretty well guaranteed”.</p>
<h2>A few good batsmen</h2>
<p>The milestone has been reached only nine times. A household name in the Victorian era, WG Grace was the first to do it in 1895. It was especially astonishing given that his 18-stone frame was being supported by 47-year-old legs. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="Man with large beard and wearing a striped hat." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/397356/original/file-20210427-15-dxytme.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/397356/original/file-20210427-15-dxytme.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=719&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/397356/original/file-20210427-15-dxytme.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=719&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/397356/original/file-20210427-15-dxytme.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=719&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/397356/original/file-20210427-15-dxytme.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=903&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/397356/original/file-20210427-15-dxytme.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=903&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/397356/original/file-20210427-15-dxytme.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=903&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">WG Grace was the first to achieve 1000 runs in May.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._G._Grace#/media/File:WG_Grace_c1902.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span>
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<p>The next to hit the mark, in 1900, was Surrey’s Tom Hayward. A dedicated and reliable professional, he entered the season with ten days of intensive batting practice under his belt and showed early form “no other batsman <a href="https://www.espncricinfo.com/wisdenalmanack/content/story/152484.html">could approach</a>”. </p>
<p>Walter Hammond – the most elegant batsman of his age - was the next to reach the target in 1927, followed by Lancastrian Charlie Hallows the following year. <a href="https://www.espncricinfo.com/player/charlie-hallows-14002">Though much less famous</a> than any of the other of the May champions, “before radio and television blew the bubble of cricketers’ reputations, the name of Charles Hallows was a household word in the north”.</p>
<p>The freakish Donald Bradman – by far the most prolific batsman of his time, and any other time - did it twice, plundering county bowlers in 1930 and 1938 when Australia toured England. Englishman Bill Edrich also did it in 1938, but it would be 35 years before it was repeated. </p>
<p>In 1973, the slightly built Glenn Turner – on tour with New Zealand but already well used to playing cricket in England with his time with Worcestershire - had the <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cricket/2021/04/26/race-score-1000-runs-may-remains-mystique-cricket/">benefit of more innings than usual</a> as the tourists “went round the country gently warming up”. No such feat would be possible nowadays, as touring teams play so few county games. </p>
<p>The small matter of a single innings of 405 was pivotal for the most recent man to do it, in 1988. Zimbabwe-born Graeme Hick was another Worcestershire batsmen who made county bowlers “<a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/31691452">look like cannon fodder</a>”, albeit he was never quite consistent enough to secure a regular England spot after qualifying to represent the country in 1991.</p>
<p>In 2021, though, the elusive 1,000 runs in May is still possible. The new Hundred competition and an increasingly chaotic fixture schedule <a href="https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/sport/cricket/adam-lyth-sprints-towards-a-thousand-runs-as-joe-root-and-yorkshire-ccc-take-control-at-kent-3205007">has meant more championship games</a>. And, with the whole of May still to come, several county batsmen are well poised to become forever part of cricketing folklore, 33 years after it was last achieved. Should it happen, the great shame is that with spectators not yet part of domestic cricket’s post-COVID recovery, the much-merited cheering and applause is likely to be recorded and piped in over a PA system.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/159737/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Richard Thomas receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) for academic research not connected to this article.</span></em></p>Only eight batsmen have achieved the feat, will another join their ranks this May?Richard Thomas, Associate Professor, Journalism, Swansea UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1593122021-04-20T14:47:49Z2021-04-20T14:47:49ZEuropean Super League: a history of splits over money in professional sport<p>The world of European football experienced one of the biggest shake-ups in its history when a prospective <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/56794673">European Super League</a> (ESL) was announced. Fans, football associations and even the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/football/2021/apr/19/the-european-super-league-what-can-boris-johnson-do-about-it">government</a> united in condemning the new tournament, which was criticised as “a cynical project founded on the self-interest of a few clubs”.</p>
<p>Described as a “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/football/live/2021/apr/19/european-super-league-latest-reaction-to-breakaway-football-competition-live?page=with:block-607d82a78f08080a7ae65413with">new midweek competition</a>”, the league was initially announced with 12 founding members from across Europe, including the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/56795811">six “top” English football clubs</a> (who have now <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/football/2021/apr/20/european-super-league-unravelling-as-manchester-city-and-chelsea-withdraw">reportedly pulled out</a>, throwing the creation of the tournament into jeopardy). These founding clubs could not be relegated from the competition – one of the major points of contention. </p>
<p>The draw for these clubs is easy to understand. Each of the founding teams <a href="https://qz.com/1998582/how-much-tv-money-could-the-european-super-league-command/">would receive</a> an expected €3.5 billion (£3.02 billion) to join, plus €10 billion (£8.6 billion) for an “initial commitment period”. </p>
<p>In a statement, the Football Supporters’ Association voiced: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>This competition is being created behind our backs by billionaire club owners who have zero regard for the game’s traditions and continue to treat football as their personal fiefdom.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>There is an overwhelming sense from all angry parties that owners of the already wealthy clubs have sought further financial domination by distorting competition. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1383909222895603716"}"></div></p>
<p>The initial outrage will give way to more measured thought and criticism, but the burning questions are whether this model represents a realistic challenge to the current style of competition and what the consequences would be for both the European and domestic English game. The history of sport can offer some clues.</p>
<h2>A history of break-ups and conciliation</h2>
<p>Sport has historically been mired in splits and divisions. Football experienced such episodes during the last quarter of the 19th century with the separation between football and rugby football and then the latter into the amateur Rugby Union and the professionalised Rugby League. </p>
<p>The Premier League itself was the result of a split away from the Football League in 1992. The Football Association wanted to exploit the developing commercial opportunities, notably the sale of broadcasting rights. The legal challenge by the jilted Football League failed and the Premier League clubs have since prospered, largely thanks to the new subscription model of broadcasting.</p>
<p>Cricket’s great split occurred in 1977 over the allocation of broadcasting rights to Australian cricket. TV magnate <a href="https://www.espncricinfo.com/story/haigh-on-the-wsc-323297">Kerry Packer</a> wanted the rights to show Australian matches but was rebuffed as the traditional relationship with the state broadcaster (ABC) prevailed. </p>
<p>Packer’s response was to launch his own competition, the innovative World Series Cricket, and in great secrecy contracted the world’s leading players, including England captain Tony Greig. <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/may/13/newsid_2512000/2512249.st">Greig was duly sacked</a> and players earning a living in England who had signed were banned from playing in England. The resulting court case went in favour of the players and the bans were rescinded. World Series Cricket ran for two seasons, embracing new ideas such as coloured clothing and games that were played later in the day and continued into the evening (known as day/night games), which attracted spectators and made the more traditional offering appear jaded. </p>
<p>The financial pressure on the Australian Cricket Board led to an inevitable compromise and Packer gaining the broadcasting rights. </p>
<p>More recently, the Board for Cricket Control in India (BCCI) fought off the challenge by the broadcasting-driven India Cricket League (ICL). A combination of player bans and improved prize money in existing competitions were used. However, it was the formation of its own competition, the highly successful <a href="https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/ipl-history/indian-premier-league-how-it-all-started/articleshow/19337875.cms">Indian Premier League</a>, that proved the trump card. The ICL was strangled in infancy. The Packer affair and the Indian Premier League clearly demonstrate that new markets for a traditional sport could be developed and exploited.</p>
<h2>Possible outcomes</h2>
<p>These examples point towards possible outcomes for football. </p>
<p>Broadcasting income is a key driver of sports and since the formation of the Premier League and sale of the rights to Sky, new players – BT and Amazon – have entered the market, driving up the value of the content. The big clubs want a larger slice of this and other commercial income, arguing that it is their profile and popularity that attracts subscribers and viewers. </p>
<p>A new formula for <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/football/2018/jun/07/premier-league-big-six-win-battle-overseas-television-rights">international broadcasting income</a> has already been agreed upon. Where previously the income from sharing rights was split equally, the top six clubs now receive larger sums. Any changes to the system would no doubt apply pressure to approve a new domestic formula. </p>
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<p>A threat to potentially <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/56795811">ban teams and players involved in the ESL</a> from the Premier League will have concentrated the minds of those clubs who are dependent on broadcasting income for their viability. The smaller clubs have less in the way of gate receipts and other commercial income so are very vulnerable to any decrease in TV revenue. A domestic league without the big six clubs has significantly decreased value and the same arguments apply at European level. </p>
<p>Fans have protested about the rich clubs getting richer and the betrayal of tradition, but the combination of the attractiveness of the Premier League product, ironically created by a split orchestrated by the FA, and the willingness of club owners to exploit their assets suggests a willingness to actively pursue change. The decision for the national governing bodies across Europe and the Uefa itself is whether to embrace and incorporate change and inevitably cede some control or stand firm and fight off the threat and with it consign professional football into a maelstrom of uncertainty.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/159312/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Steve Greenfield does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>From the emergence of Premier League to Cricket’s newer formats, the history of professional sport is full of breakups.Steve Greenfield, Professor of Sports Law and Practice, University of WestminsterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1480762020-10-16T11:02:04Z2020-10-16T11:02:04ZHow baseball’s first commissioner led a conspiracy of silence to preserve baseball’s color line<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/363523/original/file-20201014-15-1idqvy8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=728%2C29%2C2483%2C1778&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">When commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis received a petition to integrate baseball with over a million signatures, he simply ignored it.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/on-january-15-dedication-ceremonies-were-held-for-the-clock-news-photo/146337021?adppopup=true">APA via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Baseball Writers’ Association of America recently announced that it would <a href="https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/29387969/mvps-say-pull-landis-name-plaques">remove former Major League Baseball</a> Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis’ name from the plaques awarded to the American and National League MVPs. </p>
<p>The decision came after a number of former MVPs, including Black award winners <a href="https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/29387969/mvps-say-pull-landis-name-plaques">Barry Larkin and Terry Pendleton</a>, voiced their displeasure with their plaques being named for Landis, who <a href="http://baseballegg.com/2020/07/01/kenesaw-mountain-landis-mvp-trophy-controversy/">kept the game segregated during the 24 years he served as commissioner from 1920 until his death in 1944</a>. The Brooklyn Dodgers ended the color line when they signed Jackie Robinson to a contract in October 1945, less than a year after Landis’ death. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/363520/original/file-20201014-15-1plessn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Awarded to Oakland Athletics outfielder Rickey Henderson, the 1990 American League Most Valuable Player Award prominently features Kenesaw Mountain Landis' name." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/363520/original/file-20201014-15-1plessn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/363520/original/file-20201014-15-1plessn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=771&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/363520/original/file-20201014-15-1plessn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=771&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/363520/original/file-20201014-15-1plessn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=771&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/363520/original/file-20201014-15-1plessn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=969&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/363520/original/file-20201014-15-1plessn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=969&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/363520/original/file-20201014-15-1plessn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=969&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Moving forward, the award – and plaque – will no longer feature Landis’ name.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/detail-view-of-the-1990-kennesaw-mountain-landis-award-for-news-photo/51995592?adppopup=true">MLB Photos via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Landis has had his defenders over the years. In the past, essayist <a href="https://time.com/4294175/jackie-robinson-burns-landis-myth/">David Kaiser</a>, baseball historian <a href="https://ourgame.mlblogs.com/when-landis-met-robeson-dc10f951a8b">Norman Macht</a>, Landis biographer <a href="https://time.com/4294175/jackie-robinson-burns-landis-myth/">David Pietrusza</a> and the commissioner’s nephew, <a href="https://www.pharostribune.com/sports/article_e00020c0-c875-11ea-beb9-33c0a67eeed4.html">Lincoln Landis</a>, have claimed that there is no evidence that Landis said or did anything racist. </p>
<p>But in my view, it’s what he didn’t say and didn’t do that made him a racist. </p>
<p>In my book “<a href="https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/nebraska/9780803210769/">Conspiracy of Silence: Sportswriters and the Long Campaign to Desegregate Baseball</a>,” I argue that baseball’s color line existed as long as it did because the nation’s white mainstream sportswriters remained silent about it, even as Black and progressive activists campaigned for integration.</p>
<p>However those who ran the league possessed far more power than sportswriters. Landis, along with the owners, knew that there were Black players good enough to play in the big leagues. If he wanted to integrate Major League Baseball, he could have.</p>
<p>Instead, he did all he could to prevent the rest of America from knowing just how talented Black baseball players were. </p>
<h2>Petitions go ignored</h2>
<p>By the time Landis became commissioner in 1920, baseball had been segregated ever since a so-called “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2020/08/16/baseball-is-honoring-negro-leagues-it-needs-explain-why-they-existed/">gentlemen’s agreement</a>” took place among team owners in the 1880s. </p>
<p>However, it was common practice in the 1920s for Major League teams to earn extra money in the off-season by playing Black teams in exhibition games. Landis <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/baseballs-great-experiment-9780195339284?cc=us&lang=en&.">put a halt</a> to these games because he wanted to end the embarrassment of the Black teams’ winning so often.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="African American sports reporter Sam Lacy grins in a black-and-white portrait from 1960." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/363524/original/file-20201014-19-uc7z68.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/363524/original/file-20201014-19-uc7z68.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=742&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/363524/original/file-20201014-19-uc7z68.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=742&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/363524/original/file-20201014-19-uc7z68.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=742&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/363524/original/file-20201014-19-uc7z68.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=932&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/363524/original/file-20201014-19-uc7z68.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=932&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/363524/original/file-20201014-19-uc7z68.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=932&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sam Lacy pushed Kenesaw Mountain Landis to advocate for the signing of Black players.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/portrait-of-former-afro-american-newspapers-sports-reporter-news-photo/506705777?adppopup=true">Afro American Newspapers/Gado via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It is worth noting that Black athletes competed with white ones in other sports in the 1920s and 1930s, including boxing, college tennis, college football and, for several years, the National Football League. Black athletes <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/sports/1988/12/25/black-athletes-struggle-in-fight-for-equality/391a69e5-f5f5-4f80-ae6b-1e1e11a6ff16/">also represented the United States in the Olympics</a>.</p>
<p>During the 1930s, Black sportswriters like Wendell Smith and Sam Lacy, along with white sportswriters for the Communist newspaper The Daily Worker, intensely <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-politics-played-a-major-role-in-the-signing-of-jackie-robinson-56890">campaigned for the integration of baseball</a>. </p>
<p>In their <a href="https://www.espn.com/espn/otl/news/story?id=4943434">editorials and articles</a>, Worker sportswriters chronicled the accomplishments of Negro League stars and told readers that struggling Major League teams could improve their chances by signing Black players. Meanwhile, Communist activists organized protests and circulated petition drives outside the ballparks of New York’s three Major League teams – the Yankees, Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers – demanding that teams sign Black players. </p>
<p>The petitions, which had, according to one estimate, <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-politics-played-a-major-role-in-the-signing-of-jackie-robinson-56890">a million signatures</a>, were then sent off to the commissioner’s office. They were ignored. The Daily Worker regularly focused on Landis as the person responsible for the color line, while the Black press derisively <a href="https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/nebraska/9780803210769/">called him</a> “the Great White Father.”</p>
<h2>Don’t ask, don’t tell</h2>
<p>Landis’ defenders say that he <a href="https://time.com/4294175/jackie-robinson-burns-landis-myth/">could not possibly have been a bigot</a> because he suspended Yankees <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/27/sports/baseball/27powell.html">outfielder Jake Powell</a> for making a racist comment during a 1938 radio interview. </p>
<p>Landis suspended Powell not because the ballplayer used a slur, but because it was heard by fans, and Black activists pressured the commissioner to do something. While Landis ended up punishing a racist player, he <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/27/sports/baseball/27powell.html">did nothing</a> to end racial discrimination against Black players.</p>
<p>Furthermore, Landis refused to allow players and managers to speak on the issue. When Brooklyn manager Leo Durocher was quoted in a 1942 Daily Worker article saying he would sign Black players if he were allowed to, <a href="https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/nebraska/9780803210769/">Landis ordered Durocher</a> to deny that he made the statement. </p>
<p>The following year, Landis again subverted the campaign to end segregation in the sport.</p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>Sam Lacy, who was then working for the Chicago Defender, repeatedly asked Landis for a meeting to talk about the color line. When Landis finally agreed, Lacy asked the commissioner if he could make the case for integration at baseball’s annual meeting. </p>
<p>Landis, without telling Lacy, invited the Negro Newspaper Publishers Association. Also invited to speak was Paul Robeson, the onetime college football star who had become an actor, singer, writer – and avowed Communist. <a href="https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/nebraska/9780803210769/">Lacy was incensed</a> that Robeson would be asked to address the conservative white owners about the sensitive issue of integration. </p>
