The Changing Attitudes Toward Athletics

At foundation level women face many barriers when trying to participate in sport. In football women may come up against cultural barriers which could stop them from playing this could be because of the stereotypical perception that they should be at home and that it is an unfeminine thing to do this could stop then from participating, also they may have been brought up in a very feminine world so they are more likely to play something like netball rather than football, another cultural barrier could be the persons religion as some Christians will not play on a Sunday which is when most foundation level teams play.

However, athletics developed dramatically as a postindustrial rational recreation. The industrial revolution ended the traditional festivals and fairs as people moved to bigger cities in search of jobs. Instead, professional athletes became more popular especially in the cities and the sport modernized significantly. There were a number of purpose build specialist tracks by the end of the 1850s, which lead to an increase in the number of competitions that took place. These competitions would often have extremely large amounts of spectators of up to 20,000, helped by the improvements in transport such as the railways. Wagering of pre-industrial Britain was replaced with a more sophisticated type of gambling whereby people would bet on the winners of each race.

In our society sports are a very important social construction. As sports continue to grow, they are becoming more integrated into the major spheres of social life. Sports have become an entity, due to the fact that they not only create entertainment and jobs; sports have become a huge platform for various causes. Sports are extremely important to our society and have very powerful influences. Though experiences vary from person to person, most people have some sort of experience with sports. I personally have experienced sports more from the spectator and participant stance, and have been impacted from each perspective a great deal. Compared to sophomore safety, Jamal Adams my sports experience has been very different from impact and perspective.

     When it came to horses and how their racetracks should look “Jack” Keene knew what it was all supposed to be about. Keene spent more than 20 years of his life, and some $400,000 of his money, in trying to build a track and combination clubhouse and stable. He never intended for his fine establishment to be used for racing but rather to be a training center for his friends and their horses. Keene and his friends conducted private races of their own and merely just enjoyed the pure sport of racing. Little did he know, this great place would soon become one of world’s greatest racetracks. With this outlook, The Keeneland Association saw Keene’s property as a start to their dream.

There are a lot of aspects that should be taken into account when determining what makes an athlete successful. One could argue that natural ability is one of the determining factors which leads to success. For example, if an athlete has dreams of playing in the NBA then height makes a difference. There aren’t many successful players in the league under six feet tall. One could argue that level of competition plays a role in the development of an athlete. This could include the skill level of the opponent or outside factors such as playing conditions or game circumstances. These types of arguments play a role in athlete success, but will not be used in this paper because they are factors that are out of the athlete’s control. This paper

Participation in youth sports in the United States is on the rise. “Organized youth sports are highly popular for youth and their families, with approximately 45 million children and adolescent participants in the US” (Merkel, 2013). There are many benefits for children that can be attributed to sports such as: physical activity, learning motor skills, sense of belonging, stress relief, and many more. With childhood obesity on the rise recreational sports has never been needed more than it is today. “Over the past three decades, the incidence of obesity in children has tripled, with one of every three children being affected” (Merkel, 2013). Obesity has many long-term health problems related to it such as: diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure cancer, asthma. We can attribute this health problem to changes in our society over like increased technology, increased crime rates, fast food and isolated suburban neighborhoods. Sports and other physical activities are needed to keep children from causing further damaged to their future.

Unfortunately, for the athlete, once “they” start investing money into the sport, “they” also begin to place constraints and regulations that all athletes must follow. Some may seem as ridiculous as wearing regulation clothes that some would feel as though they looked “like Minnie damn Mouse in a tu-tu” (1667) rather than a serious competitor. More often than not, the changes seem extreme and one may wonder what could be waiting around the next corner; “it won’t be long before they’re strappin’ ice-skates on the ponies” (1667). Big Eight finds herself having a hard time adjusting to the changes employed. Although she is not adapting well to the arrival of the sponsors, she is most uncomfortable with the dress code changes. She does not feel as though dressing the women up in fancy outfits will increase the capacity of the audiences when the rodeo is only supposed to be about the rides. She believes that it does not matter what you wear, but instead, how you ride. She is noticing that the “big crowds” (1667) are mostly city people in “designer jeans and day-glo Stetsons,” (1667) there “ain’t hardly no ranch people, no farm people” (1667) any more.

