The Perfect Swing

This feature story was written as part of the requirements for Dr. Staurowsky's SMT 608 Sports Information and Public Relations graduate class by Kim Chiarelli

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Patrick Molloy is standing 325 yards away from the first hole at a Pennsylvania golf course. He stands patient and eager at his tee, ball in place. He feels the warm sun on his back and smells the faintest scent of cut grass, a smell that would go unnoticed to the untrained nose. He takes a step that reveals soft earth beneath his feet, it rained here yesterday he says to himself. All he is waiting for is a description, a spoken description that he relies on in order to perform. Patrick Molloy is blind.

Under Further Review No. 10 - Max Blau

This week's Under Further Review is adapted from an informational interview that I did with Max Blau for Dr. Giddings' Professional Portfolio class back in February, so note the different format. For anybody who has an interest in ever writing a freelance article, Blau's insight is extremely valuable. Enjoy!

It was a dream, but no one knew how to accomplish it

This human interest feature article was written as part of the requirements for Dr. Staurowsky’s SMT 608 Sports Information and Public Relations class by Simone Suetsugu.  

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She is known as “Gordinha, Vi, Vivi, Vivian Saca Moco, honey, and Bi," – nicknames that family members, teammates, and friends call her as signs of friendship, trust and intimacy. These nicknames may sound bizarre to outsiders, but Vivian knows that these  are gifts given by her loved ones showing affection.

Bradman’s Legacy Continues To Live On

This historical feature was written for Dr. Ellen Staurowsky's SMT 608 Sports Information & Media Relations class by Maty Brennan.

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I never had the honor and privilege of watching the greatest athlete the world has ever seen play the beautiful game of cricket live in person. When growing up all I heard was tales of this man, his legacy and legend was something untold, myth almost. I was fortunate enough to see photos and videos of his childhood and playing days. The man who has inspired generations, and many more generations to come with batting skills is Sir Donald George Bradman. He set many batting records, some of which still in the process became Australia’s sporting idol.

Under Further Review: An Agenda Setting Review of the Michael Sam Coverage

On Sunday Feb. 9, the sports world was hit with one of the biggest news stories of the year: University of Missouri All-American defensive end Michael Sam said he is gay. Only two players in the five major sports had publicly come out prior to Sam – the NBA’s Jason Collins and the MLS’s Robbie Rogers. Sam, who recorded double-digit sacks as a senior and was honored as the SEC Defensive Player of the Year, is projected to be selected as high as the third round in this year’s NFL Draft, which would make him the first openly gay player to play in the NFL. The story was initially broken by ESPN and the NewYork Times, while Sports Illustrated followed closely behind, but further analysis reveals that each covered the news in unique ways.

Under Further Review: Braves Bolt for Cobb County's Public Money

Public funding for private facilities seems to be the gift that keeps on giving. Sports welfare, as some call it, puts tax payer money into the pockets of billionaire sports franchise owners. Yes, these are the same billionaire owners that own teams in leagues that dodge taxes because their hide under the ugly guise of not-for-profit status. This is how Roger Goodell made $29.5 million from the NFL and Bud Selig made $22 million from the MLB. The money has to go somewhere. So why not into someone’s pockets that are already lined with Benjamins. The sports welfare aspect is perhaps the most difficult part to digest, though. 

The Closer: Sport Ideology of Great Britain

This essay was written during my British Culture class while studying abroad in London, England this summer. Its topic is Sport Ideology of Great Britain.



The first thing that everyone thinks about when prompted with the word “sport” and the “United Kingdom” is football. There is a lot more to the sport culture of the UK than what is going on in the Premier League; the make-up of sport in the United Kingdom roots back much further than the creation of football in 1863. The history of sport culture has made sport in the United Kingdom a fascinating subject to study as it has shaped so much of what is seen today on the field and in everyday life. Not unlike any other nation, the United Kingdom clings onto their stars in particular sports and rides with them until they fall off, but it is interesting to follow where people’s allegiances are while taking club affiliation into the equation. By looking at two of the largest sports in the UK, football and tennis, this essay will compare how these sports, teams, and stars are portrayed and followed by the media and the general public. Using small comparisons to sport figures and organizations in the United States, some differences and similarities will become clear. Those comparative points can be attributed to cultural differences between the two nations, which will also be mentioned throughout the essay. Football has always been the international figure of British sport, as it is the most popular sport in the world.