<p>To Lacy, the presence of Robeson meant that Landis could plant seeds of suspicion with white owners and sportswriters that the campaign to integrate baseball <a href="https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/nebraska/9780803210769/">was a Communist front</a>.</p>
<p>Lacy wrote in a column that Landis <a href="https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/nebraska/9780803210769/">reminded him of a cartoon</a> he had seen of a man extending his right hand in a gesture of friendship while clenching a long knife that was hidden in his left hand.</p>
<p>Landis died in December 1944, and Lacy finally got a chance to address team executives in March of the following year. Brooklyn Dodgers executive Branch Rickey ended up <a href="https://www.leelowenfish.com/_i_branch_rickey__baseball_s_ferocious_gentleman__i__80969.htm">signing Jackie Robinson</a> to a contract several months later, thus ending segregation in baseball.</p>
<p>Lee Lowenfish, Rickey’s biographer, was convinced that Landis would have tried to stop the Brooklyn executive <a href="https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/bison-books/9780803224537/">from signing Robinson</a>.</p>
<p>I believe it is no coincidence that baseball remained segregated during Landis’ reign as commissioner – or that it became integrated only after he died.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/148076/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chris Lamb does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>By removing Kenesaw Mountain Landis’ name from the plaques awarded to each league’s MVP, the Baseball Writers’ Association of America acknowledged Landis’ role in upholding segregation.Chris Lamb, Professor of Journalism, IUPUILicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1314412020-02-25T13:52:20Z2020-02-25T13:52:20ZGirls are reaching new heights in basketball, but huge pay gaps await them as professionals<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/316262/original/file-20200219-11000-g13ev.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=577%2C0%2C4008%2C2894&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Gigi Bryant, looking up to her dad on the court in 2016</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/kobe-bryant-of-the-los-angeles-lakers-and-the-western-news-photo/510291022">Elsa/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Women have made great strides in the world of sports over the past 50 years.</p>
<p>Especially in some individual sports, female champion athletes today earn far more money and command a much bigger audience than their predecessors – thanks to breakthroughs by tennis champions like <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/11/despite-equal-grand-slam-tournement-prizes-tennis-still-has-a-pay-gap.html">Billie Jean King and Venus and Serena Williams</a> and top golfers such as <a href="https://golfcollege.edu/history-womens-professional-golf/">Kathy Whitworth, Nancy Lopez and Michele Wie</a>.</p>
<p>We are fans of women’s basketball and scholars who study the <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=0e4vyAcAAAAJ&hl=en">role that gender plays in sports</a> and <a href="https://ecommons.udayton.edu/do/search/?q=author_lname%3A%22Picca%22%20author_fname%3A%22Leslie%22&start=0&context=3338972&facet=">the changing status of female athletes</a>. Despite massive changes in attitudes toward women who excel at sports overall, with few exceptions we’ve observed that the <a href="http://sociology.iresearchnet.com/sociology-of-sport/gender-and-sports/">disparity between what adolescent boys and girls</a> can aspire to accomplish in professional basketball today remains enormous.</p>
<p>This gap has become more visible due to the deaths of retired basketball legend <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-losing-kobe-bryant-felt-like-losing-a-relative-or-friend-130836">Kobe Bryant</a>, his <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4a6432ypCdE">daughter Gianna</a> and <a href="https://www.khou.com/article/news/national/all-9-victims-in-the-kobe-bryant-helicopter-crash-have-been-identified/285-4494a6b6-ccd5-4c14-acbc-ef0731c70543">two of the other girls</a> on the <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/kobe-bryant-helicopter-crash-victims-identified-john-altobelli-keri-altobelli-alyssa-altobelli-christina-mauser/">basketball team he coached</a> in January.</p>
<p>Known as “Gigi,” the 13-year-old by all accounts inherited not only her former NBA player father’s love of the game, but silky smooth moves as well. She aspired to attend the <a href="https://theundefeated.com/features/uconn-womens-basketball-is-no-longer-invincible/">University of Connecticut</a> where she would play on its <a href="https://www.si.com/college/2020/01/28/uconn-team-usa-kobe-gianna-bryant">highly ranked women’s basketball team</a>. Mourners spoke reverently about Gigi’s <a href="https://www.sbnation.com/nba/2020/1/28/21111224/kobe-gigi-bryant-womens-basketball-uconn-wnba">intentions to play professionally</a> and carry on her father’s legacy during a <a href="https://sports.yahoo.com/kobe-bryant-memorial-kobe-was-the-mvd-of-girl-dads-191822159.html">star-studded memorial service</a> for both of them held on Feb. 24.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/UC-EaHehIQk?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Gigi Bryant, here wearing a No. 2 jersey on the Mamba team, was already a youth basketball star before her death at age 13.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Fears about fertility</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.timetoast.com/timelines/history-of-basketball-fd2deed7-a6a9-41d8-8cf1-23248e628f43">Women began playing basketball</a> in 1892, one year after the sport’s emergence. </p>
<p>Women’s basketball started as a passing game with its own peculiar rules. The court was divided into three sections and each team fielded nine players, versus the five who play on the court today. Players could not move out of their assigned area, were restricted to three dribbles, and could only hold the ball for three seconds. Players were also generally advised against engaging in strenuous activity as the medical experts at the time were convinced that <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/43609324%20https://www.aauw.org/2013/05/13/college-doesnt-make-you-%20infertile/">overexertion would damage women’s fertility</a>.</p>
<p>In 1896 teams from Stanford and the University of California, Berkeley competed in the <a href="https://125.stanford.edu/the-first-game/">first women’s intercollegiate basketball game</a>. Women kept playing basketball despite the perceived health risks.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/316480/original/file-20200220-92551-1gdqv50.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/316480/original/file-20200220-92551-1gdqv50.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/316480/original/file-20200220-92551-1gdqv50.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=760&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/316480/original/file-20200220-92551-1gdqv50.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=760&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/316480/original/file-20200220-92551-1gdqv50.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=760&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/316480/original/file-20200220-92551-1gdqv50.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=956&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/316480/original/file-20200220-92551-1gdqv50.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=956&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/316480/original/file-20200220-92551-1gdqv50.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=956&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">After Babe Didrikson won three Olympic medals in 1932, she excelled at other sports, including basketball and golf.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Associated-Press-Sports-California-United-State-/8d30f701f9e6da11af9f0014c2589dfb/70/0">AP Photo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>One of the most famous women’s amateur basketball teams of the 1930s was the <a href="https://flashbackdallas.com/2014/11/16/babe-didrikson-oak-cliff-typist/">Golden Cyclones</a> of the Employers Casualty Company of Dallas, which was led by track and field Olympic gold medalist and champion golfer <a href="https://www.biography.com/athlete/babe-didrikson-zaharias">Mildred “Babe” Didrikson Zaharias</a>. The first professional women’s basketball team was created in 1936. The <a href="http://www.hoophall.com/hall-of-famers/all-american-red-heads/">All-American Red Heads</a> <a href="https://www.si.com/vault/1974/05/06/628147/all-red-so-help-them-henna">barnstormed the country</a> for more than 50 years.</p>
<p>Although the players were required to wear makeup and either dye their hair red or wear red wigs, the team played by men’s basketball rules against men’s teams. Despite the popularity of individual teams like the All-American Red Heads, women’s professional basketball struggled to gain a firm footing for decades.</p>
<p>Likewise, basketball did not become an Olympic sport for women until the 1976 Montreal Summer Olympic Games, four decades after men’s basketball made its debut at the <a href="https://www.olympic.org/basketball-equipment-and-history">1936 Berlin Summer Olympic Games</a>. </p>
<p>By that time, rules for women had become about <a href="http://fs.ncaa.org/Docs/stats/w_basketball_RB/2001/RulesHistory.pdf">the same as for men</a>.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/UUVubfIY2ns?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gigi believed that she would achieve great things as a basketball player.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Title IX’s repercussions</h2>
<p>The advent of a new federal civil rights policy enacted in 1972 changed the world of women’s sports. What became known as <a href="https://titleix.harvard.edu/what-title-ix">Title IX</a> was originally intended to provide equal opportunities and access for women in fields such as science, medicine and law.</p>
<p>In practice, Title IX forced high schools and colleges to open up more <a href="https://www.womenssportsfoundation.org/advocacy/what-is-title-ix/">opportunities for female athletes</a> and to <a href="https://apnews.com/7b4e53eb40094a3b8337f322b715e57a">spend more money</a> and attention on girls’ and women’s sports teams.</p>
<p>But it would take more than 20 years for the emergence of a women’s professional basketball league.</p>
<h2>A breakthrough in 1996</h2>
<p>Sports fans dubbed the 1996 Summer Olympic Games the “<a href="https://www.si.com/more-sports/2012/08/12/2012-olympics-women-title-ix">Summer of the Women</a>” because U.S. <a href="https://www.espn.com/espnw/sports/story/_/id/17078201/flash-back-20-years-atlanta-1996-olympics-women-reigned-supreme">women’s teams won gold</a> medals in softball, soccer, basketball and <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/u-s-women-take-home-gymnastics-gold">gymnastics</a>.</p>
<p>The women’s Olympic basketball team’s success powered by star players <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Sheryl-Swoopes">Sheryl Swoopes</a>, <a href="https://espnpressroom.com/us/bios/lobo_rebecca/">Rebecca Lobo</a> and <a href="https://www.wnba.com/player/lisa-leslie/">Lisa Leslie</a> led to the creation of two women’s professional leagues.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://apnews.com/3578d5b373430211b933fd1bfa6d98e6">American Basketball League</a> proved short-lived, ceasing operations in 1998 after only three years. The <a href="https://www.womenshistory.org/articles/we-got-next">Women’s National Basketball Association</a>, known as the WNBA, is entering its 23rd season this summer.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/316263/original/file-20200219-11040-h5k9lr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/316263/original/file-20200219-11040-h5k9lr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/316263/original/file-20200219-11040-h5k9lr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/316263/original/file-20200219-11040-h5k9lr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/316263/original/file-20200219-11040-h5k9lr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/316263/original/file-20200219-11040-h5k9lr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/316263/original/file-20200219-11040-h5k9lr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/316263/original/file-20200219-11040-h5k9lr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The victorious Olympic U.S. women’s team in 1996. Shown here, from left: Jennifer Azzi, Lisa Leslie, Carla McGhee, Katy Steding and Sheryl Swoopes.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Associated-Press-Sports-Georgia-United-States-n-/9eb2e725f9e6da11af9f0014c2589dfb/55/0">AP Photo/Susan Ragan</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The WNBA and pay</h2>
<p>Despite the WNBA’s staying power, its players until now have only earned an <a href="https://www.wsn.com/nba/nba-vs-wnba/">average salary of US$71,000</a>, little more than 1% of the $6.4 million their typical male counterparts on NBA teams take home.</p>
<p>Average pay for WNBA players, however, will soon nearly double to about $130,000 a year, and some of the league’s star players will be making $500,000, following a <a href="https://www.wnba.com/news/wnba-and-wnbpa-reach-tentative-agreement-on-groundbreaking-eight-year-collective-bargaining-agreement/">collective bargaining agreement</a>. Players will now be eligible for maternity leave at their full salary, and can become unrestricted free agents after five full seasons. </p>
<p>Attendance at WNBA games now averages about 7,000 per game, compared to 18,000 at NBA games. The disparity in terms of the sports finances through TV deals and licensing agreements is much larger than that. The women’s league generates about $60 million in revenue, just a tiny fraction of 1% of the NBA’s $7.4 billion revenue.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/316478/original/file-20200220-92533-1dp9cf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/316478/original/file-20200220-92533-1dp9cf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/316478/original/file-20200220-92533-1dp9cf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/316478/original/file-20200220-92533-1dp9cf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/316478/original/file-20200220-92533-1dp9cf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/316478/original/file-20200220-92533-1dp9cf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/316478/original/file-20200220-92533-1dp9cf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/316478/original/file-20200220-92533-1dp9cf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Many WNBA fans want the players to get big raises.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Sun-Mystics-Basketball/5c894cbf5fe04381b7d1e3552a4f1b8f/2/0">AP Photo/Patrick Semansky</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>What will it take to bridge the huge gender gap in professional basketball’s popularity and pay?</p>
<p>We think that it could take a player like dunking sensation Stanford freshman <a href="https://www.usab.com/basketball/players/womens/b/belibi-francesca.aspx">Fran Belibi</a> who has captured significant media attention. <a href="https://sports.yahoo.com/steph-curry-daughters-soak-sabrina-034033419.html">Sabrina Ionescu</a>, senior point guard for the Oregon Ducks, is another potential gamechanger.</p>
<p>Ionescu was named <a href="https://www.kptv.com/news/sabrina-ionescu-wins-wooden-award-for-player-of-the-year/article_408a9ae6-5d98-11e9-a275-133e7a1b322d.html">national player of the year</a> in 2019 as a junior. She has broken the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s <a href="https://www.sportslingo.com/sports-glossary/t/triple-double/">triple-double</a> <a href="https://www.espn.com/womens-college-basketball/story?id=28162685&_slug_=the-ultimate-guide-oregon-women-basketball-star-sabrina-ionescu">record for college women and men</a>. Ionescu had trained with her <a href="https://www.theplayerstribune.com/en-us/articles/sabrina-ionescu-dear-oregon-basketball">close friend and mentor, Kobe Bryant</a>. And Golden State Warriors star player <a href="https://www.espn.com/womens-college-basketball/story/_/id/28753752/steph-curry-daughters-hand-sabrina-ionescu-25th-triple-double">Stephen Curry</a> has brought his daughters along to watch her play.</p>
<p>Or maybe it will take parents like Kobe Bryant and Curry, born after Title IX changed so much about athletics, to instill in their daughters an understanding that a sports career is not only feasible for women, but within reach.</p>
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<p>[<em>Get the best of The Conversation, every weekend.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/weekly-highlights-61?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=weeklybest">Sign up for our weekly newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/131441/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Before a helicopter crash brought about their tragic deaths, Kobe Bryant’s daughter Gianna aspired to carry on his legacy as a pro basketball champion.Corinne M. Daprano, Associate Professor of Health & Sport Science; Interim Dean of the School of Education and Health Sciences, University of DaytonLeslie H. Picca, Professor of Sociology; Roesch Endowed Chair in the Social Sciences, University of DaytonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1279022020-01-15T19:09:15Z2020-01-15T19:09:15ZThe erotic theatre of the pool edge: a short history of female swimwear<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307056/original/file-20191216-123992-10u4hjb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=6%2C4%2C1487%2C1104&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Women at Brisbane's Oasis Swimming Pool, January 1950.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Brisbane City Council</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Human beings have a surprisingly long relationship with the concept of swimwear. After all, the <a href="https://royallifesavingwa.com.au/news/community/history-of-the-swimming-pool">first heated swimming pool</a> is believed to have been built by Gaius Maecenas of Rome in the 1st century BC. </p>
<p>Before the early 1800s, it was relatively common to swim either nude or simply in your underwear. When communal swimming baths became more popular and prevalent in the mid-19th century, decorum demanded men and women cover their modesty with garments made specially for the purpose. <a href="https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/86436?searchField=All&sortBy=Relevance&ft=Bathing+suit%2c+1870s%2c+American&offset=0&rpp=20&pos=1">Women covered up</a> with cotton or wool bathing dresses, drawers, and sometimes even stockings. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/306352/original/file-20191211-95120-xy42ly.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/306352/original/file-20191211-95120-xy42ly.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=769&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306352/original/file-20191211-95120-xy42ly.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=769&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306352/original/file-20191211-95120-xy42ly.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=769&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306352/original/file-20191211-95120-xy42ly.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=966&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306352/original/file-20191211-95120-xy42ly.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=966&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306352/original/file-20191211-95120-xy42ly.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=966&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A women’s swimsuit from the 1870s.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Metropolitan Museum of Art</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While seeming ungainly today, these impractical garments must have been liberating for women used to corsets and long, hampering skirts worn over multiple petticoats. By their very nature these “swimming suits” also <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=IFcLyQEACAAJ&dq=Contributions+from+the+Museum+of+History+and+Technology:+Papers+59-64&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjryc_upPnmAhVL7HMBHaMDCZgQ6AEIKDAA">threatened entrenched ideas</a> around feminine activity (or lack thereof), perhaps suggesting women who swam energetically could no longer be considered “the weaker sex”. </p>
<p>Nonetheless, modesty presided above all else during this period, and it wasn’t until women began to swim competitively that change began.</p>
<h2>A scandalous arrest</h2>
<p>Water, particularly the beach, has been <a href="https://www.amazon.com.au/Splash-History-Swimwear-Richard-Martin/dp/0847811867">described</a> by fashion scholars Harold Koda and Richard Martin as the “great proscenium of twentieth-century dress” – a statement that encourages us to rethink the importance of swimwear in our everyday dress and lifestyles. </p>
<p>In 1907, Australian swimmer Annette Kellerman <a href="https://www.boston.com/news/history/2015/07/02/this-womans-one-piece-bathing-suit-got-her-arrested-in-1907">was arrested</a> on Revere Beach, Massachusetts, for wearing a one-piece bathing suit in public. This garment was a sporting necessity, and fellow athletes successfully championed a skirtless, sleeveless one-piece for the 1912 Olympics. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307061/original/file-20191216-124036-o9gi7g.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307061/original/file-20191216-124036-o9gi7g.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=590&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307061/original/file-20191216-124036-o9gi7g.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=590&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307061/original/file-20191216-124036-o9gi7g.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=590&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307061/original/file-20191216-124036-o9gi7g.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=741&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307061/original/file-20191216-124036-o9gi7g.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=741&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307061/original/file-20191216-124036-o9gi7g.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=741&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Annette Kellerman demonstrating her diving skills at Adelaide’s Glenelg baths, 1905.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">State Library of South Australia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Kellerman’s incredible figure was admired as much as her actions were berated, and she was known to strip down to her bathing costume in all-female public lectures, proving a healthy lifestyle (rather than a corset) was to thank for her silhouette. </p>
<p>“If more girls would swim and dance and care for athletics”, <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/19619041?searchTerm=annette%20kellermann&searchLimits=l-decade=191">she commented in 1910</a>, “instead of rushing into matrimony as the only joy in the world, there’d be fewer divorces”. </p>