The major theme of this book consisted of playing conditions, political and economic climates and commercialization of a product that gained popularity through a “firsts” in the sport. Frank

Women had to face many difficulties that held them back in various categories in the 1900’s, whether it was education, getting a job, or owning property. When the 1920’s arrived there were several new opportunities that helped women prosper, even though it wasn’t simple. In 1920 women were allowed to vote which was a crucial and ground- breaking event that finally became reality. Some may think about track as just a sport and contemplate heavily on how it could possibly have positive contributions to the female position, but it does. 1Up until the 1920’s most sports track exclusively consisted of males, males were considered the

For my future study I would like to research how these articles effects the general public’s view of African American athletes. I would do this by surveying groups of classrooms, students around campus, and showing them athletes. I would show them both African American athletes and White Athletes. I would ask them how they feel about these athletes, why they feel this way about them, and what have they heard about them in the media. After collecting this data, and gathering my conclusion from it, I would like to go back and do another survey. I would go to classrooms of students and show them positive media and tell them the good things that African American athletes have done. I would give them the same survey asking how the feel about these athletes, why they feel this way, and what they have heard about them in the media. To further explore this belief future research would have to be conducted that tested and compared subjects’ racial attitudes toward both a positive and a negative television portrayal of African Americans. In attempts to further examine racial attitudes and media portrayals, this same study could be done with the addition of a pre-test that evaluates media portrayals as being either negative or positive. In addition, future research could expose subjects to repeated treatments or media of African American athletes. I feel this research would be different because it would look at the effects from positive portrayals of African American athletes, and

Media is use as a communication where people all over the world watch TV, read newspapers, listen to the radio and use the Internet everyday, to be informed of what is happening in the world. In my topic, I'll be discussing how media captures and affects youth sports. For instances, every young adult who plays a sport during their school age years tend to have a gradiouse admiration for those playing in the major leagues; admiring what they own and wishing/hoping that one day they can reach that level of success. Each youth player typically plays with the desire to get scouted by professional leagues because they want to own all the extravagance portrayed by media.

Most sports are the same today, but might be under slight changes such as name or distance of the race. They include:

not very pleasant. The sport had to be refined by the authorities in order to make it more credible. The sport was much later refined after the World War I which was the foundation of Formula One Racing. In the year 1904 a joint body was formed as the Association Internationale des Automotive Clubs Reconnus (AIACR). After that the Commission Sportive Internationale was built in 1922 which took care of the authoritative aspects.

The period of 1865 to 1950 was critical to the formation of “Modern” sport that is recognized today. In an article by Allen Guttmann titled From Ritual to Record: the nature of modern sport, Guttmann outlines seven characteristics that played a central role in the development of sports. These concepts were created as a sociological history of sports and took into place both American and European competitions. Guttmann’s notions of secularism, rationalization, bureaucracy and quantification, among others, all advanced the culture of sports; yet the most important of the stated characteristics is equality.

The article that we have chosen for our scholarly article was “Athletics as a Source for Social Status among Youth”. The main reason for this article is to further the understanding of sport as a source for youth popularity among a national US sample of 3rd through 12th graders. They first review previous work on the issue to discuss the roles gender, grade level, race/ethnicity, and socioeconomic status might play in the association between sport and social status and present there hypotheses regarding the relationship of each of these variables. Then they examine the relationship between athletic status and popularity using quantitative descriptive analysis and logistic regression to determine if this relationship varies according to gender, race/ethnicity, grade level, and socioeconomic status. The central purpose of this study is to examine first, whether youth perceive sport as a status enhancer for themselves and their peers. Second, to determine if variation in this perception can be accounted for by student’s athletic status, gender, race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and grade level.