Super Bowl - ✔✔ - 20 million Americans attend parties
- parties are planned over 1 month in advance
- average of 17 people attend each
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- 40% of people are not fans at all
- spend 10 million hours preparing food for the big game
sport is: - ✔✔ institutionalized competitive activity involving two or more opponents and stressing physical exertion by serious competitors who represent or are part of formally organized associations
sport is: - ✔✔ competitive activity involving at least two competitors, requiring physical skill, following formal rules, and occurring within a formal organizational framework
sport represents: - ✔✔ well-established, officially governed competitive physical activities in which participants are motivated by internal and external rewards
sport: - ✔✔ - physical in nature
- involves at least 2 people
- involves competition
- bound by formal rules of competition
levels of sport: - ✔✔ 1. informal- growing up as children; play catch
2. organized- presence of rudimentary organization; softball league, little league
3. corporate- elements of informal and organized sports, economics & politics; olympics, NCAA, pro sport
physical activity: - ✔✔ any body movement produced by skeletal muscles and resulting in a substantial increase over the resting energy expenditure
exercise - ✔✔ form of leisure physical activity(as opposed to occupational or household physical activity) that is undertaken in order to achieve a particular objective(improved appearance, improved cardiovascular fitness, reduced stress, fun)
fantasy sport users - ✔✔ - over 20 million users
USA Today - ✔✔ - largest circulation in America
- reserves a quarter of the news coverage to sport and physical activity
gross domestic sport product - ✔✔ - $168.5 to 207.5 billion
economic activity - ✔✔ most of this comes from physical activity and exercise endeavors, also known as "participant sport"
sociology - ✔✔ - scientific discipline that describes and explains human social organization
- study of social worlds that people create, organize, maintain, and change through their relationships with one another
- analysis of the structure of social relationships as constituted by social interaction
Sociology is: - ✔✔ 1. academic discipline aimed at scientifically studying phenomena
2. sociologists examine people and the institutions these people create
3. researchers adopting a sociological lens primarily study social issues and the manner in which people engage and interact with one another
sociologists: - ✔✔ 1. view people as social beings by their very nature
2. maintain that people are largely socially determined, as they are products of their social environment
3. suggest that people create, shape & challenge the social contexts in which they are situated
sociology of sport and physical activity - ✔✔ - subsection of sociology that studies sport and physical activity as social phenomena
- social constructions or parts of the social world that are created by people as they interact with one another under particular social, political, and economic conditions
sport can be seen as: - ✔✔ - microcosm of society
- sport is a window into or a mirror which reflects the underlying values, beliefs and assumptions of a cultural group
values - ✔✔ - criteria that people use to select and justify action and to evaluate people and events
- beliefs that transcend specific situations
- pertain to desirable ed states or behaviors
- guide selection or evaluation of behavior or events
- vary in terms of relative importance
- they are what we deem to be worthwhile, interesting, excellent, desirable & important
attack upon sport - ✔✔ seen as an attack upon society itself
predominant American values - ✔✔ - success
- competition
- valued means to achieve
- progress
- materialism
- external conformity
success in society - ✔✔ - framed success and excellence as aspects that must be displayed and measured in the constant pursuit of human excellence
- we value the self-made person or the individual who has achieved money and status through his or her efforts in a highly competitive system
- coaches and athletes who fail to win the "big one" are seen as failures
negative consequences - ✔✔ win-at-all-costs mentality that pervades sport at al levels
metrics we use to gauge success - ✔✔ income
personal wealth
amount of possessions we attain
competition - ✔✔ - selects out those not fit to succeed or achieve
- infuses almost all aspects of American society, from the corporate world to schools to the boy and Girl scouts to our sporting pursuits, resulting in a "survival of the fittest" mentality
3 valued means to achieve - ✔✔ 1. puritan ideal of hard work
2. pathway to success is through continual striving for excellence
3. deferred gratification
means to achieve in sport - ✔✔ athletes presumably obtain individual achievements in sport through hard work, perseverance & sacrifice
puritan ideal of hard work example: - ✔✔ - value individuals who are industrious and make something of themselves out of nothing
- such as an immigrant who came to this country with nothing and then through hard work & sacrifice, became wealthy [Show Less]