<p>The new one-piece contributed hugely to what has been described as the “<a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=rOIAjM7TaEYC&pg=PA138&dq=coda+martin+erotic+theatre+pool+edge&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwivsbOu5a3mAhV28HMBHU9KC-kQ6AEIKTAA#v=onepage&q&f=false">erotic theatre</a>” of the pool edge: swimwear is an item of both form and function, and so the pool or sea is an acceptable space to bare all.</p>
<h2>Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie</h2>
<p>The introduction of <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=UPg5YQw5qBkC&pg=PT65&dq=pool+fashion+australia&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjW6YyI3MzkAhUu6nMBHSoFDp4Q6AEIODAD#v=onepage&q&f=false">elastic yarn</a> in the 1930s created a fabric that clung to the body and enabled risqué designs. </p>
<p>The influence of the Hollywood starlet, lying immaculate (and dry) by a sparkling pool sowed the seed swimwear need have nothing to do with exercise. It could instead suggest leisure and luxury: the embodiment of a society now used to annual holidays.</p>
<p>The 1940s introduced what we now recognise as the bikini, and the 50s saw iconic portrayals of swimsuits worn by the likes of Esther Williams and Marilyn Monroe. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307066/original/file-20191216-123983-6ewdlt.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307066/original/file-20191216-123983-6ewdlt.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307066/original/file-20191216-123983-6ewdlt.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307066/original/file-20191216-123983-6ewdlt.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307066/original/file-20191216-123983-6ewdlt.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=567&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307066/original/file-20191216-123983-6ewdlt.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=567&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307066/original/file-20191216-123983-6ewdlt.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=567&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A young Marilyn Monroe.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The swinging 60s opened with Brian Hyland’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICkWjdQuK7Q">Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie, Yellow Polka Dot Bikini</a>, and further promotion through <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/remember-when-ursula-andress-bond-bikini/index.html">the Bond franchise</a> firmly cemented the bikini’s erotic prowess. </p>
<p>Soon, swimwear’s eroticism was being used by some to promote ideals of gender equality and acceptance. </p>
<p>In 1964, Austrian-American designer Rudi Gernreich introduced his notorious “Monokini”, a bathing suit featuring two skinny straps just grazing the breasts. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="InstagramEmbed" data-react-props="{"url":"https://www.instagram.com/p/B6F5boZoSAZ","accessToken":"127105130696839|b4b75090c9688d81dfd245afe6052f20"}"></div></p>
<p><a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=BSs4Kd5tHsIC&printsec=frontcover&dq=challenge+prudishness+gernreich&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj8usys9tnmAhXi7HMBHdhHAgIQ6AEIaTAJ#v=onepage&q&f=false">Gernreich hoped</a> the suit would challenge existing prudishness and shame around the nude female body. His plan backfired. From its birth, the press described the monokini as <a href="https://cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=SCS19650413&e=-------en--20--1--txt-txIN-topless+swimsuit+scandal-------1">controversial</a> – and, although it sold well, it <a href="https://cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=SCS19691228.1.40&srpos=2&e=-------en--20--1--txt-txIN-Gernreich+scandal-------1">never became</a> conventional swimwear. </p>
<p>The 1970s and 80s welcomed fashionable suits and bikinis with less internal structuring, fitting the silhouette of the decade. Fashionable first and practical second, they could still withstand a certain amount of sun, sand and chlorine. </p>
<h2>A protest symbol</h2>
<p>Swimming, fashion, and baring all are not mutually exclusive.</p>
<p>“Rashies” or “rash guards” (so-called because they protect the wearer from rashes and sunburn), are long-sleeved waterproof shirts that first originated as surfwear. In countries like Australia with prominent beach culture and harsh weather the garment has grown in popularity. </p>
<p>In 2004, Australian designer Aheda Zanetti, inspired by the increasing presence of Muslim women in Australian sports (especially swimming), created the “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/24/i-created-the-burkini-to-give-women-freedom-not-to-take-it-away">burkini</a>”. Acting as a kind of lightweight wetsuit, the garment covers the entire body and comes in a variety of styles and colours. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/308754/original/file-20200107-123385-14frq85.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/308754/original/file-20200107-123385-14frq85.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=747&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308754/original/file-20200107-123385-14frq85.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=747&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308754/original/file-20200107-123385-14frq85.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=747&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308754/original/file-20200107-123385-14frq85.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=939&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308754/original/file-20200107-123385-14frq85.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=939&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308754/original/file-20200107-123385-14frq85.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=939&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The burkini in action.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Aheda Zanettii</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The style came under intense scrutiny in 2016 when several French municipalities <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/24/french-police-make-woman-remove-burkini-on-nice-beach">banned the burkini</a> in line with the country’s secular laws (it had banned the wearing of a burqa and niqab three years earlier). </p>
<p>It doesn’t seem to matter whether women’s swimsuits bare-all or cover-all: those wearing them will still be judged. But much as the shift from bulky dresses to lean one-pieces opened up new opportunities for women in the water, this latest suit also makes the beach lifestyle more accessible, with wearers remaining both cool and UV-protected. </p>
<p>With our “<a href="https://theconversation.com/our-house-is-on-fire-why-greta-thunberg-infuriates-conservatives-124341">house on fire</a>”, as Thunberg eloquently put it, we may be seeing more swimsuit innovation heading our way as a matter of necessity.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/127902/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lydia Edwards does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The pool and the beach have become acceptable spaces to bare all, but how did we get here?Lydia Edwards, Fashion historian, Edith Cowan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1154122019-07-05T12:22:28Z2019-07-05T12:22:28ZHow indigenous women revolutionized Bolivian wrestling<p>Though wrestling is widely regarded as the <a href="https://www.olympic.org/wrestling-greco-roman-equipment-and-history">world’s oldest sport</a>, women have only <a href="https://unitedworldwrestling.org/organisation/history-wrestling">recently gained a foothold</a>.</p>
<p>And even then, they’ve done so while <a href="https://yp.scmp.com/news/sports/article/104035/olympics-mongolian-women-wrestle-sexism">facing tremendous</a> <a href="https://www.athleticbusiness.com/rules-regulations/discrimination-at-heart-of-female-wrestling-lawsuit.html">discrimination and resistance</a> from organizers, other wrestlers and fans.</p>
<p>This is certainly true in competitive Olympic forms of wrestling. But it’s also been the case for more spectacular forms of wrestling entertainment, where women have long been relegated to the roles of managers or girlfriends. When they do actually wrestle, <a href="https://nypost.com/2018/10/25/wwe-voice-talks-us-through-long-path-to-evolution/">they’re often sexualized</a>.</p>
<p>Yet these women are nonetheless making advances. World Wrestling Entertainment’s most recent Wrestlemania featured the first ever <a href="https://www.wwe.com/shows/wrestlemania/article/wrestlemania-to-feature-first-ever-womens-main-event">women’s main event</a>. And in the world of Bolivian wrestling, women have also made big strides. In fact, many Bolivian women wrestlers now have <a href="https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2016/03/105802/bolivia-wrestling-women-cholitas-indigenous-el-alto">achieved far more popularity</a> than their male counterparts.</p>
<p>As an anthropologist of gender in Latin America, I actually trained and performed alongside these wrestlers while conducting ethnographic research.</p>
<p>These women have not gained respect easily: They have met resistance and sexism at every turn. However, their stories not only <a href="https://www.fodors.com/world/south-america/bolivia/experiences/news/las-cholitas-bolivias-answer-to-the-female-wrestling-revolution">pay tribute to Bolivia’s past</a>, but may foretell <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2016/mar/24/bolivia-cholitas-female-wrestlers-cholitas-discrimination-stranglehold">a more egalitarian future</a> in the world of wrestling.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/282342/original/file-20190702-126376-1bgyvc6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/282342/original/file-20190702-126376-1bgyvc6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=435&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282342/original/file-20190702-126376-1bgyvc6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=435&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282342/original/file-20190702-126376-1bgyvc6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=435&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282342/original/file-20190702-126376-1bgyvc6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=546&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282342/original/file-20190702-126376-1bgyvc6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=546&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282342/original/file-20190702-126376-1bgyvc6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=546&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Women have become a force in Bolivian wrestling.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.nellhaynes.com/lucha-libre-photos.html">Nell Haynes</a>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Wrestling’s masculine past</h2>
<p>Bolivian wrestling traces its roots to Mexican professional wrestling, called <a href="https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/lucha_libre">lucha libre</a>, and <a href="https://www.lapazlife.com/places/cholita-wrestling-in-la-paz/">professional wrestling in the U.S.</a> before that.</p>
<p>The scale and production level of Bolivian lucha libre are certainly not on par with World Wrestling Entertainment, but the conventions are the same. This form of wrestling is less about the competition, and <a href="http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20160321-the-female-wrestlers-of-bolivia">more about the theater</a>.</p>
<p>Just like in the U.S., promoters, wrestlers and others with a stake in the business at times <a href="https://writeonsports.org/students/wwe-real-or-fake">decide beforehand who will win</a> the match in order to further developing storylines. To this end, referees don’t always enforce the rules. The wrestlers aren’t just grappling. They’re performing as characters.</p>
<p>In the 1960s, Mexican wrestlers toured South America, and while there, trained a number of Bolivian men. Early wrestlers like <a href="http://www.nellhaynes.com/fieldnotes/a-brief-history-of-bolivian-lucha-libre">Médico Loco, Mr. Atlas and Diablo Rojo</a> helped build the tradition in Bolivia, which waxed and waned in popularity for four decades.</p>
<p>But <a href="http://juro.uga.edu/2009/papers/abigail_wilson.pdf">beginning in 2001</a>, <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/2018/08/flying-cholitas-indigenous-women-bolivia-wrestling/">Bolivian women started appearing in the ring</a>.</p>
<h2>The fighting cholitas</h2>
<p>These women wrestlers began calling themselves “<a href="https://www.wbur.org/onlyagame/2016/01/16/cholitas-luchadoras-bolivia-women-wrestlers">cholitas luchadoras</a>,” or fighting cholitas. They take their name from the “<a href="https://www.latinorebels.com/2016/12/01/chola-thats-who-i-am/">chola</a>” of the Andes, women who have historically worked in markets – though not all of them do – and have earned reputations for being aggressive negotiators, strong advocates for workers’ and women’s rights. At the same time they’re romantically evoked as national icons.</p>
<p>The combination of this character type with the spectacular physicality of <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/8875832/bolivia-female-wrestling-cholita-women/">lucha libre has made them popular</a> with both local and foreign audiences. </p>
<p>Some represent <a href="https://bust.com/living/194042-cholitas-luchadoras-wrestlers.html">morally corrupt characters</a>: “rudas,” or the equivalent of heels in English. They’ll sometimes shake a 2-liter soda bottle and spray its contents into the audience. Others will simply sneer and hurl insults at the crowd.</p>
<p>On the other hand, the good ones – called “técnicas” – will stand with a microphone in the ring and declare their loyalty to “the people” and promise to fight for their honor. </p>
<p>Once the match begins, the luchadoras often incorporate humor, pulling each others’ braids, or even ripping off the spandex pants of a male opponent to reveal hot pink boxer briefs. At times they pull audience members up to dance with them, or will lean in to kiss the cheek of a young man in the crowd.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/282343/original/file-20190702-126391-1hc3u0k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/282343/original/file-20190702-126391-1hc3u0k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282343/original/file-20190702-126391-1hc3u0k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282343/original/file-20190702-126391-1hc3u0k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282343/original/file-20190702-126391-1hc3u0k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282343/original/file-20190702-126391-1hc3u0k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282343/original/file-20190702-126391-1hc3u0k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Leonor Cordova, known as ‘Angela la Simpatica,’ wears a pollera skirt to a wrestling match.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Spain-Bolivian-Wrestling/55f300c79af54e08b8750b87a2102232/17/0">AP Photo/Paul White</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Costumes and cumbia music</h2>
<p>But perhaps their most eye-catching quality is the <a href="https://llilasbensonmagazine.org/2017/08/28/making-beauty-the-wearing-of-polleras-in-the-andean-altiplano/">pollera skirt</a>, a knee-length garment made by extensive pleating of sparkling fabric and further puffed by multiple petticoats beneath.</p>
<p>As they enter the ring to local <a href="https://www.moderndrummer.com/article/september-2015-cumbia-drumset-adaptations-traditional-colombianpanamanian-rhythm/">cumbia music</a>, they’ll swirl these layered skirts. As they flip from the ropes or throw an opponent to the ground, the polleras will billow in the air.</p>
<p>After a few years of wrestling, international journalists began to take notice. Outlets like <a href="https://nationalgeographicbackissues.com/national-geographic-september-2582.html">National Geographic</a>, <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7429029.stm">BBC</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/21/world/americas/in-this-corner-in-the-flouncy-skirt-and-bowler-hat.html">The New York Times</a> have published articles about the luchadoras. They even appeared as a “challenge” for competitors on “<a href="https://www.cbs.com/shows/amazing_race/episodes/21954/">The Amazing Race</a>.”</p>
<p>Each of the stories plays up the novelty of women wrestling in these “traditional” skirts. And it doesn’t hurt that the colorful pollera makes for a <a href="https://apimagesblog.com/blog/2019/2/26/bolivia-fighting-cholitas">good cover photo</a>.</p>
<p>But much of the media coverage fails to acknowledge the continued struggles the women face. They often find themselves demeaned by other Bolivian wrestlers and spectators, who sneer at their gender, race and performance styles.</p>
<h2>‘All show, no ability’</h2>
<p>As I wrestled alongside both men and women in La Paz, I heard trainers, current wrestlers and even the retired luchadores of the country disparage the women for relying too heavily on the chola character – which they derided as a “gimmick” – rather than on their craft as wrestlers.</p>
<p>Many of the men involved in wrestling have said that the women have degraded the skill level of the sport. Others called them “payasas” – clowns – or said that they were “all show, no ability,” even as they urged male wrestlers to incorporate more elements of spectacle into their performance.</p>
<p>The cholitas luchadoras have also been criticized by a number of Bolivians as a kind of racist performance. They suggest the characters are offensive to the image of the chola, Bolivia’s indigenous women, and Bolivians as a whole.</p>
<p>While some of these critiques may be valid, at times they are leveled by the same promoters who fill their events with male luchadores whose gimmicky personas often involve little technical ability. These men perform as stiff mummies who simply bulldoze their way across the ring, or clowns who spend more time popping balloons than grappling with opponents.</p>
<p>The luchadoras, <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/2018/08/flying-cholitas-indigenous-women-bolivia-wrestling/">many of whom identify as Indigenous</a>, counter that they are using their popularity as a springboard for highlighting the roles that Indigenous women may play in society. They say they are attempting to act as role models providing young Indigenous women with positive representations in the public sphere.</p>
<p>So while the luchadoras are bringing progress, critiques of them show that the more popular they become, the more backlash they have to contend with. But women’s acceptance in sports is not only an issue in Bolivia.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/10/magazine/womens-soccer-inequality-pay.html">Even in the United States</a>, women fight to be taken seriously in areas related to sports and entertainment. By understanding how these stories are linked, observers can understand the widespread difficulties women face when navigating power structures in sports that continue to be largely made up of men.</p>
<p>[ <em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/115412/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nell Haynes receives funding from the European Research Council, the National Commission for Scientific and Technological Research of Chile, the Explorers' Club of Washington, DC, the Cosmos Club Foundation, and the Robyn Rafferty Mathias International Research organization.</span></em></p>The more they fight, the more popular they become – and the more pushback they receive.Nell Haynes, Assistant Teaching Professor, Georgetown UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/969132018-06-13T02:17:41Z2018-06-13T02:17:41ZFixed matches and prisoners of conscience: A history of politics intruding on football<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/221074/original/file-20180530-120505-1wnx73u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Argentine striker Mario Kempes controlling the ball during his team's win against the Netherlands in the 1978 World Cup.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kempes_vs_netherlands_1978.jpg">El Grafico</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is part of a World Cup series exploring the politics, economics, science and social issues behind the world’s most popular sports event.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>There is an old tradition in England that sport and politics do not mix. This carried over into FIFA when it was established in 1904, sought to take control of the Olympic football competition and then organised its own professional World Cup. </p>
<p>Yet, as Bill Murray, my co-author on <a href="https://www.amazon.com/History-Soccer-Australia-Game-Halves/dp/1742707645">The History of Soccer in Australia: A Tale of Two Halves</a>, has pointed out, it was the British home nations (England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales) who brought politics into football when they refused to play Germany, Austria and Hungary in the aftermath of the first world war. They expected everyone in FIFA to follow suit, and when this didn’t happen, they temporarily withdrew from the organisation.</p>
<p>Since then, politics have regularly intruded into the football world, including recently with the controversial selections of Russia and Qatar to host the next two World Cups. As one of the <a href="https://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/foreign-affairs/socceroos-urged-to-wear-black-armbands-over-mh17-at-world-cup/news-story/ade6af931d791ab43d95f68ff620ef04">most politically charged World Cups gets set to kick off in Moscow</a>, we look back at five other moments in history when politics <em>did</em> mix with football internationally.</p>
<h2>1. Benito Mussolini predicts victory on home soil</h2>
<p>In the 1930s, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini discovered that the game had a greater pull on his subjects than his fascist ideology.</p>
<p>After Uruguay hosted and won the first World Cup in 1930, Mussolini was determined that Italy would do the same four years later. He did everything in his power to make this happen, too. Argentina was denuded of star players who were “persuaded” to play for Italy, while Italy’s own players were threatened with immediate conscription into the army if they failed to win.</p>
<p>Il Duce may or may not have entertained match officials on occasion, but the tournament had some very strange refereeing decisions that reinforced Italy’s “home ground advantage”. The 1934 tournament was so contentious, in fact, the UEFA website’s story of the event is entitled <a href="http://www.uefa.com/worldcup/news/newsid=24834.html">1934: Mussolini pulls the levers.</a> Mussolini got his victory, albeit a tainted one.</p>
