Reprints over twenty selections of sports writing from print media across the United States, including beat coverage, and significant issues in sports reporting.
This distinctive Handbook covers the breadth of sports and media scholarship. Organized into historical, institutional, spectator, and critical studies perspectives, this volume brings together the work of many researchers, defining the full scope of the subject area, including the development of sports media; production, coverage, and economics of sports media; sports media audiences; sports promotion; and race and gender issues in sports and media.
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?
In Scorecasting, University of Chicago behavioral economist Tobias Moskowitz teams up with veteran Sports Illustrated writer L. Jon Wertheim to overturn some of the most cherished truisms of sports, and reveal the hidden forces that shape how basketball, baseball, football, and hockey games are played, won and lost. Drawing from Moskowitz's original research, as well as studies from fellow economists such as bestselling author Richard Thaler, the authors look at: the influence home-field advantage has on the outcomes of games in all sports and why it exists; the surprising truth about the universally accepted axiom that defense wins championships; the subtle biases that umpires exhibit in calling balls and strikes in key situations; the unintended consequences of referees' tendencies in every sport to "swallow the whistle," and more. Among the insights that Scorecasting reveals: • Why Tiger Woods is prone to the same mistake in high-pressure putting situations that you and I are • Why professional teams routinely overvalue draft picks • The myth of momentum or the "hot hand" in sports, and why so many fans, coaches, and broadcasters fervently subscribe to it • Why NFL coaches rarely go for a first down on fourth-down situations--even when their reluctance to do so reduces their chances of winning. In an engaging narrative that takes us from the putting greens of Augusta to the grid iron of a small parochial high school in Arkansas, Scorecasting will forever change how you view the game, whatever your favorite sport might be.
Sally Jenkins, bestselling co-author of It's Not About the Bike, revives a forgotten piece of history in The Real All Americans. In doing so, she has crafted a truly inspirational story about a Native American football team that is as much about football as Lance Armstrong's book was about a bike. If you’d guess that Yale or Harvard ruled the college gridiron in 1911 and 1912, you’d be wrong. The most popular team belonged to an institution called the Carlisle Indian Industrial School. Its story begins with Lt. Col. Richard Henry Pratt, a fierce abolitionist who believed that Native Americans deserved a place in American society. In 1879, Pratt made a treacherous journey to the Dakota Territory to recruit Carlisle’s first students. Years later, three students approached Pratt with the notion of forming a football team. Pratt liked the idea, and in less than twenty years the Carlisle football team was defeating their Ivy League opponents and in the process changing the way the game was played. Sally Jenkins gives this story of unlikely champions a breathtaking immediacy. We see the legendary Jim Thorpe kicking a winning field goal, watch an injured Dwight D. Eisenhower limping off the field, and follow the glorious rise of Coach Glenn “Pop” Warner as well as his unexpected fall from grace. The Real All Americans is about the end of a culture and the birth of a game that has thrilled Americans for generations. It is an inspiring reminder of the extraordinary things that can be achieved when we set aside our differences and embrace a common purpose.
Real Feature Writing emphasizes story shape and structure by illustrating several distinct types of feature and non-fiction stories, all drawn from the real world. Author Abraham Aamidor presents a collection of distinct non-deadline story types (profile, trend, focus, advocacy, and more), providing an introduction to each story type, a full-text example, a critical analysis of the example, and clear directions for producing similar stories. In this second edition, Aamidor and his guest contributors (all with real-world journalistic experience) demonstrate in clear, honest language how to write features. New for this edition are: *updated examples of feature writing, integrated throughout the text;*a chapter on ethical journalism, which takes a critical look at propaganda;*a chapter on international perspectives, including coverage of issues in the Middle East;*chapters on research, freelancing, content editing, copyediting, and literary journalism. This text is appropriate for upper-level journalism students, and will be a valuable resource for freelance writers and young working journalists needing guidance on writing features.
Everything has its weird side-- even sports! Add wacky stats, facts, and stories to your arsenal of spots trivia with this new addition to the very popular Weird but True series!
A comprehensive introduction to the workings of the business, Sportscasters/Sportscasting: Principles and Practices explains all of the information essential to anyone looking to begin a career in sports media, and includes numerous appendices containing acronyms and biographic information about over 200 sportscasters, and a complete Instructor's Manual.
School Counseling and the Student Athlete explores empirical, theoretical, and practice-based issues that demand consideration by school-based counseling and educational professionals working at the pre-collegiate level. In its pages clinicians and students will find insights into both why student athletes experience many of the issues they do as well as the steps that counselors can take to help these individuals and their families. Theories of motivation and theoretical approaches to counseling student athletes are covered in order to provide an orientation to working with this group, and the book also includes a thorough discussion of the most important elements of counseling the student athlete: the academic, career, personal, and social issues they face; consultations with coaches, teachers, and parents; commercialism and the student athlete’s identity; and gender, sexual identity, and culture issues. Each chapter ends with discussion questions and available resources for counselors. Grounded in research and pioneering in its analysis of sports psychology for students in grades K-12, School Counseling and the Student Athlete is a must-have for school counselors, clinicians, and other professionals who work with elementary and secondary students.