Amateurism, Professionalism and the Value of College Sports

The value of college sport can be measured in many ways. Most people measure it in dollars, others point to less-tangible benefits such as alumni engagement and campus morale, only a few focus on its educational value. Yet this, as Myles Brand repeatedly recognized, is the value that really counts. Brand’s was something of a voice in the wilderness on this issue—a voice sorely missed in this age of debate about limits on compensation for student-athletes. As a philosophy professor, Brand’s insistence on the educational value of sport follows a tradition begun in ancient Greece by Pythagoras, Socrates, and especially Plato. In this essay, I honor Brand and that ancient tradition by exploring the value of college sport from a philosophical perspective. I interrogate the oppositions of amateurism vs. professionalism, academics vs. athletics, and employment vs. exploitation to arrive at the paradoxical conclusion that ideals of excellence and professionalism are at the heart of “amateurism” in the context of college sport. Education, meanwhile, is the value in college sport that needs to guide all the others—including those that involve dollar signs.

Outsiders Within: College Sport as an Avenue to Integrate International Students

The increasingly volatile social, cultural, and political environment in the United States has made it difficult for U.S. institutions of higher learning to retain and integrate international students, especially those from East Asian countries. Drawing upon social identity theory and the acculturation process, this study explored how college sport contributes to international students’ university identification using narrative interviews with East Asian international students who attended college football events at a U.S. university. Findings revealed that international students identified with their co-national peers for socialization purposes at football events and identified with the football spectator subgroup through the influence of domestic students, which contributed to university identity. Theoretically, our research highlighted the dynamics between sport identification, university identity, and acculturation by showing how college sport spectatorship can foster university identification but also create cultural distance within the university community. Findings also offer practical guidelines on how universities can use college sport to initiate organic social interactions between students from different cultures and empower international students to identify as essential members of universities.

Comparação entre as Recomendações do American College Sport Medicine para a Realização de Exercício Aeróbico e a Prática Autosselecionada por Mulheres

Introdução: É corriqueira a prática de atividade física (AF) de forma autosselecionada por essas pessoas.Objetivo: Estabelecer os padrões de AF autosselecionado por mulheres durante a caminhada, corrida e trote e verificar se atendem às diretrizes do American College Sports Science (ACSM) para sua prática.Materiais e Métodos: Participaram do estudo 80 mulheres, sendo divididas em quatro grupos etários (G1 = 20-29 anos; G2 = 30-39 anos; G3 = 40-49 anos; G4 = 50-59 anos). Na primeira etapa foram realizados os procedimentos antropométricos. A segunda etapa consistiu em avaliar uma sessão de exercício sob intensidade autosselecionada através de um monitor cardíaco e IPE.Resultados: Ao analisar o escore do índice de percepção de esforço (IPE), foi encontrado que 43,8% da amostra esteve dentro da intensidade “vigorosa” e 26,3% “moderada”, ambas estando dentro das recomendações do ACSM. Em relação ao percentual da FC (%FC) média, todos os grupos estiveram de acordo com as diretrizes. Quanto ao tempo total da sessão e frequência semanal, todos os grupos atingiram as recomendações mínimas.Conclusão: A maioria das avaliadas autosselecionou intensidades dentro do recomendado pelo ACSM, quando analisado a %FC média, IPE, tempo de treino e frequência semanal.

The dynamics of cause-related marketing platform and interactivity on college sport fans' donations

PurposeThis study aims to examine how sport fans' intention to donate to college athletics differs by the type of communication and by the interactivity of communication when a college athletic department uses a social cause for marketing.Design/methodology/approachTo discover differences in donation intention, the study adopts a two (social media/newspaper) by two (interactive/non-interactive) factorial experiment in which the study's created scenario is randomly presented to subjects. Participating in the online survey are 184 collegiate sport fans at a university in the American Midwest. Collected data are analyzed on the analysis of variance.FindingsResults show that fans demonstrating the highest donation intention are those in the group of fan-interactive marketing on social media. Those showing the lowest are in the group of non-interactive marketing on newspaper. Between marketing interactivity and marketing platform, no interaction effect is found.Originality/valueThe study tests the effectiveness of marketing communication in the context of collegiate sports and identifies the impact of social media on college sport fans' donation intention. For collegiate athletic administrators designing a cause-related marketing campaign, this study provides practical information on how to use social media in delivering fan-oriented activities.