<p>Italy repeated its victory in 1938 in France with a much stronger team. But even here, political pressure was not absent. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2014/apr/01/world-cup-moments-1938-italy-benito-mussolini">According to one popular story,</a> the Italian players received a message before the final against Hungary: “Win or die”.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/222123/original/file-20180607-121234-1v0dc1u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/222123/original/file-20180607-121234-1v0dc1u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/222123/original/file-20180607-121234-1v0dc1u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/222123/original/file-20180607-121234-1v0dc1u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/222123/original/file-20180607-121234-1v0dc1u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=567&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/222123/original/file-20180607-121234-1v0dc1u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=567&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/222123/original/file-20180607-121234-1v0dc1u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=567&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Italy’s 1934 World Cup-winning team.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>2. Hungary fails to show, Soviets claim gold</h2>
<p>At the height of the Cold War in the 1950s and ‘60s, the Soviet Union was determined to make its mark through the game as well. </p>
<p>Winning a World Cup against full-time professionals was beyond their capacity at the time, so the Soviets set their sights a bit lower: the nominally amateur Olympic Games. They came up short at the Helsinki games in 1952, however, when Yugoslavia knocked them out and Hungary’s “Golden Team” won the tournament. </p>
<p>The Soviets were determined not to fail again. At the next Olympics in Melbourne in 1956, the Hungarians were conspicuously absent. <a href="https://search.informit.com.au/documentSummary;dn=405780031695687;res=IELHSS">There is strong circumstantial evidence</a> the Soviet Union pressured the dominant Hungarian team to stay home, clearing the way for it to win gold. The Soviets did just that, getting revenge on Yugoslavia in the final. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/222117/original/file-20180607-137295-1fotxwy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/222117/original/file-20180607-137295-1fotxwy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/222117/original/file-20180607-137295-1fotxwy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/222117/original/file-20180607-137295-1fotxwy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/222117/original/file-20180607-137295-1fotxwy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/222117/original/file-20180607-137295-1fotxwy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/222117/original/file-20180607-137295-1fotxwy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hungary’s ‘Golden Team’ didn’t have a chance for gold in 1956.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>3. A stadium filled with political prisoners</h2>
<p>In the lead-up to the World Cup in West Germany in 1974, a playoff was held between the Soviet Union and Chile for the last qualifying spot. </p>
<p>Just before the first leg of the playoff, the leftist government of Salvador Allende was overthrown in Chile in a bloody coup by a junta led by Augusto Pinochet. The first match went ahead in Moscow and resulted in a scoreless draw, giving Chile a small advantage. If the Chileans could win the second leg at home, they would go to West Germany.</p>
<p>The second match was never played. Following the coup, thousands of Allende supporters were rounded up and taken to Estadio Nacional in Santiago, where they were imprisoned and tortured. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/19/sports/soccer/in-chiles-national-stadium-dark-past-shadows-copa-america-matches.html">According to official records, 41 people were killed.</a></p>
<p>FIFA is said to have inspected the stadium and deemed it fit to stage the match, despite the fact many of the prisoners were still being held there. However, the Soviets refused to play out of respect for the dead. The Chilean team took to the field and walked the ball into the net for the victory and one of the most shameful qualifications in World Cup history. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Fb5KpkSajpw?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<h2>4. Peru throws a match in a deal with Argentina</h2>
<p>In 1978, the World Cup returned to Argentina, where another rapacious military junta was in control. </p>
<p>There were many bizarre elements to the World Cup that year. First, the Netherlands tried to organise a boycott in protest of the Argentine junta, to no avail. The world’s greatest player at the time, the Dutchman Johan Cruyff, did refuse to go, though it wasn’t clear at the time if this had to do with the junta or the Dutch coach. (<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/football/2008/apr/17/newsstory.sport">Cruyff later claimed a kidnapping attempt</a> in Spain influenced his decision.)</p>
<p>The most controversial moment on the pitch also had a political element to it. In a critical match, the hosts routed Peru by an inexplicable 6-0 to leapfrog mighty Brazil and clinch their spot in the final. The final group matches were supposed to have been played at exactly the same time, but Argentina had managed to delay its match so the team knew exactly what it had to do to progress.</p>
<p>It later emerged there was a deal between the juntas in the two countries to fix the match. In 2012, former Peruvian Senator Genaro Ledesma said that Argentine dictator Jorge Videla had <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/news/argentinas-1978-world-cup-win-052800565--sow.html">agreed to accept 13 Peruvian political prisoners</a> in return for ensuring the hosts progressed to the final at the expense of Brazil.</p>
<p>Argentina ended up beating the Netherlands in the final to become the fifth host to win the World Cup at home.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Tpzwg8DTSzo?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<h2>5. Charlie Dempsey skips out on the vote</h2>
<p>While political interference affected the results of matches and tournaments in FIFA’s early days, the greatest political scandals in recent times have occurred over the bidding to host the World Cup. </p>
<p>One of the biggest scandals was in 2000, the year FIFA’s executive committee met to decide the host for the 2006 tournament. FIFA President Sepp Blatter believed at the time that if post-apartheid South Africa were to win, he or FIFA would be in the running for the Nobel Peace Prize. (<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/football/2017/jun/19/sepp-blatter-fifa-president-corruption-">He was still trying to win the prize</a> right up to his dismissal from the organisation.)</p>
<p>The executive committee was expected to be deadlocked at 12-all when it voted in Zurich, with Blatter then casting the deciding vote in favour of South Africa. But Charles Dempsey, the president of the New Zealand Federation, mysteriously disappeared before the vote took place, giving Germany a shock 12-11 victory.</p>
<p>In his book, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Dirty-Game-Uncovering-Scandal-FIFA/dp/1780895429">The Dirty Game: Uncovering the Scandal at FIFA</a>, the investigative journalist Andrew Jennings revealed <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/article-3223727/250-000-suitcase-Germany-bought-World-Cup-shady-deals-lead-FBI-Sepp-Blatter-s-door.html">Dempsey had been paid $250,000</a> to change his vote. Dempsey later claimed that he had been under intolerable pressure from both German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and South African President Nelson Mandela and had been a “nervous wreck”. </p>
<p>His non-vote ended up sending the World Cup to Germany, but Blatter got his prized South Africa World Cup four years later. Just not the Nobel Prize. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"659069583500808192"}"></div></p>
<p>So, politics has always been part of the World Cup – sometimes overtly, more often covertly – and yet FIFA still insists that there shall be no political interference in the game under its auspices. Those who misinterpret this notion can find their country <a href="https://www.sportsnet.ca/soccer/fifa-suspends-president-dominican-republic-soccer-body/">suspended from competition</a>, but the FIFA ship will sail on. </p>
<p>Until, that is, it runs into the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/30/sports/soccer/more-indictments-expected-in-fifa-case-irs-official-says.html">United States tax authorities</a>, just like Al Capone.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/96913/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Roy Hay does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>FIFA has never been free of political interference and controversies since its inception in 1904.Roy Hay, Honorary Fellow, Deakin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/934882018-03-25T19:00:29Z2018-03-25T19:00:29ZThe Commonwealth Games of exclusion: what are authorities so afraid of?<p>Sport, race and racism are entwined. It was always so, and it will always will be so – even in the Commonwealth Games, the event we <a href="https://www.gc2018.com/history-games">dub the “friendly games”</a>. </p>
<p>In a throwback to the 1982 Commonwealth Games in Brisbane, preparations for next month’s event on the Gold Coast are <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-03-15/homelessness-increases-across-nsw/9547686">forcing the homeless</a> to move out of town, and even out of the state – to Tweed Heads in New South Wales. Women who run soup kitchens for the poor and indigent have been told to close their shops until these “friendly games” are over.</p>
<h2>Australia, the Commonwealth Games, and race</h2>
<p>In the 1930s, Australia’s sporting authorities deemed the previously named Empire Games worthier than the Olympics. Empire above all else, Australia second, was the motto.</p>
<p>Some British officials even <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=IRE4DwAAQBAJ&pg=PT48&lpg=PT48&dq=%E2%80%9Ca+narrower+local+patriotism%E2%80%9D&source=bl&ots=FfzVdHezhX&sig=oFYdQ9wxJEnF1axBSzPK3ojp6vs&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiEttfElPzZAhUBTrwKHXiSCzAQ6AEIJzAA#v=snippet&q=british%20empire%20team&f=false">advocated a British Empire Olympic team</a>. The Empire Games appealed to “<a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=IRE4DwAAQBAJ&pg=PT48&lpg=PT48&dq=%E2%80%9Ca+narrower+local+patriotism%E2%80%9D&source=bl&ots=FfzVdHezhX&sig=oFYdQ9wxJEnF1axBSzPK3ojp6vs&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiEttfElPzZAhUBTrwKHXiSCzAQ6AEIJzAA#v=onepage&q=%E2%80%9Ca%20narrower%20local%20patriotism%E2%80%9D&f=false">a narrower local patriotism</a>” and that was the healthier way to go, The Sydney Morning Herald editorialised, hinting that Australia avoid intimate contact with “foreigners” at the Olympics. But all that changed after the second world war. </p>
<p>The “friendly games” have since tended to be the tense and the nervous games. Race has marred several events. Australia made extraordinary efforts to keep South Africa and (the then) Rhodesia in the fold when no-one else wanted to have dealings with them. </p>
<p>A near-calamitous era for sport resulted from the highly divisive Springbok rugby union tours to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/oct/09/the-1971-springboks-coming-between-these-blokes-and-their-sport-was-the-most-dangerous-thing-ive-done">Australia</a> (1971) and to <a href="https://nzhistory.govt.nz/culture/1981-springbok-tour">New Zealand</a> (1981), the 28-African nation <a href="http://montrealgazette.com/sports/montreal-olympics-african-boycott-of-1976-games-changed-the-world">boycott of the Montreal Olympics</a> (1976) – because of New Zealand–South Africa rugby ties – and the 61-nation <a href="https://2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/ho/time/qfp/104481.htm">boycott of the Moscow Olympics</a> because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (1980). </p>
<p>Many will remember Commonwealth Games head Arthur Tunstall <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/sport/arthur-tunstalls-reign-of-error-as-commonwealth-games-chief-20170405-gvdz23.html">threatening to punish</a> Cathy Freeman for wrapping herself in an Aboriginal flag in Canada at the 1994 Games. This was hardly the friendliest event on racial matters, and we can tie them to Moscow.</p>
<p>The Moscow Olympics in 1980 was held at the time of Western outcry at the treatment of “dissidents”, <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Borderline-Views-Remembering-the-Soviet-refuseniks-310720">of <em>refuseniks</em></a> – those refused the right to emigrate to Israel and elsewhere. Aimed mainly at Jews, refusal also applied to Ukrainian Greek Catholics, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Volga Germans. By the time of the Olympics, the ban on Jews had been lifted (largely through Australian-led pressure), but some were still being held as financial hostages. </p>
<p>To give the appearance and the message that Moscow was “clean”, the Soviet regime removed all the “unsightly ones” from that city for the two weeks of sport.</p>
<h2>Remembering the protests of 1982</h2>
<p>Two years after the Moscow Olympics, in September 1982, Brisbane hosted the Commonwealth Games. At the helm of draconian government was Joh Bjelke-Petersen, a fundamentalist Lutheran and a man intolerant of democracy and its institutions. He ruled Queensland from 1968 to 1987. </p>
<p>Bjelke-Petersen <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=G60Cgsnzc7AC&pg=PA225&lpg=PA225&dq=martial+law+1971+queensland&source=bl&ots=ENa3mVD1qk&sig=79MDjlHvxEf_3tvwJs60eYGe__0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwixjr76q_zZAhXDUrwKHdJ3D7UQ6AEIczAJ#v=onepage&q=martial%20law%201971%20queensland&f=false">placed all of Queensland</a> under a state of emergency, declaring martial law, when the Springbok rugby team toured, disastrously for all, in 1971. He made dubious history as the first leader in a democracy to declare a state of emergency in peacetime over a sporting event. Martial law reigned for three weeks to enable matches, with indemnities given to all police against lawsuits.</p>
<p>The Bjelke-Petersen government passed the <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/15140198?q&versionId=17809259">Commonwealth Games Act</a>, a statute not commented on then or later. The law ensured Brisbane was free of Aboriginal people and their “friends”. </p>
<p>Possibly the Western world’s most punitive law on sport, police had the power under the act to declare a state of emergency. It also gave specially deputised non-police full police powers and enabled seizure of people and property “on suspicion”.</p>
<p>The act provided for palm, foot, toe and voice-printing, with a A$2,000 fine or two years’ jail for offences under the act, and disallowed any consequent criminal or civil charges against real or “temporary” police. But human rights organisations – especially the vociferous rights body in Queensland – said nary a word on this statute.</p>
<p>Bjelke-Petersen was adamant there would be no Aboriginal land rights marches in Brisbane at that time, and the statute was meant to ensure that. By coincidence or not, the ABC ran a Saturday-night Four Corners special program on land rights mid-Games, and that led to much press publicity. </p>
<p>I was there, reporting on the event for The Australian. Two land rights marches <a href="https://collections.museumvictoria.com.au/articles/2766">took place</a>, peacefully.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/211465/original/file-20180321-165557-aql49b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/211465/original/file-20180321-165557-aql49b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211465/original/file-20180321-165557-aql49b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211465/original/file-20180321-165557-aql49b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211465/original/file-20180321-165557-aql49b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211465/original/file-20180321-165557-aql49b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211465/original/file-20180321-165557-aql49b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Land rights marches attracted foreign media attention at the 1982 Commonwealth Games in Brisbane.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Museums Victoria</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Interestingly – but not surprisingly – the British, Canadian and New Zealand journalists were much more interested in learning about the Aboriginal story than in the sporting contests, and I was able to help them file stories of greater import than the discus thrower’s ankle.</p>
<p>Aboriginal protests didn’t stop or disrupt the Games, and police generally behaved politely. True, there was a great deal of camera scrutiny of events. The land rights marches hastened native title change in Queensland, with the Mabo case <a href="https://aiatsis.gov.au/explore/articles/mabo-case">starting that year</a> and ending in native title in 1992.</p>
<h2>In America as in Australia</h2>
<p>Atlanta was the low-water mark of a city using <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1996/07/01/us/as-olympics-approach-homeless-are-not-feeling-at-home-in-atlanta.html">anti-loitering statutes to keep it “clean” during the 1996 Olympics</a>. Whole suburbs were vacuumed to eliminate the “black spots”, literally.</p>
<p>So, two decades on, what are sports officials and governmental authorities still so afraid of? That we will be seen as a normal country, with normal problems like poverty, homelessness and hunger? </p>
<p>Are we really still mired in the mentality of yesteryear — that the deranged, the mentally ill, the vagrant must be kept out of sight lest they remind us of human frailty?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/93488/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Colin Tatz does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Preparations for next month’s Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast are pushing homeless people out of town, and out of the state. Sadly, that’s not unusual for events of this sort.Colin Tatz, ANU Visiting Professor, Politics and International Relations, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/922692018-02-22T23:52:33Z2018-02-22T23:52:33ZAs the Pyeongchang Olympics comes to a close, what legacy will it leave?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/207434/original/file-20180222-65236-1abdbw9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The main objective for most sporting event organising committees is to deliver an efficient and safe event.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Dan Himbrechts</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>When major sporting events like the Olympics come to a close, the focus often shifts to the question: “so what?” For all the costs, the planning, and the efforts of athletes, officials, volunteers and staff, what will be the legacy? What will remain?</p>
<p>In his keynote address to the <a href="https://www.pyeongchang2018.uni-mainz.de/symposium-information-2/program/">International Sport Business Symposium</a> held in Pyeongchang to coincide with this year’s Winter Olympics, veteran sports official Dick Pound said of legacy:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>No-one promoting an Olympic bid would dream about not including the word in virtually every public statement made in support of the bid. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Yet, as he further noted, there is little research supporting legacy. Much of it is anecdotal, rather than empirical, which may have resulted in “decisions that are not based on reliable data”.</p>
<h2>The importance of ‘legacy’</h2>
<p>The increasing importance of legacy for the International Olympic Committee (IOC) is reflected in the launch in December 2017 of a document, <a href="https://www.olympic.org/%7E/media/Document%20Library/OlympicOrg/Documents/Olympic-Legacy/IOC_Legacy_Strategy_Full_version.pdf?la=en">Legacy Strategic Approach: Moving Forward</a>. </p>
<p>The key elements of this document may be new for the IOC. But for those versed in managing mega sporting events, what it suggests <a href="https://hbr.org/2007/01/leading-change-why-transformation-efforts-fail">isn’t new</a>: have a vision, plan for it, put the structures and finance in place, evaluate, learn, and celebrate.</p>
<p>But why did the IOC feel the need to put this on the public record now, when they note that in the document that legacy has been in Olympic discourse since the 1956 Melbourne Olympics? </p>
<p>Maybe the drop-off in countries bidding to host the Olympics is part of it. Maybe, too, the rise of BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) as hosts of mega sporting events highlights the need for a demonstrated return on investment – not just more hype.</p>
<p>The main objective for most sporting event organising committees is to deliver an efficient and safe event. But is this the most important objective? For those outside the “fence” like the general public, the question becomes: what did we get for our multi-billion-dollar investment? </p>
<p>In some ways, the offer of legacy beyond the event helps organisers achieve a social licence to operate: that is, they obtain support to go ahead with the project. Policymakers and politicians need to clearly demonstrate that hosting sporting events is a better investment than spending in other public goods like education and health.</p>
<h2>What for Pyeongchang?</h2>
<p>The Pyeongchang Olympics’ <a href="https://issuu.com/thatsnotmypuppy/docs/pyeongchang2018volume1">proposed legacies</a> include purpose-built venues, sports legacies, and promoting the Olympic movement.</p>
<p>But, in contrast to many previous host cities, Pyeongchang did not offer a volunteer legacy. Rather, it aimed to draw upon the legacy of hosting a series, or portfolio, of previous events like the athletics World Championships in Daegu in 2011, the Asian Games in Incheon in 2014, and the World University Games in Gwangju in 2015.</p>
<p>Hosting the Olympics may have accelerated the delivery of some of these legacies, such as roads and railways. It may have also initiated others, like new venues.</p>
<p>The budget for Pyeongchang is in the vicinity of <a href="https://library.olympic.org/Default/doc/SYRACUSE/172488/questions-answers-regarding-volunteer-programmes-pyeongchang-2018-the-pyeongchang-organising-committ">US$13 billion</a>, up 50% from initial estimates. Before gasping at the amount of money involved, it is worth noting that the bulk of these costs are allocated to capital investments, such as new stadiums and infrastructure.</p>
<p>This includes the cost of building a 35,000-seat temporary stadium that will be used just four times: for the opening and closing ceremonies for both the Olympics and Paralympics. </p>
