Esports Fandom and the Collegiate Student-Athlete Experience

eSports audiences have gratifications that must be met. Online gaming provides access to gamers to create community and gain virtual reality skills within the online world. Through information seeking and virtual gratifications, gamers have a need to establish relationships and learn new skills in their game of choice. The event of competitive gaming has become so popular that it is not uncommon for college students to create an organization on campus around eSports. eSports has been studied in the disciplines of audiences, college athletics, and online learning communities; however, few have examined the importance of eSports spectatorship and the student-athlete experience. Using the extension of Hall's Encoding and Decoding model of Active Audience Theory, this research will identify the effects of audiences and spectatorship within the collegiate eSports fandom experience.

Transgender Swimmer in College Athletics

There is current scientific and legal controversy about sports competition eligibility regulations for transgender athletes. To better understand and contextualize the effect of androgen-suppression treatment on swimming performance, we compared the gender-related differences in performance of a transgender swimmer who competed in both the male and female NCAA (collegiate) categories to the sex-related differences in performance of world and national class swimmers. These data demonstrate that the gender-related differences in middle distance freestyle performances of a transgender woman are smaller than the observed sex-related differences in performance of top athletes. Our analysis may be useful as a framework for regulators considering participation guidelines which promote fair competition for all athletes, whether cisgender or transgender.

Research on the Application of Data Mining Technology in the Analysis of College Students’ Sports Psychology

The advent of the information age has changed every existing career and revolutionized most if not all fields, notwithstanding many benefits that came along with it. There has been an exponential rise in information and, alongside it, an increase in data. Data centers have erupted with details as the number of rows in databases grows by the day. The use of technology has nevertheless become essential in many company models and organizations, warranting its usage in virtually every channel. College physical education and sports are not an exception as students studying such subjects are skyrocketing. As the information is getting more complex, improved methods are needed to research and analyze data. Fortunately, data mining has come to the rescue. Data mining is a collection of analytical methods and procedures used exclusively for the sake of data extraction. It may be used to analyze features and trends from vast quantities of data. The objective of this study is to explore the use of data mining technologies in the analysis of college students’ sports psychology. This study uses clustering methods for the examination of sports psychology. We utilize three clustering methods for this aim: expectation-maximization (EM) algorithm, k-means, COBWEB, density-based clustering of applications with noise (DBSCAN), and agglomerative hierarchal clustering algorithms. We perform our forecasts based on various metrics combined with the past outcomes of college sports using these methods. In contrast to conventional data research and analysis techniques, our approaches have relatively high prediction accuracy as far as college athletics is concerned.

An Examination of Relationship Selling Effectiveness in NCAA Division I Ticket Sales

College athletics departments are making more money than ever and spending it even faster (Fulks, 2017). As athletics departments look to increase their individual schools’ revenue year-to-year, ticket sales stands out as one of the only revenue streams without a long term contract. The current study examined the effect of relationship selling on several purchase behaviors in Division I college football. A study of over 90 FBS schools concluded the factor of customer disclosure predicted all football-related purchase behaviors, while interaction intensity was found as a non-predictor or even negative predictor. Cooperative intentions predicted some but not all behaviors. Cross-selling behaviors were uniquely predicted by agent disclosure, which did not predict any other outcomes, suggesting that while relationship selling may have a positive effect on the bottom line, not all factors are positive. Additionally, findings suggest positive selling relationships appear differently, cross-selling the customer to another sport.

Stakeholder status in the identification, prioritization and management of college athletic donors

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to examine how athletic fundraising managers perceive status and seek to use status to identify, prioritize and manage stakeholders within college athletics.Design/methodology/approachTo test this purpose, the researchers use the Gioia methodology to interview 19 college athletic department fundraising officers within National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) institutions. Following interviews, the data were analyzed by the researchers and structured within a first-order and second-order concept designation.FindingsInterviews show that status is an effective concept for explaining how athletic fundraisers identify and prioritize donors. Officers relied on economic (capacity) and social (passion and interest) factors to rank order donors. The results also show that athletic departments use status to manage stakeholders by rewarding their giving and escalating their commitment. Status is used in four strategies to manage the donor hierarchy: benefits, recognition, membership and access. Each strategy highlighted exclusivity and rank order.Originality/valueThere is a need to empirically test the application of status within the stakeholder theory context. These findings also contribute to the evolution of stakeholder management beyond the use of social identity theory or stakeholder salience. It helps our understanding of the evolving relationship between fundraiser and donor by recognizing the importance of capacity, passion and interests when identifying and prioritizing donors. Further, status-markers such as exclusive benefits, recognition, membership and access can be used to manage donors toward the organization's goals.