Global Scope: The Rhetoric of Sustainability

It is the first time in history that the same country (Brazil) will host the two largest sporting events in the world back to back. After Brazil won the bid to host the 2014 FIFA World Cup, it was announced that all the host city’s stadiums will go through a process of renovations, and it was announced that sustainability would be a focus of the organizing committee. Sustainability is the long-term maintenance of responsibility, which has environmental, economic, and social dimensions, and encompasses the concept of the responsible management of resource use.

The hot topic with hosting mega sporting events around the world, such as the Olympic Games and the FIFA World Cup, is the issue of legacy, which encompasses sustainability. In these cases legacy can be defined as what did the tournament/mega event leave to the local area. Especially with countries such as South Africa and Brazil hosting the World Cup, legacy rose up to the top of the list in terms of importance of hosting such events. The success of the event used to be determined by how smoothly it went by and how many historic athletic achievements actually took place. However, now it became more of a long term success or failure measurement. The reason this has changed has a lot to do with the fact that many developing cities and countries have won the bid to host these global events. Beijing hosted the 2008 Olympics, while South Africa hosted the 2010 World Cup and Brazil is soon to be hosting both the Olympics and the FIFA World Cup. For the actual population of these cities such as Cape Town, Beijing, or Rio de Janeiro what really matters is the positive changes that these events will bring to their hometowns. A good example of the sustainable legacy issue envolving these cities is the fact that South Africa now has many state of the art stadiums throughout the country, but no one to make good use of them. These “white elephants” as they are called by the specialists turn out to be a waste of money and energy, making the legacy of such enjoyable events a negative one. It is interesting to see many countries and cities around the world competing to be the host of events like the Olympics and the FIFA World Cup while studies have shown that to this date the only Olympic Games that in fact made a profit were the Los Angeles Summer games of 1984. Whenever a city wins a bid it is celebrated and considered a blessing, but many times it actually has been quite the opposite. Athens, Greece was the host city for the 2004 Summer Olympics and many economists throughout the world claim that Greece went bankrupt in large part because of the Olympic Games. Athens spent a lot of money to make it a fantastic and memorable event, but shortly after hosting the summer games, Greece began to experience some intense economic issues that led to the recession Europe is facing right now.

Brazil is facing a crucial time in its existence, facing the challenge of hosting mega events in back to back occasions, something that has never happened in history. Well aware of the difficulties and challenges that hosting such events bring, Brazil has been working on the legacy and sustainable side of the preparation. In regards to the FIFA World Cup, two of the main concerns involving “white elephant” stadiums are the cities of Manaus and Cuiabá. The city of Cuiabá is about to have a brand new stadium, the “Arena Pantanal,” which will have full capacity of 43 thousand people. After the FIFA World Cup ended (Cuiabá is only hosting 2 matches in the entire tournament) there is a strong concern as to when there will be events that would bring out such an amount of people. The solution found by the organizing committee for the city and its governing body was to make 18 thousand seats behind both goals that can be removed after the World Cup, reducing its capacity to 25 thousand people. It is the first time in FIFA World Cup history that such an idea is implemented, and Eder Moraes, the executive secretary of the Cuiabá organizing committee said “It’s a sustainable and intelligent step for our city, I hope the larger markets see us as an example” (Casado, 2011). The city of Manaus is the “capital of the Amazon,” since it is located in the heart of the Amazonas state and is comprised in large part of the Amazon forest. The new stadium that is being built there, the “Arena da Amazonia” is a very interesting case study. Since the city of Manaus lacks a lot of urban and business areas, the project at hand for this stadium is to make it a 44 thousand seater but with movable luxury suites that can be turned into indoors convention centers, meeting rooms, and can even hold small scale art exhibits. The total amount budgeted for this stadium is of R$ 533,3 million reais, and the coordinator of the Manaus committee, Miguel Capobiango stated that “If you count the number of times our city’s brand will be mentioned throughout the world, the return on investment is already profitable” (Casado, 2011).