<p>It might seem strange to pull it down, but Pyeongchang is a poor rural community with a population of just 45,000. There is no obvious need for it to have such a stadium. And new stadiums are not cost-neutral: it has been suggested that a stadium’s maintenance costs alone could be in the vicinity <a href="http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_international/681591.html">of $20 million per year</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/207466/original/file-20180222-152372-1edbvnd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/207466/original/file-20180222-152372-1edbvnd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/207466/original/file-20180222-152372-1edbvnd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/207466/original/file-20180222-152372-1edbvnd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/207466/original/file-20180222-152372-1edbvnd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/207466/original/file-20180222-152372-1edbvnd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/207466/original/file-20180222-152372-1edbvnd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A temporary stadium used for the Olympic ceremonies in Pyeongchang will be pulled down after the Games.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tracey Dickson</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Future Olympics will be required to report on their legacies for up to five years after the event under the IOC’s new framework. This will include analysis of relevant data and the production of case studies to highlight how they achieved their positive legacies, so future organising committees may learn from them. </p>
<p>This will hopefully result in better planning for and delivery of not just a great event, but a legacy for host communities that is economically, socially and environmentally positive and sustainable.</p>
<p>Mega sport events can deliver legacies, but most examples to date have been about infrastructure. An era could soon be upon us when they can deliver on the other legacies like sport participation, volunteer legacies, tourism, and sustainability.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/92269/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tracey J Dickson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Future Olympics will be required to report on their legacies for up to five years after the event under the IOC’s new framework.Tracey J Dickson, Associate Professor, Centre for Tourism Research, Faculty of Business, Government and Law, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/913092018-02-13T19:06:50Z2018-02-13T19:06:50ZIn Harley Windsor, Australia has its first Indigenous Winter Olympian – why has it taken so long?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/206073/original/file-20180212-58335-gz6bhw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Harley Windsor's visibility before, during and after these Winter Olympics may just be the catalyst to inspire future generations of Indigenous athletes.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Brendan Esposito</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Many Indigenous athletes have represented Australia at the <a href="http://corporate.olympics.com.au/olympians/indigenous-australian-olympians">Summer Olympics</a>. But, in Pyeongchang, figure skater <a href="http://pyeongchang2018.olympics.com.au/news/windsor-selected-to-be-australia-s-first-indigenous-winter-olympian">Harley Windsor</a> is set to become Australia’s first Indigenous Winter Olympian.</p>
<p>While Windsor’s selection deserves celebration, it’s surprising it has taken until now for an Indigenous Australian to compete at a Winter Olympics.</p>
<h2>A northern hemisphere legacy</h2>
<p>Many of the sports included in the Winter Olympics are expensive to compete in and typically involve travel to specialist facilities. The costs often force Winter Olympians to turn to alternative funding sources to <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/bobsleigh-british-women-s-pair-selected-after-crowd-funding">support their efforts</a>. </p>
<p>Winter sports are associated with northern hemisphere countries, particularly those from Europe and North America. As a result, the sports on show at the Winter Olympics <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/winter-olympics-2018/2018/02/05/united-states-seeing-uptick-diversity-winter-olympics-team/308775002/">are often</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… dominated by children of white families, many of them fairly wealthy.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Despite these sentiments, participation at the Winter Olympics is not confined to the global north, or rich white kids. <a href="http://www.americasquarterly.org/content/latin-america-winter-olympics">South American involvement</a> started with Argentina at the second Winter Olympics in 1928. Africa has been represented at the Winter Olympics since 1984; both Nigeria and Eritrea can now be added to the <a href="https://qz.com/1189058/winter-olympics-debuts-ecuador-eritrea-kosovo-malaysia-nigeria-singapore/">growing list of African nations</a> to have competed. </p>
<p>Jamaica will again compete in Pyeongchang. Its first involvement in the 1988 Calgary Olympics was mythologised in the film Cool Runnings, which (inaccurately) portrayed its participation <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1onot9/i_am_dudley_tal_stokes_founding_member_of_the/">as somewhat comedic</a>. The country has since participated at several Winter Olympics, finishing as high as 14th in the four-man bobsled in 1994.</p>
<p>Winter sports are also popular in Australia, which claims to have the world’s oldest ski club, <a href="http://www.australianmastersgames.com.au/_uploads/res/9_9132.PDF">formed in 1861</a>. The inclusion of <a href="https://www.olympic.org/athlete365/news/whats-new-the-4-events-set-to-debut-at-pyeongchang-2018/">new events</a> will increase the appeal of winter sports across the world. It’s claimed that Pyeonchang will be the <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/sport/olympics/2018-winter-olympics-numbers-show-black-athletes-making-inroads-in-winter-sports-20180203-h0t45c.html">most diverse Games ever</a>. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/snowboarding-and-freeskiing-got-to-the-olympics-by-carving-their-own-path-91389">Snowboarding and freeskiing got to the Olympics by carving their own path</a>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/205229/original/file-20180207-74487-1d7qqyl.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/205229/original/file-20180207-74487-1d7qqyl.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205229/original/file-20180207-74487-1d7qqyl.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205229/original/file-20180207-74487-1d7qqyl.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205229/original/file-20180207-74487-1d7qqyl.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205229/original/file-20180207-74487-1d7qqyl.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205229/original/file-20180207-74487-1d7qqyl.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Jamaica competing at the 1988 Winter Olympics.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Getty Images</span></span>
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<h2>Global Indigenous participation at the Olympics</h2>
<p><a href="http://www.cbc.ca/cbckidsolympics/blog/meet-canadas-indigenous-olympians">Indigenous Canadian</a> athletes (First Nations, Inuit and Métis) have competed at the Winter Olympics for more than 80 years. Many have won medals: <a href="http://www.nationnews.ca/canadian-first-nations-well-represented-2018-winter-olympics/">Kenneth Moore</a>, a Peepeekisis First Nation man, won gold in ice hockey at the 1932 Lake Placid Olympics.</p>
<p>Ice hockey players <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/brigette-lacquette-cote-first-nation-olympic-hockey-team-1.4499136">Brigette Lacquette</a> (from the Cote First Nation, and the first First Nations woman on Canada’s hockey team) and Rene Bourque (Métis), and curler Kevin Koe (a Gwi'chin First Nation descendant) will represent their First Nations and Métis communities in Pyeongchang.</p>
<p>Another noteworthy moment occurred when Norway hosted the 1994 Winter Olympics. <a href="https://munin.uit.no/bitstream/handle/10037/6178/paper_5.pdf?sequence=6&isAllowed=y">Sámi</a> man Nils Aslak Valkeapää <a href="http://www.baiki.org/contentFeatures/Vesterheim-who%20are%20the%20sami.pdf">arrived on skis</a> before opening the games with a <em>yoik</em> (a traditional form of singing). This entrance was symbolic given it is believed the Sámi people invented skis before 2,500BC.</p>
<h2>Indigenous Australian representation</h2>
<p>Indigenous Australians have had much greater involvement at the Summer Olympics and Paralympics, with more than 40 <a href="https://www.creativespirits.info/aboriginalculture/sport/famous-aboriginal-athletes">Olympic</a> and 11 <a href="https://www.paralympic.org/news/indigenous-australian-paralympians-honoured">Paralympic</a> representatives over time.</p>
<p>The consistent representation means generations of role models have paved the way for ongoing ambitions to compete in Summer Olympic sports. But the lack of role models in winter sports may be inhibiting intent (and interest) from within the Indigenous Australian community.</p>
<p>Historically, Indigenous Australian athletes <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1012690216686337">have been typecast</a> as being more suited to a small number of sports they are <a href="https://theconversation.com/booing-adam-goodes-racism-is-in-the-stitching-of-the-afl-45316">“born to play”</a> as a result of <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/ILB/2010/31.html">“40,000 years of hunting and gathering”</a>. While this idea “celebrates” the “natural” and outstanding athletic skills of Indigenous Australian athletes, it also ties in with cultural stereotypes where success is due to innate physical capacities, rather than hard work. </p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/booing-adam-goodes-racism-is-in-the-stitching-of-the-afl-45316">Booing Adam Goodes – racism is in the stitching of the AFL</a>
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<p>Along with few role models, these notions may have undermined Indigenous Australians’ aspirations in other sports, such as those included in the Winter Olympics. They also have negative implications for sport governing bodies that are implementing strategies to maximise inclusion and <a href="http://pyeongchang2018.olympics.com.au/news/windsor-selected-to-be-australia-s-first-indigenous-winter-olympian">further opportunities</a> for athletes from diverse backgrounds. </p>
<h2>From western Sydney to Pyeongchang</h2>
<p>Being the first to break barriers and achieve something significant is not easy.</p>
<p>Windsor grew up in western Sydney – a region that’s more likely to be associated with rugby league or cricket. His entry into the world of winter sports reportedly occurred by accident, when he <a href="https://nit.com.au/harleys-wrong-turn-right-track/">stumbled upon an ice rink</a> in Sydney’s west. </p>
<p>His rise has been rapid, particularly since being paired with Russian-born Ekaterina Alexandrovskaya in 2015. <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/radio/sydney/programs/evenings/ice-skating/8371372">His story</a> demonstrates that, regardless of background and stereotypes, success can be achieved with the <a href="http://www.bbc.com/sport/winter-olympics/42558786">right support</a> from family, peers, coaches and sport governing bodies. </p>
<p>A <a href="http://www.owia.org/harley-windsor.html">descendant</a> of the Weilwyn, Gamilaraay and Ngarrable peoples, Windsor is a proud Indigenous man whose visibility before, during and after these Winter Olympics may just be the catalyst to inspire future generations of Indigenous Australian athletes.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/91309/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>While Harley Windsor’s selection deserves celebration, it’s surprising that it has taken until now for an Indigenous Australian to compete at a Winter Olympics.Andrew Bennie, Director of Program, Health and Physical Education, Western Sydney UniversityKeith Parry, Senior Lecturer in Sport Management, Western Sydney UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/904112018-02-08T09:57:15Z2018-02-08T09:57:15ZHow the Winter Olympics expanded – and brought growing pains with them<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/203296/original/file-20180124-107971-wx3vdp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Alpine skiing at the 1952 Winter Olympics in Oslo, Norway. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4a/18673_Vinter-OL_1952_-_slal%C3%A5m.jpg">By P.A. Røstad via Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When the International Olympic Committee (IOC) <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2011/jul/06/ioc-pyeongchang-2018-winter-olympics">announced</a> that PyeongChang would host the 2018 Winter Olympic Games, most people outside of South Korea had probably never heard of it, let alone knew that the eastern part of the country had snow and mountains. </p>
<p>The shift in the type of place capable of hosting such a mega sporting event demonstrated how much the Winter Olympics has grown – but this change also brought with it a set of problems unforseen when the event began in 1924.</p>
<p>Figure skating first appeared on the Olympic programme in 1908, and ice hockey in 1920, but these events were part of the summer games. The first Winter Olympics took place in the French alpine village of Chamonix in 1924. The organisers of the Paris Olympics that year wanted to offer an International Sports Week at the beginning of the year with solely winter sports as an experiment. Only after its success did the IOC decide to call the Chamonix event the Winter Olympics. </p>
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<p>The first few Winter Olympics took place in ski resort towns known to winter sport enthusiasts: St. Moritz, Switzerland in 1928, Lake Placid, US in 1932 and Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany in 1936. In the 1930s the US and Germany hosted both the Summer and Winter Olympics because the IOC allowed the country which won the right to host the summer games to decide whether they wanted to organise the winter ones too. If they did not – or could not in the case of the Netherlands in 1928 – then the IOC opened up the bidding to other countries.</p>
<p>The Winter Olympics has always been significantly smaller than its summer counterpart in terms of the number of sports contested and number of countries competing. Just over 250 athletes competed in Chamonix, and it took until the 1964 games in Innsbruck, Austria, for more than 1,000 athletes to compete. Fewer than <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2014/01/08/world/europe/russia-sochi-numbers/index.html">3,000 athletes</a> competed in Sochi in 2014, whereas more than <a href="https://www.olympic.org/news/rio-2016-sets-records-on-the-field-of-play-and-online-1">11,000 athletes</a> competed in the 2016 Rio Olympics.</p>
<h2>No more village ski resorts</h2>
<p>Although still significantly smaller than the summer event, the growth of the Winter Olympics to include 102 events across 15 sports at PyeongChang, alongside its global media coverage, means that the games no longer take place in small ski resort villages. Instead, larger cities have bid for and hosted the Winter Games in the past few decades. </p>
<p>Urban centres provide many of the required amenities for a successful Olympics: huge venues for the opening and closing ceremonies, sizeable indoor arenas for ice hockey and figure skating, facilities to accommodate the world’s media, and thousands of hotel rooms for all of the spectators. However, those same larger cities tend to be further away from tall mountains and the higher altitudes needed to ensure sufficient snowfall and cold temperatures for the outdoor events of skiing, snowboarding, and the sliding sports of bobsled, skeleton, and luge. </p>
<p>At the 2010 Vancouver games, even with the widening of the highway that leads from the city to the mountains at Whistler, it still took nearly two hours to reach the mountain venues. The organisers put on buses for those spectators who purchased tickets to events in the mountain to minimise traffic on the highway. After the initial ticket allocation, only Canadians with a postal code within a small radius of Whistler were permitted to <a href="https://thetyee.ca/News/2014/02/13/Vancouver-Olympics-Problems/">purchase the remaining tickets</a> to some of the mountain events.</p>
<h2>Further and further from the mountains</h2>
<p>One of the reasons the IOC selected the Korean city for the 2018 event was to <a href="https://www.olympic.org/news/ioc-elects-pyeongchang-as-the-host-city-of-2018-olympic-winter-games">spread winter sport</a> to a new part of the world which had not held the Winter Olympics. But aside from concerns about the post-Olympic use of these venues in a country where <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/sport/gallery/2018/jan/20/south-korea-abandoned-ski-resort-near-to-winter-olympics-venue-in-pictures">participation in skiing has declined</a>, logistics for spectators will be challenging.</p>
<p>The PyeongChang organisers recommend that visitors use the high-speed train from Seoul which opened in December 2017. However, a major Korean holiday falls during the Winter Olympics and the majority of seats on the train have already been reserved. International spectators who purchased special train passes for the games are now <a href="https://www.koreaexpose.com/korails-pyeongchang-olympic-discrimination/">unable to book seats</a> on trains to take them to the Olympic events. There have also been concerns about accommodation shortages. </p>
<p>The next Winter Olympics in Beijing in 2022 will be ever more spread out between venues. As larger cities further away from the mountains host the Winter Olympics, the games feel more disjointed for both athletes and spectators. Fans must decide where to stay and may decide not even to bother attending any mountain events. The organisers for recent Winter Games have built two Olympic villages, one in the city and another in the mountains, separating athletes instead of them all living together. </p>
<p>Future hosts for the Winter Olympics have to find a way to balance the interests of athletes, spectators, and post-event use of facilities. This challenge will not be easily solved, although recent past host cities – such as Salt Lake City – putting their hat in the ring to host the Winter Olympics again may be one solution.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/90411/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Heather Dichter does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The long winter Olympic journey from Chamonix in 1924 to PyeongChang in 2018.Heather Dichter, Associate Professor, Leicester Castle Business School, De Montfort UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/906802018-02-05T01:54:28Z2018-02-05T01:54:28ZDespite good intentions, the Olympics has its limits in promoting peace<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/204186/original/file-20180131-38206-u78npy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The IOC has adopted the dove as an official Olympic symbol.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Yannis Behrakis</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The announcement that North and South Korean athletes would march together under one flag at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang and field a joint women’s hockey team <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-17/koreas-to-march-under-one-flag-at-olympics-opening-ceremony-jcj37ai4">has been hailed</a> as a sports diplomatic breakthrough.</p>
<p>Diplomatic overtures during sporting events are not unusual. Sports have long been seen as apolitical spaces where athletes from adversarial countries can mingle, become friends and overcome the chauvinism that leads to war. </p>
<p>The promotion of world peace is one of the Olympic movement’s stated goals. The <a href="https://stillmed.olympic.org/Documents/olympic_charter_en.pdf">Olympic Charter</a> urges leaders:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… to place sport at the service of the harmonious development of humankind, with a view to promoting a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But despite Olympic organisers’ powerful rhetoric, they have only very limited ability to promote peace between warring nations.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-winter-olympics-and-the-two-koreas-how-sport-diplomacy-could-save-the-world-89769">The Winter Olympics and the two Koreas: how sport diplomacy could save the world</a>
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<h2>Hark back to history</h2>
<p>Since the refoundation of the Olympic Games, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has asked countries to respect the historic tradition of the Olympic Truce during the competition.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.olympic.org/olympic-truce">Olympic Truce</a> was a crucial component of Ancient Greek Games. Every four years, hundreds of athletes from across Greece met at Olympia under the protection of a sacred truce (<em>ekecheria</em>) that brought a halt to the yearly cycle of violent city-state warfare and inaugurated a month-long festival of athleticism.</p>
<p>The truce made the Games possible: it allowed athletes and spectators to travel in complete safety to participate.</p>
<p>The notion of an Olympic Truce re-emerged when the modern Olympics resumed in 1894. The IOC’s founder, Pierre de Coubertin, hoped the competition would promote world peace. <a href="http://thesportjournal.org/article/the-idea-of-peace-as-coubertins-vision-for-the-modern-olympic-movement-development-and-pedagogic-consequences/">He said</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Wars break out because nations misunderstand each other. We shall no have peace until the prejudices which now separate the different races shall have been outlived. To attain this end, what better means than to bring the youth of all countries periodically together for amicable trials of muscular strength and agility.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Of the signatories of the original Olympic Charter, 80% were also members of organisations devoted to peace movements; they shared de Coubertin’s belief in Olympism’s potential to promote peace. Five signatories later won Nobel Peace prizes.</p>
<h2>Past opportunities for peace</h2>
<p>The Olympic Games have provided several opportunities for international reconciliation, particularly during the global upheaval of the 1990s. </p>
<p>Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, athletes from 12 of the former Soviet republics competed as members of a unified team at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. The unified athletes took home more medals than any other team. Their victories were <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/why-russia-will-see-its-olympic-ban-as-a-declaration-of-war">seen as</a> a symbol of “hope, solidarity, and sportsmanship over totalitarianism”.</p>
<p>Similarly, during the wars in the Balkans, the IOC co-ordinated to allow athletes from the post-Yugoslavian states to compete. At the 1994 Lillehammer Olympics the Bosnian-Herzegovina Olympic Committee fielded a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1994/02/07/sports/winter-olympics-athlete-escapes-sarajevo-s-new-round-of-death.html?pagewanted=all">mixed bobsled team</a> with Russian Orthodox, Catholic and Muslim athletes.</p>
<p>The Olympic Truce continues to be a priority for sport administrators because they see sport as able to promote peace globally and in local communities. </p>
<p>In 1993, the IOC reached out to the United Nations, which passed a resolution calling for a global ceasefire during the Lillehammer Games. The UN has renewed that resolution for every subsequent Olympics. </p>
