Intercollegiate athletics continue to bedevil American higher education. This book explores the complexities of intercollegiate athletics while explaining the organizational structures, key players, terms, and important issues relevant to the growing fields of recreational studies, sports management, and athletic administration.
Michael Lewis’s instant classic may be “the most influential book on sports ever written” (People), but “you need know absolutely nothing about baseball to appreciate the wit, snap, economy and incisiveness of [Lewis’s] thoughts about it” (Janet Maslin, New York Times). One of GQ's 50 Best Books of Literary Journalism of the 21st Century Just before the 2002 season opens, the Oakland Athletics must relinquish its three most prominent (and expensive) players and is written off by just about everyone—but then comes roaring back to challenge the American League record for consecutive wins. How did one of the poorest teams in baseball win so many games? In a quest to discover the answer, Michael Lewis delivers not only “the single most influential baseball book ever” (Rob Neyer, Slate) but also what “may be the best book ever written on business” (Weekly Standard). Lewis first looks to all the logical places—the front offices of major league teams, the coaches, the minds of brilliant players—but discovers the real jackpot is a cache of numbers?numbers!?collected over the years by a strange brotherhood of amateur baseball enthusiasts: software engineers, statisticians, Wall Street analysts, lawyers, and physics professors. What these numbers prove is that the traditional yardsticks of success for players and teams are fatally flawed. Even the box score misleads us by ignoring the crucial importance of the humble base-on-balls. This information had been around for years, and nobody inside Major League Baseball paid it any mind. And then came Billy Beane, general manager of the Oakland Athletics. He paid attention to those numbers?with the second-lowest payroll in baseball at his disposal he had to?to conduct an astonishing experiment in finding and fielding a team that nobody else wanted. In a narrative full of fabulous characters and brilliant excursions into the unexpected, Michael Lewis shows us how and why the new baseball knowledge works. He also sets up a sly and hilarious morality tale: Big Money, like Goliath, is always supposed to win . . . how can we not cheer for David?
This practical, comprehensive book combines solid theoretical concepts with relevant examples, extensive factual information, and important insider perspectives to help prepare students who are interested in pursuing a career in collegiate athletics management. The authors' in-depth discussions reveal the inner workings of athletic departments and the conferences and governing organizations that impact them. Using examples from institutions of varying sizes and representing numerous conferences, associations, and divisions, Managing Intercollegiate Athletics, second edition, provides an extensive view of management processes such as generating revenue to cover expenses; recruiting and its mechanics and regulations; the role of the conferences and national governing bodies; and academic standards, reform, and fraud. New to the second edition is an increased emphasis on the impact of division, institution, and department missions and goals on decision making. The book also includes new discussions of the application of management functions--including goal setting, decision making, and strategic management--on intercollegiate athletics at various levels. Adding to the practical nature of the book, and providing an important critical-thinking component to each chapter, are "Practitioner Perspectives." These contributions demonstrate how and why administrators make and implement their decisions, and they present creative problem-solving ideas for readers that they can use in their own careers. New Practitioner Perspectives in this edition provide, for example, an insider's view from an NCAA vice president, a conference commissioner, and a Division I athletic director. Chapters also feature one or more Case Studies offering an in-depth look at how institutions grapple with management challenges. In the second edition, new case studies look at the NCAA's leadership role in the Penn State University abuse case, the role of the TRAC model to ensure data-based decision making in terminating the University of Alabama at Birmingham football program, and others. These case studies and accompanying questions can serve as starting points for class discussion.