The Olympic Games are a little different to approach, especially since it is hosted by only one city and not an entire country. Also, it encompasses many different sports and different venues, not only soccer and soccer stadiums. Since it requires a more complex planning, and some venues are tough to maintain after the games because of the lack of popularity that some sports have in different places. The International Olympic Committee, the IOC, created the ‘legacy-fund’ to help out with some of the costs.  “This ‘legacy-fund’ is an important feature because the required event facilities, for example luge tracks developed for Winter Olympic Games, are often not economically sustainable and need ongoing operating subsidies” (Preuss, 2007). The IOC has been more involved in this “modern” issue of legacy and sustainability than FIFA has, but there are still many flaws that must be changed. “In 2000, the IOC launched a project called the ‘Olympic Games Global Impact’ (OGGI). This project was initiated in order to improve the evaluation of the overall impacts of the Olympic Games on the host city, its environment and its citizens, as well as to propose a consistent methodology to capture the Games effects. It covers a period of 11 years, from the bidding stage to two years after the hosting of the Olympics. The focus is put on the economic, social and environmental sustainability of the Olympic Games measured by several indicators” (Preuss, 2007). However there is a big problem with this new venture the IOC is pursuing, two year after the event is not nearly enough time to measure the impacts. A proposed change should be to bump it up to at least 14 years total and 5 year after the event has left. Rio de Janeiro is spending a lot of money to host the Olympic Games and make it a memorable one, and the sustainability issue involving the venues seems to be in good shape. However, the IOC is not aiding very much with the “non-sport legacy” of the games, because more than half of what is being invested into the games is infrastructure of the city, public transportation, and airports.

In conclusion, legacy and sustainability are the two main words surrounding the preparations and bidding of a world class sporting mega event like the FIFA World Cup and the Olympics. Taking previous developing countries and cities in consideration such as Beijing, Cape Town, and Seoul, Brazil seems to be very well aware of the challenges surrounding such events. The two cities that are the main concern for the FIFA World Cup event in Brazil, Cuiabá and Manaus, seem to be in better shape than many cities in the past have been. In regard to the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, The International Olympic Committee and the local committee seem to be working closely to try and avoid legacy and sustainability issues, using some of the previously implemented projects by the IOC. It is a very challenging and exciting time in Brazil, and if everything functions properly could be the country’s big break.

Under Further Review: What Sport Means To Me

Although we should all give thanks every single day, there is no better day since Thanksgiving.  Below is a paper that I wrote for Dr. Staurowsky's Technology and Sport class about what sport has meant in my life especially within the past year.

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Sport was something that I took for granted for most of my life.  I played sports but was never good enough to play competitively beyond high school.  I have always been a knowledgeable and enthusiastic sport fan but truthfully game results never determined whether I was having a good or bad week.  Sport has always been a big part of my life because within my family it will always provide a special bond between my brother, mom, dad, and I.  The bond that sport provided made communicating easy, and we always had something to talk about.  Even with the bond that sport provides my family, I still took it for granted.  The bond was never tested; it was there, but none of us knew how strong the bond truly was.  That was until this past year.

In late April this past year, my mom got sick.  I say that she simply got sick because nobody knew what was wrong, not even the doctors.  The situation would have been scary for any family, but my family had never been through a health scare like this before.  My mom ended up spending 28 of the 31 days in May in the hospital.  At about the halfway point of the month-long medical runaround of doctors calling her condition a stroke, a blood clot, a bad heart valve, and pneumonia, the answer became clear: my mom had blood clots in her leg, lungs, and brain.  The cause of the blood clots was a cancerous mass located on one of her ovaries.  The next two weeks were spent in recovery after surgery to remove the mass and during that time a prescription for 18 weeks of chemotherapy was handed down.  My mom remained a fighter, never shedding a tear and never uttering one complaint.  The month long medical nightmare shook up my family, but we began to realize how strong the bond of sport truly was between the four of us.

Throughout the period of recovery in the hospital and then the continuing recovery in the comfort of home, sport played a tremendous role.  One of the roles that sport played for my family was as a distraction.  We used sport to distract ourselves by consuming sport and then talking about it.  Our house was a microcosm of what D. Stanley Eitzen and George H. Sage call our society’s “sportsmania” in “Sociology of North American Sport.”  The sports section in the local newspaper was always read and always discussed.  The only time that the television was on a channel other than ESPN was to check in on the MLB Network or the Tennis Channel.  Although Eitzen and Sage said that one-fifth of television networks dedicate some time to sport, my household dedicated about four and a half-fifths of its television-watching time to sport (Eitzen & Sage, 2009).  Sport at our house is not only consumed; it is analyzed and talked about.  The first two of the three sociological assumptions are that individuals are social beings and individuals are socially determined (Eitzen & Sage, 2009).  In the way that my family talks about sport, we are the perfect embodiment of the sociological assumptions.  Everyday we are spending time seeking conversations with each other or others to talk about games of the previous days and to look ahead to games in the coming days. 