<p>In 2000, the IOC founded the International Olympic Truce Foundation and adopted the dove as an Olympic symbol. The 2012 London Olympics was the first in which every nation present – 193 countries – signed onto an Olympic Truce. </p>
<p>The IOC’s <a href="https://www.olympic.org/peace-through-sport">current peace initiatives</a> include preventing youth violence in Colombia, anti-crime projects in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, and community pilot programs for peace in Jamaica.</p>
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<span class="caption">North and South Korean athletes will march under the one flag at the Pyeongchang Olympics opening ceremony.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Kim Hong-Ji</span></span>
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<h2>The Olympics has its limits</h2>
<p>However, the Olympics did not end either of the two world wars. War actually stopped Olympic Games from taking place: they were not held between 1912 and 1920, and 1936 and 1948.</p>
<p>North and South Korea remain technically at war despite the two countries having competed together or marched under a unified flag nine times since the 2000 Sydney Olympics.</p>
<p>The Olympics can also provoke international confrontations or be a site where international tensions are played out. The Nazi regime <a href="http://time.com/4432857/hitler-hosted-olympics-1936/">used the 1936 Berlin Olympics</a> to promote their fascist and racist agenda. Contemporaries understood these Games as a confrontation between democracy and totalitarianism. </p>
<p>Throughout the Cold War, the US and the Soviet Union channelled their international conflict through the Olympics. When the Cold War warmed up in the 1980s, each side boycotted the Olympics once: the US stayed home during the 1980 Moscow Olympics and the Russians responded with a boycott of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. </p>
<p>Palestinian terrorists <a href="http://time.com/24489/munich-massacre-1972-olympics-photos/">targeted Israeli athletes</a> at the 1972 Munich Olympics. More recently, Arab athletes from Saudi Arabia, Syria and Egypt routinely forfeit matches or withdraw from competition <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boycotts_of_Israel_in_sports">rather than compete</a> against Israeli athletes.</p>
<p>In 1912, de Coubertin <a href="http://thesportjournal.org/article/the-idea-of-peace-as-coubertins-vision-for-the-modern-olympic-movement-development-and-pedagogic-consequences/">wrote an ode</a> to Olympic peace. The sixth stanza begins: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>O Sport, You are Peace! You forge happy bonds between the peoples …. Through you the young of the entire world learn to respect one another.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>However, sport’s ability to overcome war remains limited.</p>
<p>At the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics, both reconciliation and struggle narratives will be visible. The two Koreas will march together under one flag. But the ban on Russian athletes for doping has been framed in Russia in the language of the Cold War: it has <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/why-russia-will-see-its-olympic-ban-as-a-declaration-of-war">been described as</a> a “part of a Western plot to overthrow the Russian government”.</p>
<p>Twitter bots allegedly associated with Russian intelligence agencies have started an online campaign against the Pyeongchang Olympics with the hashtag <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-twitter-russia-olympics/norussianogames-twitter-bots-boost-russian-backlash-against-olympic-ban-idUSKBN1E223V">#NoRussiaNoGames</a>. Who knows what those bots will do when the Games begin?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/90680/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Keith Rathbone does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>History shows Olympic Games have only very limited ability to promote peace between warring nations.Keith Rathbone, Lecturer, Modern European History and Sports History, Macquarie UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/878812017-11-26T10:09:12Z2017-11-26T10:09:12ZPatterns inherited from South Africa’s colonial past still persist in sport<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196182/original/file-20171123-18001-p40k7s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">South Africa's sport facilities are sorely lacking.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Delwyn Verasamy/Mail & Guardiian</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>South African sporting roots are deep in the country’s colonial past. </p>
<p>During the 19th century, sport in Britain and her colonies – South Africa one of them – was played and organised according to a class structure. It was based on English cultural critic <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Matthew-Arnold">Matthew Arnold’s</a> <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/Sport_in_society.html?id=iLfcAAAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y">classification</a> of society into “barbarians”, “philistines” and the “populace”. The barbarians were the aristocrats, the philistines the petty bourgeoisie, and the populace represented the working class.</p>
<p>According to Arnold’s classification, the staunchly individualistic and well-organised barbarians controlled sport at the beginning of the 19th century. They did so without making any attempt to hand down sport to the populace. Consequently, the philistines developed their own games such as athletics, hockey, soccer and tennis. They also infiltrated the Barbarian strongholds of cycling, rowing and rugby. </p>
<p>Later they welcomed the populace into their sports. This, provided they would conform to their etiquette of good manners and fair conduct in play. Many Philistines went further and introduced games and sport with a religious motive to the Populace.</p>
<h2>Restricted participation</h2>
<p>Transported to the British colonies, this class structure in sport was evident in the Cape Colony. The Western Province Rugby Football Union played the Junior Challenge Cup for rugby for the first time in 1897. It was explicitly stated that participation was restricted to boys from “European descent” in the union’s minutes of 4 May 1898.</p>
<p>In the Western Cape town of Stellenbosch, local white students expressed concern about playing rugby with the “chams” (Coloureds) on a piece of land called <em>Die Braak</em>. They were pleased when the authorities approved segregation measures. This was a <a href="http://encore.seals.ac.za/iii/encore_nmmu/plus/C__SSports%20%20%20%20South%20Africa%20%20%20%20History.__Orightresult;jsessionid=AA3EC06870231EB67633855A3123583E?lang=eng&suite=nmmu">reflection</a> of 19th and 20th century societies where people were included and excluded from sport participation by design.</p>
<p>The colonised had little room to manoeuvre outside these restrictions, discriminatory attitudes and exclusionary clauses in their sport organisation’s constitutions. Hence, prior to the Second World War, separate sport organisations for African, mixed race (Coloured), Muslim and Jewish communities existed at provincial and national level.</p>
<p>Occasionally, these clubs played each other. But generally the administrators and supporters remained strict about who could play or not in their fixtures. </p>
<p>After the Second World War, there was a drive towards black unity amongst sport federations that mirrored resistance political initiatives. By then, these sport-political drives stretched beyond the male muscular sports of cricket, rugby and soccer. It also included athletics, baseball, softball and weightlifting amongst others, as Robert Archer and Antoine Bouillon wrote in the study of racism in local sport, <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/The_South_African_game.html?id=lXeBAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y">The South African Game</a>.</p>
<h2>International participation</h2>
<p>Under the influence of administrators such as <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/dennis-brutus">Dennis Brutus</a> and Milo Pillay, black sport structures started directing their efforts towards international participation. Pillay wrote to the South African Empire and Olympic Games Association in 1947, requesting permission to consider black athletes for selection to the 1948 Olympic Games. The association’s refusal resulted in the Capetonian, weight lifter <a href="https://www.sports-reference.com/olympics/athletes/el/ron-eland-1.html">Ron Eland</a>, participating for England in the games.</p>
<p>Pillay represented the traditional method of sport resistance of writing pleading letters that would appeal to white sympathy. Brutus, a more radical minded politician, and the better known, <a href="https://www.olympic.org/mr-sam-ramsamy">Sam Ramsamy</a>, agitated for South Africa’s complete expulsion from international sport while apartheid was still the law of the land. </p>
<p>A major stimulus for black unity in sport came with the formation of the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2637137?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">South African Council on Sport (Sacos)</a> in Durban in 1973. The council grew into the internal sport wing of the Anti-Apartheid Movement. It remained a political home for the broader black liberation movement, for black consciousness and Pan-Africanist formations, as well as the anti-racist <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv02424/04lv02730/05lv03188/06lv03213.htm">New Unity Movement</a>. </p>
<p>At times Sacos was in conflict with its international counterpart, the <a href="http://scnc.ukzn.ac.za/doc/SPORT/SPORTRAM.htm">South African Non-Racial Olympic Committee</a> who was influenced largely by the politics of the African National Congress (ANC).</p>
<p>In 1990 the ANC and other liberation organisations were <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/fw-de-klerk-announces-release-nelson-mandela-and-unbans-political-organisations">unbanned</a>. It led to South Africa’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/1991/jul/10/southafrica.davidberesford">readmission</a> to international sport. But it also resulted in the demise of Sacos and the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/sacos-vs-nsc">dominance</a> of the short-lived ANC body, the National Sports Congress. The National Sports Congress punted the ANC line of power first, then development, whereas Sacos argued for the reverse. </p>
<p>Both the National Sports Congress and Sacos have dissolved with unresolved issues of ensuring maximum sport participation for all South Africans in the 21st century. </p>
<h2>Array of evils</h2>
<p>Today, the class gap as outlined by Arnold in the 19th century, remains firmly intact in South African sport. Media <a href="http://www.heraldlive.co.za/sport/2014/08/28/transformation-trips-lack-facilities/">reports</a> of <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/eastern-cape/poor-facilities-cripple-teaching-1326099">inadequate sport facilities</a> and lack of participation <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2016-09-23-00-ten-things-that-sa-sport-must-fix">opportunities</a> in poor communities, corruption and an array of evils surface regularly.</p>
<p>South African sport administrators seek to address inequalities of the past through politically convenient identity politics. In the process they utilise instruments such as race-based <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2016-04-28-sports-farce-in-land-of-pantomime">quotas</a>, while ignoring historical class divides that formed a basis for modern day sport formations. </p>
<p>Access to good schooling is generally considered a key to successful sport participation at senior level. However, many young people across the race spectrum, lack access to schools and universities. Only a select few make it into national representative teams. </p>
<p>In this way, modern day sport participation remains rooted in the dilemmas of colonial society. It necessitates an ongoing need for discourse, debate and dialogue on decolonisation in sport history. </p>
<p>South Africans owe it to themselves and their sport.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/87881/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Francois Cleophas receives funding from Stellenbosch University.
</span></em></p>Sport participation in South Africa remains rooted in the dilemmas of colonial society. It necessitates an ongoing need for discourse, debate and dialogue on decolonisation in sport history.Francois Cleophas, Senior Lecturer in Sport History, Stellenbosch UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/866072017-11-08T19:14:49Z2017-11-08T19:14:49ZAs Socceroos face moment of truth, let’s remember our football triumph of 1967<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192563/original/file-20171031-18686-101clfw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Australian national football team's remarkable triumph in Vietnam in 1967 has never been properly and collectively recognised.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Australian Soccer Federation</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>November 14 <a href="http://sesasport.com/?p=2493">marks 50 years</a> since the Australian men’s national football team – which was not yet known as the Socceroos – won its first international trophy in Saigon in the middle of the Vietnam War. </p>
<p>This remarkable triumph, and the young men who made it happen, have never been properly and collectively recognised. Eight of those who took part went on to help Australia <a href="https://theconversation.com/qualifying-is-never-easy-australias-world-cup-history-27508">qualify for the World Cup</a> in 1974; the collective spirit forged in Vietnam was one of the keys to that success. </p>
<p>As the national team of today prepares for its last-chance World Cup qualifier against Honduras, it would do well to draw inspiration from this episode – despite its <a href="https://www.bookdepository.com/Football-War-Roy-Hay/9780994601902">exclusion from the national narrative</a>.</p>
<h2>Football played amid fighting</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192564/original/file-20171031-18704-qeww5x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192564/original/file-20171031-18704-qeww5x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192564/original/file-20171031-18704-qeww5x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=780&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192564/original/file-20171031-18704-qeww5x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=780&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192564/original/file-20171031-18704-qeww5x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=780&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192564/original/file-20171031-18704-qeww5x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=981&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192564/original/file-20171031-18704-qeww5x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=981&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192564/original/file-20171031-18704-qeww5x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=981&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Captain Johnny Warren leads the team out at the opening ceremony.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Johnny Warren Collection, National Museum of Australia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 1967, at the height of the Vietnam War, the Holt government agreed it would be a good idea if the national football team took part in a tournament in Vietnam to boost morale in some of the nations involved in the war.</p>
<p>Football diplomacy in Asia <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/av/magazine-25836922/how-ping-pong-diplomacy-brought-nixon-to-china">preceded ping-pong diplomacy</a> by a few years. So, Australia set off for the Vietnam National Day Football Tournament in Saigon at the start of November 1967.</p>
<p>In many ways, it was a strange and frightening experience for the Australians. They were pitched into the middle of a war that was beginning to become unpopular at home.</p>
<p>Australian captain Johnny Warren recalled the team would be eating with soldiers in their mess and then going to play football, while their compatriots went off to fight. Players were warned by security on arrival not to spend time with Americans, because the latter were prime targets for the Viet Cong.</p>
<p>Eight teams from nations involved in the war took part. Australia, South Vietnam, New Zealand and Singapore made up Group A; South Korea, Malaysia, Thailand and Hong Kong were in Group B.</p>
<p>After a tough tournament, Australia came up against South Korea in the final. The match nearly did not take place after the team was informed there was no space in the stadium for the Australian military personnel who had been a huge support to the players on and off the field. The Australians threatened not to take part. </p>
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<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ray Richards exhausted on the bench alongside Lou Lazzari.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Laurie Schwab Collection, Deakin University Library</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As it turned out, the service personnel were allowed in and the rest of the crowd supported Australia rather than the Koreans, much to the Australians’ surprise. South Korea scored in the first minute, but the Australians responded brilliantly. Billy Vojtek scored a wonderful solo goal after 36 minutes, and Attila Abonyi and Warren added the others in a 3-2 win.</p>
<p>Though mortar batteries could be heard in Saigon on most days, it was said at the time that there were so many Viet Cong at the matches there was no trouble inside the stadium.</p>
<p>The day after the victory, the Australians went off to visit the troops in Vung Tau and played a game against them. On the way home, there were matches with Indonesia and New Zealand in Malaysia. </p>
<p>Australia played ten games on the tour and won them all. The camaraderie in the face of adversity was an important element in the mindset that eventually helped them to qualify for the 1974 World Cup.</p>
<h2>Why Australia’s victory didn’t resonate</h2>
<p>However, it would have taken a miracle for Australia’s triumph in Vietnam to become part of the national sporting narrative – far less the national story. </p>
<p>The anti-Vietnam War movement, the failure to qualify for the World Cup in 1970, the involvement with the Oceania Confederation of FIFA and the opposition of the Asian Football Confederation to Australia’s membership, the triumph of Gough Whitlam and Labor: all of these played a part in reducing its prominence.</p>
<p>In addition, football did not promote itself or its triumphs effectively following the victory in Vietnam in 1967. </p>
<p>Even the success of Rale Rasic’s team in qualifying for the 1974 World Cup – though Rasic himself paid homage to Joe Vlasits, the coach in 1967, and his work – resulted in the concentration on the experience of another close-knit group and its difficulties. The Vietnam tournament was relegated to a precursor rather than an achievement in its own right.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.history.com/topics/vietnam-war/tet-offensive">Tet offensive</a> began only a couple of months after the team returned home. It marked an escalation in the war that impinged on anti-war sentiment in Australia. It is true that the large-scale anti-war movements developed later, but there was little political traction in a sporting victory in support of Australia’s involvement in the war. </p>
<p>Parliament was not sitting when the 1967 tournament victory was achieved, nor when the team returned home. So, there was little opportunity at the time for any public recognition by either the government or Labor, whose opposition to continued participation in the Vietnam War was hardening. </p>
<p>Furthermore, <a href="http://www.naa.gov.au/collection/fact-sheets/fs144.aspx">Prime Minister Harold Holt’s disappearance</a> on December 17 and its aftermath occupied public attention.</p>
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<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The official tournament program.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Johnny Warren Collection, National Museum of Australia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>What happened next?</h2>
<p>Australia’s failure to qualify for the World Cup in 1970 removed what would have been a huge boost for the game. The tortuous qualifying campaign and the narrow dimensions of the capitulation at the final hurdle in 1969 resonated with the football community, but hardly outside it.</p>
<p>Football remained the game of “sheilas, wogs and poofters” – as Warren’s autobiography <a href="https://shop.abc.net.au/sheilas-wogs-and-poofters">famously put it</a>.</p>
<p>Throughout the 1970s, the Asian Football Confederation was ambivalent about – if not hostile to – full membership for Australia. For its part, Australia was divided on the value of an Asian link, though it had become aware that Oceania was not the answer. So, promoting a victory over Southeast Asia’s best in Vietnam was not something the Asian Football Confederation or football’s governing body in Australia was likely to do.</p>
<p>The rise in Labor’s fortunes under Whitlam and Rasic’s appointment as national coach in 1970 meant that victories under the Holt government would not be trumpeted. Forgetting came quickly.</p>
<p>Real though they were, it was not just the bias against the game in Australia and the existence of other football codes that account for the absence of this triumph against the odds in the national story.</p>
<p>The game itself and its organisation was only nominally national, even though it was ahead of the other codes in this respect. It was to be another decade before a national league was established – that too was ahead of its time, and <a href="https://dro.deakin.edu.au/eserv/DU:30015957/hay-ourwickedgame-2006.pdf">somehow almost “un-Australian”</a> in 1977.</p>
<p>But that is no reason why the Australians of 1967 (or those who went back to Vietnam in 1970 and 1972) should be forgotten and <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/sport/soccer/when-the-socceroos-won-behind-enemy-lines-20141108-11j4nk.html">unrecognised today</a>. They deserve public acclaim for what they did, when they did it, and the circumstances in which they did it. </p>
<p>These men were not servicemen; they did not face the kinds of battle that young Australian infantry went through. They have never claimed that their experience matched that of the servicemen and women they met in Vietnam. But they should be a part of the national story.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/86607/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Roy Hay does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>At the height of the Vietnam War, the Holt government agreed it would be a good idea if the national football team took part in a tournament in Vietnam to boost morale.Roy Hay, Honorary Fellow, Deakin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/845752017-09-25T00:35:27Z2017-09-25T00:35:27ZTaking sides: sport organisations and the same-sex debate<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187286/original/file-20170924-17248-1eps8w7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption"></span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>There is an old adage that sport should be separate from politics. The same-sex marriage debate in Australia has revived that view, as many sport bodies have publicly advocated a position on the matter.</p>