Administration of Intercollegiate Athletics brings together some of the most knowledgeable professionals in the field of athletics administration to create an essential resource for all who aspire to work in this exciting field. This wide-ranging compilation of vital material on the subject of athletics administration is the most comprehensive textbook available to instructors of upper-level courses in sport management and a valuable resource for those in Division I, Division II, Division III, junior college, and National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics levels. This textbook takes a unique approach in the domain of sport education. Contributors to the text, chosen for their widely acknowledged expertise in collegiate athletics administration, provide students with access to ideas from top researchers in the field to incorporate into their evolving professional philosophy. The text offers practical considerations and applications for financial operations, budgeting, marketing, corporate sponsorship, safety and risk assessment, ticketing, licensing, and alumni relations. These topics, in addition to those on media relations, facility and event management, and athlete services are unparalleled to any other text in the industry. There is detailed information on expectations in academics and status of standards for athletic eligibility and discussions of the importance of publicity and promotion, public relations, and media production in today’s college athletics. Learning tools in Administration of Intercollegiate Athletics enrich students’ understanding: • Leadership Lessons provide key points, inspiring a leadership mind-set that is critical to success in today’s world of college athletics administration. • Opening scenarios and chapter objectives create a framework for learning, highlighting critical points and translating material to a real-world setting. • Sidebars and case studies call out important concepts from readings. • Industry Profile Q&As offer students a chance to see how working administrators reached their present roles. • Learning activities for each chapter present real-life situations and direct students in applying what they have learned. • Instructor ancillary materials include a test package for evaluating students’ comprehension and an image bank of content for lecture slides. With content developed in partnership with working practitioners, the information presented in Administration of Intercollegiate Athletics is foundational knowledge essential to professional administrators. After reading this text, students will understand each unit in an athletics department and be able to hit the ground running in any one of these units while understanding the broader organizational context.
The sports industry is more complex than ever before, and succeeding within it now requires an equally dynamic approach. Teams and leagues across many sports face unprecedented competition in worldwide markets as the cost of doing business increases and traditional revenue streams face pressure. In light of these changes, the idea that winning championships is the key to organizational success is misguided. The Sports Strategist: Developing Leaders for a High-Performance Industry reveals which areas in the industry, unlike winning, can be controlled and maximized for consistent success. Aspiring leaders in the sports business will learn how to design identities, manage narratives, and maximize new technologies in order to implement business analytics and build public support. These techniques are vital to creating a successful sports organization that is ready to reap the benefits of winning when it does happen, without having to rely on it when it doesn't. In such a high-performance field, the demand for well-equipped leaders is great, and The Sports Strategist provides the necessary tools and techniques for their success.
Before 1968, women’s athletics in higher education meant playdays and sports days. That spring, when the Division of Girls and Women in Sports announced that national collegiate sports championships for women would begin in 1969, Marlene Mawson, a new hire on the physical education faculty at the University of Kansas, was charged with establishing a women’s athletics program. “I was on my own,” Mawson recalls, “because there was no precedent for creating a women’s athletics program with a meager budget.” That meant planning sports competition schedules, staffing coaches, organizing policies and procedures for coaches and athletes, coordinating practice schedules, budgeting, and directing the new KU intercollegiate sports program for women without intervention or guidance. In their first decade, KU women’s teams competed in national championships in volleyball, basketball, softball, and gymnastics. In this book, Mawson, who was inducted into the KU Athletics Hall of Fame in 2009, describes her remarkable career, from her early years in Missouri to her retirement. With behind-the-scenes views and insights that reflect a lifetime’s experience, her memoir weaves together the history of the development of women’s athletics at the University of Kansas and the story of the birth of women’s intercollegiate athletics across the United States—from the Olympic Development Committee to Title IX to the NCAA. It is an engaging account of groundbreaking personal achievement by a woman in the world of college sports, and a stirring record of an extraordinary but little-documented decade in the evolution of women’s athletics.
The 17th IAAF World Athletics Championships were held in September and October 2019 in Doha, Qatar, with over 1700 athletes from 206 countries and territories taking part in 49 events. This book contains every result in all the heats and finals, details of previous World Championship records and gold medal marks, plus a comprehensive athlete index with information on every participant and their appearances history in the Championships.