Although sport was constantly used as a distraction from my mom’s health issues and a social starting point, sport was also used as a release.  On page nine of “Sociology of North American Sport,” Eitzen and Sage describe sport as a social institution.  They define social institutions as “social arrangements that channel behavior in prescribed ways” (Eitzen &Sage, 2009). They also add that one of the societal purposes of sport is “sport serves as a safety valve for both spectators and participants, dissipating excess energies, tensions, and hostile feelings in a socially acceptable way” (Eitzen & Sage, 2009).  Throughout the time spent in the hospital and in recovery, sport provided that channel for behavior and that “safety valve” so the entire family could dissipate the tensions of the medical fiasco.  Sport has been one of the social institutions that my family has used as a crutch to help us get through our tough time dealing with my mom’s medical condition.  Sport has done its job in helping to deflect some of the emotions of my mom’s situation and channel those emotions to something that we as a family can come together over. 

In the American culture, just as any other culture, there are many shared values, attitudes, and beliefs (Eitzen & Sage, 2009).  One of the American values seems to be that we tend to sympathize and rally around those that are sick, just as sport fans rally around their favorite teams and players.  The outpouring of support for my mom from family and friends was outstanding, just as sport fans would support their teams and players.  As a society we cheer on the sick to make a full recovery like we would for our favorite teams and players.  We also boo the existence of the medical conditions that have put the sick through unspeakable pain and suffering like we would for our favorite teams’ most heated rival.

As my mom’s medical nightmare comes one giant step closer to being over this week when she receives her 18^th and final chemotherapy treatment, I will never forget what sport has meant to my family over these past six months.  Before it all began, sport was simply something that I loved, something that I played, and something that I wanted to make a long, prosperous career out of.  I knew it had a deeper meaning, but the only evidence I had of any deeper meaning was from reading and hearing stories.  Now I have lived it.  I have seen what sport can do for a person and a family.  In my life sport has become a family bond, a rallying point, a representation of hope, a distraction from real world problems, and a release of pent up emotions and tension.  In my life I have seen sport save my family and mom’s life.

Issues with Youth Sports

Youth sports have consistently provided an outlet for young children to develop their athletic and character traits, establish participation in fitness, and recognize enjoyable activities that they can share with their friends. As the importance of athletic performance has progressed in the last hundred years, sport-governing bodies are forced to handle the issues associated with youth sport activity. When one begins playing their designated sport at such a young age, their peers, coaches, and parents can easily be influential. As they continue to mature as athletes, scouts, college coaches, other family members, neighbors, and athletic directors may also choose to become stakeholders in their success. For many young athletes, the pressure put on them from all of these sources can be overbearing and overwhelming enough to ruin their chance of success.

According to Helen Jõesaar, Vello Hein, and Martin S. Hagger (2012) and their study “Youth athletes’ perception of autonomy support from the coach, peer motivational climate and intrinsic motivation in sport setting: One-year effects”, it has been proven that coach and peer relationships with an athlete can affect such athlete’s ability to make coherent decisions, influence their level of involvement and effort, and the understanding of their ability to directly affect success rates. More specifically, coaches have the ability to motivate a child to develop certain individual characteristics that lead to athletic performance. If a young athlete not only understands what it takes to be successful, but can also make a self-afflicting decision to attain those goals, they can determine their own opportunities. It is this realization about the significance of youth coaches that proves how they can have a negative or positive impact on a young athlete’s life. For youth sports, it is expected that coaches act more as teachers and mentors for young children as they acquire skills and knowledge to be successful in all aspects and activities in their lives.

Youth sports affect so many individuals throughout the country, and throughout the world, it is a catastrophe that it has dealt with number of problematic issues that it faces today. Sport organizations should begin to establish principles that bring them back to the original meaning behind youth sports. The future of our society is dependent on the young individuals developing their leadership, cooperative, and proactive qualities that can make an impact on their lives in the future. The parental, coaching, and peer pressures influencing children that winning is the most important quality is harming their social development and ability to reach their potential.

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