<p>To critics, this means that sport – whether via organisations or athletes – is taking on roles and asserting views that are <a href="http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/afl/more-news/sam-newman-rants-against-afl-on-support-for-gay-marriage-yes-vote/news-story/3689a6b5810378e099c6a72ea025ccd6">beyond its remit</a>.</p>
<p>Sport, they insist, is meant to be an escape from everyday life; embedding politics in sport deprives it of fantasy. More seriously, perhaps, “progressive” sport organisations are accused of engaging in a form of social engineering that deprives athleticism and fandom of their innocence. </p>
<p>In order to be valuable, therefore, sport must be a <a href="http://www.news.com.au/sport/afl/afl-takes-down-yes-sign-from-docklands-headquarters/news-story/1da74edbbe3058c28ca2b3f893eda7a7">“neutral” space</a>, eschewing all political judgements and asserting independence from external influences.</p>
<h2>Sport taking sides</h2>
<p>Australian sport history is replete with examples of organisations embroiled in political issues of national significance. </p>
<p>In the first world war, for example, the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2014/dec/10/the-joy-of-six-politics-and-sport">football codes</a> variously supported or opposed forced enlistment under the <a href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:199295">two conscription referenda</a>. </p>
<p>During the 1960s, South Africa’s racially exclusive sport policies were made obvious in cricket and rugby: by 1971 the <a href="http://www.naa.gov.au/collection/fact-sheets/fs255.aspx">Australian Cricket Board</a> had broken ties, but in the same year <a href="https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/anti-apartheid-rugby-protests-showed-how-sport-and-politics-are-inseparable">rugby union authorities</a> invited the Springboks to tour.</p>
<p>During the 1999 republican referendum campaign, Australian cricket captain Steve Waugh and iconic bowler Shane Warne both publicly advocated for the “yes” vote, while Mark Taylor was noncommittal. A host of household names declared themselves “sports ambassadors for the republic”, but there were proponents of the “no” campaign, such as horse trainer Gai Waterhouse.</p>
<p>More recently, Australian sports have openly committed to a range of sociopolitical causes they regard as just, such as support for the Indigenous <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-08-11/recognise-campaign-wound-up/8797540">“Recognise” campaign</a> and the <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-05-10/major-codes-commit-to-stamping-out-homophobia-in-sport/6458468">“Pride in Sport Index”</a> that benchmarks inclusivity for LGBTQI people in sport. </p>
<p>Like other areas of society, sport engages with day-to-day challenges of diversity and opportunity, whether that be for people with disabilities, those from non-English speaking backgrounds, or with women in the sport workforce. </p>
<p>Sport organisations pronounce core values and goals; the instruments to achieve them are policy. Policies are about vision, strategy and impact; all of that is steeped in politics.</p>
<h2>Handpassing responsibility</h2>
<p>To use a sporting metaphor, the Turnbull government handpassed to the public the question of whether same-sex partners ought to be entitled to marry. </p>
<p>The ensuing debate has been more than robust; it has often been rancorous. In an era of social media, the best and worst of people is magnified.</p>
<p>Some <a href="http://www.australianmarriageequality.org/open-letter-of-support/">765 organisations</a>, from Qantas through to Coopers Brewery, have declared their support for the “yes” campaign. This includes several faith groups. </p>
<p>The “no” campaign is being driven by at least <a href="https://www.coalitionformarriage.com.au/partners">30 organisations</a> – in essence, religious conservatives that wish to preserve the marital status quo. The positional splits are shaped overwhelmingly by progressivism vs traditionalism and secularism vs religiosity. </p>
<p>For many large companies, though, the open embrace of gay and lesbian staff is normative. <a href="https://www.pwc.com.au/about-us/diversity-and-inclusion.html">PwC</a>, for example, reports that it has been “twice named Australia’s top LGBTI employer by Pride In Diversity”. For PwC, therefore, support for same-sex marriage is an extension of their commitment to LGBTI staff.</p>
<h2>Sport and secular values</h2>
<p>In recent weeks a host of major sport organisations, clubs and athletes have announced a position on the same-sex marriage plebiscite. The <a href="http://inclusivesportdesign.com/uncategorized/yes-australian-sport-in-support-of-same-sex-marriage/">overwhelming view</a> is support for a “yes” vote. </p>
<p>That said, some sporting bodies have preferred not to commit, asserting that the vote is a personal matter for individuals. Both of these stances have attracted commentary – which is no surprise. This is politics and democracy after all.</p>
<p>Pundits may wonder why, for example, the Australian Olympic Committee has not committed either way, while the Australian Paralympic Committee (APC) is staunchly for a “yes” vote. Both organisations are umbrella bodies for numerous Australian sports. </p>
<p>I have yet to hear of a sporting body advocating a no vote, though a few well-known sports stars – <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/2017/05/31/margaret-court-says-theres-a-plot-to-turn-kids-gay-and-its-lik_a_22118744/">Margaret Court</a> and <a href="https://www.foxsports.com.au/rugby/israel-folau-says-vote-no-david-pocock-says-vote-yes-but-does-anyone-care/news-story/200c88a41ce505cc2fe0695cf97a006b">Israel Folau</a> – have indicated that position in line with their evangelical religious beliefs.</p>
<p>Australian sport organisations, especially those at the elite level, are secular bodies. This means their values are not beholden to religious organisations. They are hardly expected to discriminate against an employee’s religion, and they have no purpose to elevate one type of faith over others. </p>
<p>The same principle of inclusion applies with sexuality (even though sport, historically, has rarely celebrated LGBTQI athletes). What this means in practice is a secular workplace involving people with different, even competing views about wider social issues.</p>
<p>But, to use the APC as an example, it is at least clear to employees what that organisation’s position is on same-sex marriage. Much the same, of course, if they were an employee of a conservative religious institution. Fair call.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/84575/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
There is an old adage that sport should be separate from politics. The same-sex marriage debate in Australia has revived that view, as many sport bodies have publicly advocated a position on the matter…Daryl Adair, Associate Professor of Sport Management, University of Technology SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/822252017-08-09T08:25:51Z2017-08-09T08:25:51ZIn Victorian Britain the crowds approved of sports doping – with cocaine<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181425/original/file-20170808-5037-12j1f4x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">sportpoint / Shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The American sprinter <a href="https://www.channel4.com/news/booing-at-justin-gatlins-victory-over-usain-bolt-in-the-100m">Justin Gatlin’s recent victory</a> over Usain Bolt at the World Athletics Championships has brought the storied issue of <a href="https://theconversation.com/doping-why-some-athletes-are-reluctant-to-speak-out-79862">sports doping</a> back into the public eye.</p>
<p>Gatlin has been subject to drug bans <a href="http://www.standard.co.uk/sport/other-sports/why-was-justin-gatlin-booed-at-london-2017-the-full-drugs-story-surrounding-the-new-100m-world-a3605991.html">twice in his career</a> – first in 2001 (though this was reduced on appeal) and again in 2006. Bolt, by contrast, has become a figurehead for clean competition over his 13 years in professional athletics. The fact that Gatlin beat Bolt to the 100m gold medal in the last race of Bolt’s career was met with enraged boos from the crowd. The event has become a lightning rod for the anger that surrounds doping in professional athletics.</p>
<p>Discussions of Gatlin in particular and of performance-enhancing drugs in general tend to be suffused with a rhetoric of criminality and disease. Doping as a “cancer” within sport is a common image. Both <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/athletics/2017/08/06/justin-gatlin-should-have-banned-life-convicted-drugs-cheat/">Lord Coe</a> (President of the IAAF) and <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/athletics/2017/08/06/justin-gatlin-should-have-banned-life-convicted-drugs-cheat/">Dame Jessica Ennis-Hill</a> have called for lifetime bans for dopers. Even Usain Bolt, in defending Gatlin’s return, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2017/aug/06/usain-bolt-justin-gatlin-100m-world-championships">referred</a> to him as having “done his time”. Modern perceptions of doping are almost entirely predicated on ideas of corruption, immorality, and crime.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181392/original/file-20170808-10926-afgcxc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181392/original/file-20170808-10926-afgcxc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181392/original/file-20170808-10926-afgcxc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181392/original/file-20170808-10926-afgcxc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181392/original/file-20170808-10926-afgcxc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181392/original/file-20170808-10926-afgcxc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181392/original/file-20170808-10926-afgcxc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Gatlin and Bolt at the IAAF Championship in London.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">ANDY RAIN/EPA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Yet this was not the case in Victorian Britain. The crowd and commentators in London who jeered Gatlin might have been surprised by the very different reaction that their forebears had in 1876 to another American sporting celebrity and his use of performance enhancing drugs.</p>
<h2>Coca-walking</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181398/original/file-20170808-5037-9qpnxe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181398/original/file-20170808-5037-9qpnxe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181398/original/file-20170808-5037-9qpnxe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=820&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181398/original/file-20170808-5037-9qpnxe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=820&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181398/original/file-20170808-5037-9qpnxe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=820&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181398/original/file-20170808-5037-9qpnxe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1030&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181398/original/file-20170808-5037-9qpnxe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1030&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181398/original/file-20170808-5037-9qpnxe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1030&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Edward Payson Weston, 1909.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Payson_Weston#/media/File:Edward_Payson_Weston_cph.3b22005.jpg">Spooner & Wells</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Edward Weston was a famous long-distance walker who came to Britain in January 1876 to compete in a series of pedestrian races and tests of endurance. In America, Weston had made a habit of getting free publicity by inviting medical specialists to oversee his races and test how his body reacted to extreme stress and exertion. In London, Weston did the same thing, and issued invitations to correspondents from The Lancet and the British Medical Journal.</p>
<p>But these invitations had an unexpected consequence. In March 1876, during an attempt to walk 500 miles in six days, one observer, John Ashburton Thompson, noticed that Weston had spent at least part of the event chewing coca leaves (the source of cocaine) to improve his stamina and recovery time. Thompson conscientiously published this fact in the BMJ. Interestingly, in breaking the news, Thompson was at pains to point out that Weston’s sporting integrity was in no way compromised by his drug use:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>There is no reason why Mr Weston should not take advantage of every aid which his superior knowledge places at his disposal. Already he is clothed, fed, and tended in such a scientific manner as leaves little room for improvement. There is nothing nefarious about the use of coca under the present circumstances; nor, I presume, would any person attribute all Mr Weston’s powers to some drug suddenly introduced into his system. Could they persuade themselves to do so, his mental powers – his foresight, his energy, his perseverance – would still remain to be accounted for. These are natural qualities of Mr Weston’s mind, which he has cultivated to the best advantage.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181399/original/file-20170808-22949-453b5k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181399/original/file-20170808-22949-453b5k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181399/original/file-20170808-22949-453b5k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181399/original/file-20170808-22949-453b5k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181399/original/file-20170808-22949-453b5k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181399/original/file-20170808-22949-453b5k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181399/original/file-20170808-22949-453b5k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Coca leaves.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mauricio Gil/Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>From a modern perspective, the reaction to Weston’s coca-chewing seems entirely counter-intuitive. Rather than anger of the kind directed at Gatlin, Weston’s use of the “performance-enhancing” coca was met with interested approval. What little controversy there was centred not on the morality of Weston’s actions, but on how his drug use was likely to affect the results of the physiological investigations the doctors had been conducting. Most significantly, no Victorian commentator seriously suggested that Weston might have been cheating by taking drugs.</p>
<h2>‘Marvellous properties’</h2>
<p>The Glasgow Herald wrote that the use of coca was “very interesting” and that the drug was likely to have many “popular applications”. The Telegraph enthused: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The coca leaf is a plant to which scientific men cannot too soon turn their attention. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Inspired by Weston’s performance, many began to experiment with cocaine and coca tonics. One doctor and sports enthusiast wrote to The Lancet that the drug was destined to “be hailed as a boon by many a brother sportsman”. Amidst the excitement, the Northern Echo reminded its readers that there was more to Weston’s success than just coca: whatever its “marvellous properties, the mere chewing of the leaf will not make a counter-jumper a Weston”.</p>
<p>So why were Victorian observers so willing both to overlook Weston’s coca use, and to embrace performance enhancing drugs themselves? The answer can be seen in how Weston’s sporting performance was constructed at the time. Thompson’s descriptions in the BMJ placed coca alongside other “preparations” and “superior knowledge” that Weston used: his clothing, the design of his boots, his diet, and the unique gait he adopted to minimise exertion over hundreds of miles of walking. Coca was folded into Weston’s regimen of training and specialised understanding of his sport.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181395/original/file-20170808-22938-198p8j1.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181395/original/file-20170808-22938-198p8j1.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181395/original/file-20170808-22938-198p8j1.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=235&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181395/original/file-20170808-22938-198p8j1.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=235&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181395/original/file-20170808-22938-198p8j1.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=235&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181395/original/file-20170808-22938-198p8j1.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=295&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181395/original/file-20170808-22938-198p8j1.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=295&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181395/original/file-20170808-22938-198p8j1.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=295&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Advert for coca-based patent medicine, 1880.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Douglas Small</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>More broadly, as a professional athlete, Weston’s achievements were seen as the result of a constellation of factors: his bodily strength, his sporting expertise, and the “indomitable pluck and determination” of his character. This was why coca alone would “not make a counter-jumper a Weston”. Sporting performance was seen as the expression of an athlete’s entire (multi-faceted) selfhood. It was, as The Lancet wrote, “essentially a personal feat”.</p>
<p>Victorian opinion held that doping was necessarily secondary to the character of the sportsman. As the <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-its-time-to-legalise-doping-in-athletics-46514">doping debate continues</a>, this change in attitudes between 1876 and 2017 highlights how subjective our apparently fixed ideas about performance enhancement – and sporting performance itself – really are.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/82225/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Douglas Small's research is funded by the Wellcome Trust.</span></em></p>A Victorian athlete’s use of ‘performance-enhancing’ coca was met with interested approval rather than anger of the kind directed at Justin Gatlin.Douglas Small, Wellcome Trust Research Fellow, University of GlasgowLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/821652017-08-09T00:48:24Z2017-08-09T00:48:24ZGrumbles over governance threaten to disrupt football’s growth in Australia<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181323/original/file-20170808-20124-h4ly7q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The FFA, headed by Steven Lowy, is currently beset by an array of challenges to its control of football in Australia.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Lukas Coch</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Football in Australia should be on a high. The Matildas achieved <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/football/live/2017/aug/04/australia-v-brazil-tournament-of-nations-final-live">stunning success</a> at the Tournament of Nations, the Socceroos are about to embark on the final stage of qualifying for their fourth World Cup in succession, and data show participation in the sport to be <a href="http://www.footballaustralia.com.au/article/ffa-audit-confirms-football-participation-boom/tn40xo1brafn1hjppl64apyn0">at an all-time high</a>. Instead, football is in the midst of a crisis of governance. </p>
<p>The game’s governing body, Football Federation Australia (FFA), is beset by an array of challenges from the A-League clubs, the aspirant clubs in various state federations, the Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA), the Asian Football Confederation, and FIFA, the international football federation. </p>
<p>The FFA has brought some of the current problems on itself by its heavy-handed – some would say dictatorial – behaviour. However, it’s worth defending the principle that the national governing body, not the clubs and not the states, should run the game.</p>
<h2>The numbers game</h2>
<p>The battle is <a href="http://www.footballaustralia.com.au/dct/ffa-dtc-performgroup-eu-west-1/FFA%20Constitution%20-%20Final%20-%2011%20Nov%202015_b4t3xe3uulh41ncne0v6bavu3.pdf">largely being waged</a> over the composition of the FFA Congress.</p>
<p>At present, the Congress consists of ten members: nine representing the state federations and one for the A-League. There is general agreement that this model needs to be replaced by a larger, more representative one.</p>
<p>FFA’s argument to FIFA is that all the other groups in the game – referees, players, women, coaches, clubs, futsal – have virtual representation through their state federations. </p>
<p>FIFA says these special interest groups should have direct representation in the Congress. FFA counters that some of these groups have not yet established governing national bodies to represent them independently, and therefore have not reached the point at which they can be considered for separate membership.</p>
<p>The A-League clubs, which are privately owned commercial organisations in possession of an FFA licence for a place in the league, have formed the <a href="https://www.fourfourtwo.com.au/news/a-league-clubs-to-ffa-please-explain-449223">Association of Professional Football Clubs</a> to advance their case for greater representation. Their preferred model is to expand Congress to 17 members, with nine positions for the state federations, six for the A-League clubs, and two for the PFA (one for the men and one for the women).</p>
<p>Meantwhile, the aspirational clubs currently playing in the second tier – the various state-based National Premier Leagues – have banded together to from the <a href="https://www.foxsports.com.au/football/first-meeting-of-association-of-australian-football-clubs-attended-by-97-clubs/news-story/7c7e747d7016b2efa96f873e8ee96e6d">Association of Australian Football Clubs</a>. Their aim is for separate representation in an expanded Congress.</p>
<p>Meantime, the state federations have been considering their preferred model. New South Wales and Victoria have agreed on a nine-five-one structure, with five places for the A-League clubs and one for the PFA. The FFA’s proposal, which has the support of all the other states, is for a nine-three-one model.</p>
<h2>Lessons from history</h2>
<p>In 1962, the principle of club control was enshrined in the governance of the Australian Soccer Federation, just when its focus began to shift from local to national and international levels. </p>
<p>The result was that the tail wagged the dog at a critical period in football’s history. This should not be allowed to happen again. The self-interest of the clubs needs to be curbed for the good of the game.</p>