Contemporary Sport Management, Fifth Edition With Web Study Guide, provides students with an overview of sport management by presenting extensive discussions of the foundational aspects of the profession and current topics from the field. The fifth edition continues to engage students with a full-color format and an integrated web study guide. The text also discusses the role of social media in revolutionizing the industry and the significance of sport as an international institution. Students will learn the relevance of legal, sociocultural, historical, political, and psychological concepts to the management of sport; the professional skills and attitudes of successful sport managers; and ways in which the globalization of sport continues to affect sport management professions. One of the top-selling textbooks in the field, the fifth edition retains many of its popular learning tools for students and also offers several key additions: • Social media sidebars in every chapter prepare future sport managers to confront some of the unique challenges and opportunities of this growing phenomenon. • Professional profiles containing a biography, Q&A, and associated web study guide activity allow students to gain realistic views into the roles of sport managers. • Enhanced ancillaries include a new image bank and chapter quizzes compatible with learning management systems to further support classroom instruction and testing. • A student web study guide now contains more than 171 fully integrated activities to provide opportunities for real-world application. • A retrospective from cofounding editor Janet Parks illustrating how the outstanding roster of contributors has been a hallmark of this title from the beginning. The text also contains a variety of updated learning tools, including international sidebars with associated activities, a timeline, ethics and critical thinking sections, a running glossary, chapter objectives, end-of-chapter reviews, and references to help students stay engaged with the material and understand key concepts and terms. In addition, the web study guide (WSG) contains multiple interactive learning experiences that assist students in retaining the information. Each chapter of the text includes several cross-references to the WSG, allowing students to take advantage of the following features: • Professional profile activities encourage students to test their expectations of the challenges that sport industry professionals face on a daily basis. • Job announcement activities demonstrate the skills that prospective employers seek in particular sport settings. • Web searches point students to the vast amount of information available online. • Portfolio activities help students reflect on questions related to the critical thinking and ethics sections of each chapter. Upon completion of the activities, students will have constructed a portfolio of their reflections on issues they might face as future sport management professionals. • Learning in Action activities help students understand and apply the concepts covered in each chapter. With 20 chapters written by 44 expert contributors, Contemporary Sport Management, Fifth Edition, begins with an overview of the field and historical aspects of the industry. Next, the attributes of effective and professional sport managers and the relevance of managerial and leadership concepts applied to sport management are discussed. In part II, students learn about the major settings in which sport management professionals work today, including professional and amateur sport management sites, sport management agencies, and sport tourism venues. Part III offers information on key functional areas of sport management, such as marketing, communication, finance and economics, and facility and event management. In part IV, readers examine current challenges in the profession, such as issues related to consumer behavior, law, sociology, globalization, and the importance of continuing sport management research. The updated and enhanced fifth edition of Contemporary Sport Management offers a varied and dynamic learning package to assist readers in understanding the many opportunities and challenges in the sport management field. From historical foundations and future directions to current issues and professional skill sets, this popular textbook continues to inform and inspire up-and-coming professionals to have a positive influence on the management of sport.
Any sports marketing student or prospective sports marketer has to understand in detail genuine industry trends and be able to recognise solutions to real-world scenarios. Sports Marketing: A Practical Approach is the first textbook to offer a comprehensive, engaging and practice-focused bridge between academic theory and real-life, industry-based research and practice. Defining the primary role of the sports marketer as revenue generation, the book is structured around the three main channels through which this can be achieved — ticket sales, media and sponsorship — and explores key topics such as: Sports markets and business markets (b2b) Fan development Brand management Media audiences, rights and revenue Live sports events Sponsorship Merchandise and retail Integrating real industry-generated research into every chapter, the book also includes profiles of leading industry executives and guidance for developing and preparing for a career in sports marketing. It goes further than any other sports marketing textbook in surveying the international sports market, including international cases and detailed profiles of international consumer and business markets throughout. A companion website offers multiple choice questions for students, editable short answer and essay questions, and lecture slides for instructors. No other textbook offers such a relevant, practice-focused overview of contemporary sports marketing. It is the ideal companion to any sports marketing course.