Readings Study Guide for Sociology of Sport Final Exam

Coakley Chapter 11--Sports and the Economy
1. The emergence and growth of commercial sport depends primarily upon what?
2. Why has golf become a major commercial sport in multiple countries?
3. What has led to football becoming known as "America's game?"
4. What are the four cultural conditions that have been important in the creation of spectator interest in sports?
5. According to sportswriter Jay Weiner, what ideology about commercial sports has been propagated by Michael Jordan?
6. What types of values are most clearly emphasized in commercialized sports?
7. What happens to the decision-making processes of sports organizations as they become more commercialized?
8. What has happened to franchise fees for professional sports teams over the past several decades?
9. How do studies conducted by independent economists compare with arguments used to justify governmental subsidies for professional sports teams?
10. To what does the author attribute the dramatic increases in annual salaries of athletes in men's professional sports?

Chapter 12: Sports and the Media
1. What are the three major purposes of the media?
2. What are important differences between countries where media are privately owned and countries where media are government owned?
3. What does it mean to describe the Internet as a "contested terrain?"
4. In the box, No Refs. No Rules. No Mercy, what is the image that producers are trying to achieve in sports coverage?
5. Which forms of media are most dependent upon sports?
6. Why do golf and tennis frequently get television coverage?
7. How are newspaper and magazine coverage of sports different from radio and TV coverage?
8. What characteristics of sports coverage are most appealing to male audiences?
9. In the box, Meet the Press, it is noted that the media coverage of women athletes tend to emphasize what?
10. What has led to increased tensions between professional athletes and sports writers?

Coakley Chapter 14--Sports in High School and College
1. People arguing against interscholastic sports (high school) tend to emphasize what?
2. In terms of grades and attitude, how do high school athletes compare to non-athletes?
3. How does sports participation in high school affect self-esteem?
4. According to research how does high school sports participation affect reported sexual activity of males and females?
5. What are the four things that adolescents tend to be most concerned about (outside of the classroom)?
6. To what does the term "clustering" refer?
7. Why is it increasingly difficult to restore academic integrity to big-time, entertainment oriented intercollegiate athletic programs?
8. Nationwide, approximately what percentage of high school budgets are used for varsity sports programs?
9. How do women's sports programs compare to men's sports programs in Divisions I-AA, II, III in terms of financial losses?
10. Data on Division I sports programs suggest that women's sports programs receive about what percentage of all money spent on recruiting expenses?

"Football is a Sucker's Game"
1. Michael Sokolove likens college football to what kind of automobile?
2. According to the author, what is the approximate annual budget for athletic departments at the top "dozen or so" athletic departments in the country?
3. Approximately how much money was lost on athletics by the University of Michigan during the 1998 to 2000 seasons?
4. Why does Sokolove refer to big-time sports as a "sucker's game?"
5. What is the "Flutie effect?"
6. According to research cited in the article, how does a successful athletics program affect donations to the general funds of universities?
7. According to the author's analysis, is USF football a revenue generating sport?  Does USF football produce a net profit for the university?
8. What was the head football coach's first salary at USF?  What did he think he was worth?
9. What is "eyeballing?"
10. What happens to players who skip classes or mandatory study sessions?  

Challenging the Myth: A Review of the Links Among College Athletic Success, Student Quality, and Donation
1. According to the author, what effect does athletic success at big-time universities have on alumni donations and the academic quality of student applicants?
2. In the studies cited by the author, how was quality of incoming freshmen student applicants assessed?
3. What organization commissioned the August 2003 study evaluating the quality of student applicants at U.S. universities?
4. What analogy is used by the author to describe increasing expenditures on athletics at U.S. universities?
5. What is the authors recommendation for policy changes at U.S. universities?

Coakley Chapter 13--Sports and Politics
1. Nations that wish to sponsor sports for the purposes of health and fitness should focus on sports that emphasis what?
2. Under what kinds of conditions are governments most likely to use sports to promote unity and identity?
3. What "spin" did Hitler give to the Olympic games held in Germany in 1936?
4. What are major purposes for governmental intervention into sports?
5. Historically-speaking, what has been the main purpose of participation in international sports (namely the Olympics) by most nations?
6. How does coverage of international sports events today compare with coverage during the Cold War?
7. According to the box Olympism and the Olympic Games, what are the Olympic games primarily designed to do?
8. What best describes the new political terms that have been used to frame sports in recent years?
9. What is the primary purpose of the Nike transnational advocacy network?

Coakley Chapter 15--Sports and Religion
1. What are the important similarities between sports and religion?
2. Why do traditional Protestant beliefs favor competitive sports over free and expressive play?
3. Research on the Olympics suggests that gold medal winners are most likely to have come from what type of religious background?
4. Why are Buddhists or Hindus less likely than Christians to become elite athletes?
5. National Olympics teams from nations dominated by which religion(s) tend to not have female athletes?
6. Shinto religious rituals and ceremonies are most evident in which sport?
7. Taoist, Confucian, and Buddhist practices in China emphasize physical movement for the purpose of accomplishing what?
8. Religious-sports organizations that have emerged in recent years have tended to reflect what kind of religious belief system?
9. According to research conducted by Chris Stevenson, how do elite athletes deal with the potential crisis of meaning caused by conflict between their religious beliefs and what they do on the field?
10. According to the "model of conflict, doubt, and resolution" diagrammed in the chapter, what are the three main resolution strategies employed by Christian athletes who experience doubts about the worth of sport participation as an act of worship?