Time’s Up: A Call to Eradicate NCAA Monopsony Through Federal Legislation

Few traditions are as near and dear to the hearts of Americans as college athletics. The institution holds a special place in society because it reflects the ultimate convergence of those values that uniquely define the United States: loyalty, competitiveness, and pride. However, the notion of basic fairness seems to have been excluded along the way, as the commercialization of college athletics gave way to total dominance over the industry by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). The NCAA promulgates sports rules and organizes collegiate-level championships, but its most influential role involves promoting “amateurism,” or the notion that student-athletes are not entitled to compensation because college athletics should be about the love of the game, not monetization. While amateurism may be touted as an honorable principle aimed at preserving the character of college athletics and its differences from professional sports, the principle is more difficult to justify at a time when the NCAA earns $1.1 billion per year in revenue, none of which is shared among student-athletes who work full-time and typically live below the poverty line. Last year, state legislators paused to consider whether any justification exists for continuing to adhere to the NCAA’s archaic system of denying compensation to student-athletes in light of the fact that “amateurism” holds no significance in a legal sense. Given the lack of any such justification, the California legislature became the first to explicitly defy the NCAA in passing the Fair Pay to Play Act in September of 2019. Since then, a number of states have followed suit by drafting nearly identical laws that would likewise have the effect of permitting student-athletes to earn compensation for use of their name, image, and likeness (NIL). Unsurprisingly, NCAA leadership vehemently condemned the movement at first, threatening to strip member institutions affected by the new legislation from the organization altogether. The NCAA has since reneged on its hostile position, making a public commitment to reform its policies so as to authorize paid endorsement opportunities for student-athletes on some level. However, the organization will undoubtedly attempt to minimize the impact of the Fair Pay to Play Act and its progeny whether through litigation or by crafting new restrictive policies ultimately aimed at nullifying the effects of new laws. Admittedly, the state-by-state approach to adopting a new stance on athlete compensation comes with a number of practical challenges, thereby providing fertile ground for the NCAA to launch powerful objections. This Comment aims to present a workable solution in the form of a comprehensive federal law, which would secure the rights of student-athletes to earn compensation for use of their NILs before the NCAA is given the opportunity to preempt the significance of that right. While several congressmen have drafted federal laws related to the topic of NIL rights in this context, this Comment identifies particular issues that have been overlooked at the state level thus far, recommending specific provisions that would not only embrace student-athletes’ rights in principle as a matter of basic fairness, but make those rights a practicable and economically feasible reality.

COVID-19: The Heart of the Matter—Pathological Changes and a Proposed Mechanism

The SARS-CoV-2 virus has resulted in over 88 million cases worldwide of COVID-19 as of January 2021. The heart is one of the most commonly affected organs in COVID-19, but the nature and extent of the cardiac pathology has remained controversial. It has been shown that patients infected with SARS-CoV-2 can sustain type 1 myocardial infarction in the absence of significant atherosclerotic coronary artery disease. However, many patients present with small elevations of troponin enzymes of unclear etiology which correlate with overall COVID-19 disease outcome. Early autopsy reports indicated variable levels of typical lymphocytic myocarditis, while radiology reports have indicated that myocarditis can be a persistent problem after recovery from acute illness, raising concern about participation in college athletics. In this communication, we review the literature to date regarding the gross and microscopic findings of COVID-19 cardiac involvement, present the findings from over 40 cases from our academic medical center, and propose mechanisms by which patients develop small elevations in troponin.