<p>In 2003, the Howard government stepped in to insist that any government investment in football depended on a root-and-branch reform of Soccer Australia (the FFA’s immediate predecessor).</p>
<p>All three reports from that time on the game’s future – David Crawford’s, the Professional Footballers’ Association’s, and the one chaired by Andrew Kemenyi (specifically on the organisation of a national league) – came down in favour of a structural separation between the league and Soccer Australia.</p>
<p>But Frank Lowy, the only man who had the experience of running the National Soccer League and who had stood unsuccessfully for the presidency of the Australian Soccer Federation, would not have a bar of that.</p>
<p>He insisted on a unitary model, with what became the FFA having effective control of the A-League. The interests of the two bodies were bound to diverge at times, so he wanted to ensure that those of the FFA were paramount. </p>
<p>While Lowy senior started with the moral authority to carry the game with him, his <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-player-played-frank-lowy-and-australias-failed-world-cup-bid-50007">disastrous attempt</a> to win hosting rights to the World Cup undermined that. His son Steven, who succeeded him as FFA chairman, has found it hard to gain parity of esteem. His <a href="http://www.footballaustralia.com.au/article/football-federation-australia-chairman-steven-lowys-message-to-australian-football-community/syna4bktrga31rkxn33unl3kw">strongly-worded media release</a> restating the FFA’s case was a somewhat belated attempt to regain the initiative ahead of the FIFA delegation’s visit.</p>
<h2>Should we copy Europe?</h2>
<p>In other countries, the top leagues are often entirely separate bodies. </p>
<p>The English Premier League may be the world’s most-watched and most competitive league, but its effect on the game in England has been problematic. For example:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>The English national team suffers from only a tiny minority of the players in the Premier League being eligible to play for it.</p></li>
<li><p>Some of the top clubs have fielded teams without a single English player in their ranks. </p></li>
<li><p>Clubs outside the top tier have seen attendances stagnate or dwindle, while their share of TV and sponsorship revenues are a small fraction of those in the Premier League. </p></li>
<li><p>Clubs relegated from that league receive a “parachute payment” to enable them to renegotiate contracts and attract new players, and thus there is not a level playing field in the Championship (the league below the Premier League).</p></li>
</ul>
<p>In most countries where leagues or clubs dominate, there tends to be a duopoly at the top that skews the whole structure of the national game. This is reinforced by the inflow of private foreign money into the game from the Middle East and parts of Asia – including China.</p>
<p>Real Madrid and Barcelona have dominated Spanish football for generations, and a political division reinforces their rivalry. In Germany, Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund have had similar success even though they are touted as membership clubs rather than the offshoots of commercial concerns. </p>
<p>In Australia, by contrast, in the 12 years of the A-League, six of the ten participant clubs have won the championship. It’s not clear that a structural separation of the A-League and FFA would be the better for the game in this country.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/82165/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Roy Hay is a member of FFA's Panel of Historians. These are his personal views not those of FFA.</span></em></p>It’s worth defending the principle that the national governing body, not the clubs and not the states, should run football in Australia.Roy Hay, Honorary Fellow, Deakin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/795362017-06-21T12:19:17Z2017-06-21T12:19:17ZRemembering heavyweight champion Joe Louis, and how society treats its sports heroes<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/174561/original/file-20170619-22079-1btro9y.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A statue of world heavyweight champion Joe Louis which stands in his hometown of LaFayette, Alabama.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Joe_Louis_Statue_LaFayette_Alabama.JPG">SaveRivers</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Joe Louis became the <a href="http://www.historytoday.com/richard-cavendish/joe-louis-crowned-heavyweight-champion">second black boxer to win the world heavyweight title</a> when he defeated James Braddock in eight rounds in Chicago on June 22, 1937. That was 80 years ago. Louis held the title for 11 years – the longest of any heavyweight – through an era of crisis and war, and in the face of ingrained racial prejudice.</p>
<p>Like many sporting heroes, Louis not only displayed extraordinary physical prowess, but came to embody the behaviour and ethical characteristics seen as desirable by mainstream society. He was also a powerful figure for African-Americans to identify with. Studying sports heroes in their context can offer insights into a nation, culture or society at the time – but the comparison with today’s sports stars also reveals surprising continuities between the past and present.</p>
<p>In the 1920s and 1930s, sport became a significant part of popular culture in America and Europe. While in the US, sports such as baseball and basketball were segregated by a “colour line”, boxing was sometimes championed as modern, fair and even democratic. But although mixed-race bouts were common, it was difficult for a black boxer to achieve his true potential – particularly in the heavyweight division.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/174467/original/file-20170619-28851-1vdrswn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/174467/original/file-20170619-28851-1vdrswn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/174467/original/file-20170619-28851-1vdrswn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=776&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174467/original/file-20170619-28851-1vdrswn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=776&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174467/original/file-20170619-28851-1vdrswn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=776&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174467/original/file-20170619-28851-1vdrswn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=975&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174467/original/file-20170619-28851-1vdrswn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=975&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174467/original/file-20170619-28851-1vdrswn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=975&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Joe Louis, heavyweight champion.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Joe_Louis_by_van_Vechten.jpg">Carl Van Vechten/Library of Congress</a></span>
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<p>The world heavyweight title had for decades been viewed as an “ultimate” test of human achievement, which meant that the racial identity of the holder came to matter. Jack Johnson, the first black boxer to hold the title (1908-15), became notorious for his <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/02/05/jack-johnson-worlds-first-black-boxing-champion-was-jailed-under-jim-crow-will-he-get-a-posthumous-pardon/?utm_term=.0eb15430b5c6">refusal to conform to the sport’s prescribed behavioural norms</a>. For example, he mocked defeated opponents, who were mostly white, and was open about his relationships with white women. Famously, Johnson had triggered a public search for a “<a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128245468">Great White Hope</a>” to defeat him. His “scandalous” behaviour ensured that for the next two decades no black fighter was given the chance to challenge for the coveted title.</p>
<p>When Joe Louis emerged in Detroit as a hugely promising young boxer, his management team ensured that his public image contrasted clearly with Johnson’s. The press was even issued with written guarantees of his sobriety, decency and humility. Although the media still resorted to crude stereotypes in their reporting of Joe “Brown Bomber” Louis, the strategy worked. In 1936, Louis suffered a shock defeat to the German Max Schmeling in a title eliminator bout. Despite this, it was Louis rather than the German who got the chance to challenge Braddock for the title.</p>
<p>After defeating Braddock, African-American newspaper The California Eagle was in no doubt about the significance of the moment. Reporting that “35,000 colored citizens […] let out a mighty roar”, the paper remarked:</p>
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<p>[I]n the twinkling of an eye they realized that the victory, as accomplished by an intelligent, clean living, home loving, young Afro-American … would increase a hundred fold the respect for the race in general.</p>
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<h2>A powerful figure for the powerless</h2>
<p>This was not just a moment of sporting triumph but one with racial and social significance. Later, during the civil rights campaigns of the 1960s, Louis, like his friend Jesse Owens, was sometimes criticised as an “Uncle Tom” who had bowed to the prejudices of white America by adopting an emasculated, docile image. Yet such criticism ignores the empowering effect of Louis’ status as a black champion who was recognised and adored by millions – and not only by African-Americans.</p>
<p>In June 1938, Louis had the chance of a rematch against Schmeling, and his knock-out victory in the first round was often remembered as the “<a href="http://www.npr.org/2006/11/25/6515548/the-fight-of-the-century-louis-vs-schmeling">fight of the century</a>”. Schmeling was widely viewed as a representative of Nazi Germany, and their fight <a href="http://www.espn.co.uk/boxing/story/_/id/9404398/more-just-fight">a duel between Nazi and American ideals</a>, so Louis’ victory was greeted with jubilation and relief across America. Legendary boxing commentator Jimmy Cannon wrote that Louis was “<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1973/12/06/archives/jimmy-cannon-columnist-dies-sportswriter-ranged-far-afield-protege.html">a credit to his race … the human race</a>”.</p>
<p>In fact, his great rival Schmeling was no Nazi – he did what he could to assist victims of persecution, even, according to one account, <a href="http://www.raoulwallenberg.net/es/prensa/2005-prensa/max-schmeling-joe-louis-s/">hiding two Jewish brothers from the violence of Kristallnacht</a>, and was widely respected for his discipline and sporting attitude.</p>
<p>After the war, Schmeling and Louis were regularly reunited in public displays of reconciliation that seemed to reflect post-war international relations in the Cold War era. Schmeling, like Louis, had proven himself willing to conform to expectations, clinging to an unrealistic belief that sport could be separated from politics – something as unlikely then as it is now, as can be seen from the scandals surrounding the politics and finance of organisations like <a href="https://theconversation.com/blatter-resigns-but-his-toxic-legacy-will-live-on-at-fifa-42728?sr=2">FIFA</a> and the <a href="https://theconversation.com/to-clean-up-the-olympic-brand-the-ioc-must-restore-trust-63305?sr=4">IOC</a>.</p>
<h2>Where lies the power today?</h2>
<p>The world today seems very different to that of Joe Louis’ heyday. Yet the appeal of boxing as a spectator sport remains strong and there are some noticeable parallels in the way in which we think about and portray our sports heroes. </p>
<p>In April 2017, a huge global television audience watched British heavyweight <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/boxing/39748791">Anthony Joshua defeat Wladimir Klitschko</a> at a sold-out Wembley Stadium to unify three world titles, prompting <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2017/apr/30/anthony-joshua-wladimir-klitschko-heavyweight-title-fight-wembley">comparisons between Joshua and previous champions</a>, notably Muhammad Ali. The shots of Joshua towering over Klitschko <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/boxing/2017/05/01/joshua-klitschko-snapshot-bears-uncanny-resemblance-iconic-muhammad/">recalled the iconic image of Ali standing victorious over Sonny Liston</a> in 1965.</p>
<p>Yet rather than Ali the showman, <a href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/boxing/secrets-of-anthony-joshua-lifestyle-10299035">praise</a> for the “gentlemanly”, focused and modest Joshua, who overcame adversity to rise to celebrity and success and who is presented as morally exemplary, is far more reminiscent of Joe Louis and indeed Max Schmeling.</p>
<p>Such praise reinforces a form of unthreatening racial and gender identity to counterbalance the inherent violence of boxing as a sport. Joshua, a gold medallist for Great Britain at the London 2012 Olympics, has become closely associated with modern, multicultural Britishness – in stark contrast to his predecessor, Tyson Fury, a British boxer from a family of Irish Travellers. Fury has seemed determined – just as Jack Johnson had been – to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2015/dec/07/tyson-fury-outrage-homosexuality-women-religion-divisive-sporting-star">reject any attempt to present him as a role model</a>. </p>
<p>Joshua has thus far embraced this image, and it is proving hugely lucrative for him. Yet such idealisation can also prove impossible to live up to. Such a sports hero, embodying physical prowess and moral qualities, is in many ways as artificial a construct as the mythological heroes with whom they are often compared. As has happened to many of today’s sporting heroes, the victims of tabloid “stings”, Joe Louis came to suffer from the gulf between the realities of his private life and the public perception of him.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/79536/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jon Hughes does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Times change, but the pillar upon which society places its sporting heroes remains the same.Jon Hughes, Senior Lecturer in German and Cultural Studies, Royal Holloway University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/781192017-05-24T03:24:33Z2017-05-24T03:24:33ZAustralian cricketers’ pay dispute: will lightning strike twice in the same place?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170467/original/file-20170523-7379-1qxnwus.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Leading Australian cricketers have indicated they may boycott forthcoming tournaments if no pay deal is reached.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/David Mariuz</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Cricket Australia and the Australian Cricketers’ Association (ACA) <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-05-19/pay-dispute-biggest-threat-to-cricket-since-wsc-richard-hinds/8538140">are at loggerheads</a> over the negotiation of pay and working conditions. </p>
<p>If a new memorandum of understanding cannot be reached by July 1, Cricket Australia <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/sport/cricket/we-wont-pay-you-cricket-australia-boss-james-sutherlands-stunning-email-to-players-heightens-tension-20170513-gw45tl.html">has threatened</a> to not pay players. The union and leading players have indicated they may boycott forthcoming tournaments, <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/sport/cricket/australian-star-david-warner-says-pay-dispute-puts-ashes-summer-in-doubt-20170515-gw51tz.html">including this summer’s Ashes series</a>, if no agreement is reached.</p>
<p>Sport, like other areas of economic life, requires decisions to be made about pay and working conditions. Especially in recent decades, <a href="https://theconversation.com/lifting-their-voice-how-unions-can-arrest-membership-decline-and-stay-relevant-57351">sport has witnessed</a> the formation of associations to represent players, and the use of collective bargaining to resolve such issues.</p>
<p>There are times, however, when the parties experience difficulties in reaching an agreement.</p>
<h2>Not unique to cricket</h2>
<p>In the US, Major League Baseball had a <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/2014/08/11/1994-mlb-strike/13912279/">232-day strike in 1994</a>. The National Football League had a <a href="http://www.espn.com.au/nfl/story/_/id/6797238/2011-nfl-lockout-owners-players-come-deal-all-points-sources-say">127-day lockout in 2011</a>. The National Basketball Association had lockouts of 204 and 161 days, respectively, in <a href="https://usatoday30.usatoday.com/sports/basketball/nba/story/2011-10-12/Timeline-to-the-1998-99-NBA-lockout/50747980/1">1998-99</a> and <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/sports/basketball/nba-and-basketball-players-reach-deal-to-end-lockout.html">2011</a>. And the National Hockey League had lockouts of 301 and 119 days, respectively, in <a href="https://www.si.com/nhl/2014/09/15/2004-nhl-lockout-look-back-at-dark-day">2004-05</a> and <a href="http://www.sbnation.com/nhl/2013/1/6/3728892/nhl-lockout-timeline-2012-2013">2012-13</a>. </p>
<p>Other examples of actual and threatened industrial disputes can be found in numerous sports across the globe.</p>
<p>In 2015, the Australian women’s national football team, the Matildas, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/football/2015/sep/11/matildas-player-strike-what-are-the-key-pay-demands-and-disputes-ahead">refused to tour the US</a> over the level and late payment of wages. This is the only example of a strike in Australian sport.</p>
<p>There are several other examples of Australian players threatening strike action: the most recent <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-04-19/australian-netball-in-turmoil-as-players-threaten-strike-action/8454762">involved netballers</a> concerned over governance of their sport. </p>
<h2>Lessons of the past</h2>
<p>Australian cricket has also experienced its fair share of industrial drama over the years. </p>
<p>Between 1908 and 1909 there was a major clash when administrators wrested control of tours away from players. </p>
<p><a href="http://library.la84.org/SportsLibrary/SportingTraditions/1991/st0801/st0801c.pdf">In 1977</a>, the creation of World Series Cricket involved media mogul Kerry Packer signing leading players to “lucrative” annual contracts ranging from A$16,500 to $35,000. The then-Australian Cricket Board (ACB) had not contracted players and paid them “low” levels of income (from $180 to $2,000 for home Test matches from 1970 to 1977). </p>
<p>The dispute was <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-1970s-cricket-revolution-a-beginners-guide-9024">essentially over</a> Packer’s attempt to broadcast cricket – the rights had long been in the hands of the national broadcaster, the ABC. The dispute was resolved in 1979 when the ACB accepted a more lucrative offer from Packer.</p>
<p><a href="https://search.informit.com.au/documentSummary;dn=990706610;res=IELAPA">In 1995</a>, the Australian Cricketers’ Association formed and experienced difficulties gaining recognition from the ACB. The ACB sought to bypass it by conducting meetings with players or writing to them individually. </p>
<p>Players, especially those in the Test team, steadfastly stood behind the ACA. They maintained they lacked knowledge concerning the business side of sport and needed their union’s professional expertise to represent them on such matters and broader, collective issues associated with player welfare. </p>
<p>The ACB sought to paint the Test players as “greedy”, only concerned with themselves. These players responded that they wished to enhance the income and security of state players, provide them with an incentive to stay in the game, and ensure a ready supply of hardened professionals to maintain the supremacy of Australian cricket. </p>
<p>The players threatened to strike in a one-day game. The ACB ultimately agreed to recognise the ACA and, in 1998, negotiated the first of several pay deals – all of which have been based on revenue-sharing.</p>
<h2>Unpicking this dispute</h2>
<p>The 2012-17 deal provided cricketers with a 24.5% to 27% share of revenue (depending on playing success). Other Australian athletes <a href="http://search.informit.com.au/documentSummary;dn=809150704816818;res=IELBUS">receive shares</a> of revenue ranging from 25% (rugby league), to the high 20s (AFL, likely, given current negotiations), and low 30s (rugby union and football).</p>
<p>In the US, athletes receive approximately a 50% share. Footballers in Europe get somewhere between 60% and 70%.</p>
<p>The 2017 cricket dispute looks like a re-run of the dispute in the 1990s. Cricket Australia is bypassing the ACA by contacting players directly, with the players again standing behind the ACA. CA is seeking to treat state players differently from Test and contracted players by offering them one-off payments, rather than linking their payments to revenue, which the ACA hopes to maintain.</p>
<p>A major difference from back then is the inclusion of female players. From July 1, Cricket Australia has offered payments of $179,000 for the Southern Stars, the national women’s team, and $52,000 for state players. The Southern Stars would be the highest-paid female team players in Australia.</p>
<p>The ACA, in offering what it regards as an olive branch, has lowered its request for a players’ share to 22.5% – including female players. Cricket Australia has not taken up this concession: it wants to negotiate with players individually and rejects revenue-sharing.</p>
<p>Recent decades have <a href="https://theconversation.com/english-football-holds-lessons-for-cricket-as-elites-hijack-the-game-45784">seen the rise</a> of Indian cricket and Twenty20 cricket globally, with offers in the millions of dollars for leading players. This differs markedly from the 1990s. If the current dispute is not settled, players could conceivably earn an income from such tournaments – or new entrepreneurs may find a willing workforce prepared to embark on new competitions. </p>
<p>There are other sports looking for a chance to find their place in the Australian broadcasting sun, such as football and burgeoning women’s sports. It remains to be seen whether a new deal can be struck like a four to the boundary, or what will happen if negotiations continue to go through to the ‘keeper.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/78119/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Braham Dabscheck has been a consultant for a number of player associations in Australia and overseas. He is on the player agent accreditation boards of the AFL and rugby union. He is a member of the Rugby Union Players Association's National Player Development Committee. He is a previous member of the ACA advisory board. In March 2010 he prepared a report the ACA entitled 'An ideal player allocation model for an expanded (eight-team) Big Bash competition'. He has been a member of Australian soccer tribunals to resolve contractual disputes.</span></em></p>Cricket has experienced its fair share of industrial drama over the years – and the 2017 dispute looks like a re-run of a brawl that enveloped the sport in Australia 20 years ago.Braham Dabscheck, Senior Fellow, Melbourne Law School, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.