Showing titles in Sociology of Sports

The Premier League is the most watched sports league in the world, broadcast into 188 countries and watched by 3.2 billion people worldwide. It revolutionised football, transforming the beautiful game into a multi-billion-pound business and making its biggest stars millionaires. Fever Pitch tells the inside story of the formation of the league, from the early discussions with Rupert Murdoch about how Sky could be at the heart of this new league, to the bitter rivalries and radical new managers who changed the face of football forever.

For the past year, John U. Bacon has received unprecedented access to Jim Harbaugh’s University of Michigan football team: coaches, players, and staffers, in closed-door meetings, locker rooms, meals, and classes. Overtime captures this storied program at the crossroads, as the sport’s winningest team battles to reclaim its former glory. But what if the price of success today comes at the cost of your soul? Do you pay it, or compete without compromising?

The Premier League is the most commercially successful football league in history, the self-proclaimed 'best league in the world'. But success has come at a cost, unbalancing the English game to a profound and damaging degree. In this revealing and eye-opening analysis, leading economist Mark Gregory reveals the breadth and depth of the problems facing our national men's game, and shows us a way to bring football home for good.

If you want relations that bring joy, fulfilment, and peace into your life. Then you’re looking at the right book. Most people have a hard time nurturing long-term, meaningful relationships. You’re exposed to new people daily at work, at the gym, or even at the supermarket. Despite this, less than one in ten interactions end up flourishing into a friendship.

Alejandro Valverde - the 'Green Bullet' - was a symbol of Spanish sport. Supremely talented, hard-working beyond belief, he was ranked no.1 in the world four times before retiring in 2022. He is a champion of undeniable charisma and immense achievement - and yet also a convicted doping cheat. Appearing in a list of encoded names, Valverde was one of many at the heart of a doping ring for elite sportsmen. Discovered by Spanish police in the infamous Operacion Puerto, the revelations contained in the operation threatened to rip cycling apart.

When a mixed martial arts (MMA) gym moves in across the street from his office, Jonathan Gottschall sees a challenge and an opportunity. Pushing 40, out of shape, and disenchanted with his job as an adjunct English professor, part of him yearns to cross the street and join up. The other part is terrified.

From Jackie Robinson to Muhammad Ali and Arthur Ashe, African American athletes have been at the center of modern culture, their on-the-field heroics admired and stratospheric earnings envied. But for all their money, fame, and achievement, says former New York Times columnist William C. Rhoden, Black athletes still find themselves on the periphery of true power in the multibillion-dollar industry their talent built. Provocative and controversial, Rhoden's Forty Million Dollar Slaves weaves a compelling narrative of Black athletes in the United States.

For football fans who hungrily feed on gossip and rumour, Christmas comes twice a year - once in August and again in January. These are the months when the transfer window dominates thoughts, when the prospect of a new signing or two reinvigorates the hopes and dreams of the hopelessly devoted. Nige Tassell goes behind the scenes to observe the workings of the transfer window and to examine why it continues to hold such fascination for a nation of football lovers.

What do you do when your world changes in an instant? For Jon Harvey, after the sudden death of his brother, it meant turning to the thing that had given him support, joy and a lifetime of memories: sport, in all its myriad sublime and ridiculous forms. A kaleidoscopic twelve months took him from London Olympia to ancient Olympia, from rugby balls to Rubik's Cubes, Wimbledon tennis to Wimbledon greyhounds, Twickenham to Frimley Green, Roger Federer to Martin 'Wolfie' Adams, and much, much more. It's a celebration, of a life shaped by sport, and the ultimate season ticket.

Everyone knows that football is violent and dangerous. But what the players who built the NFL into a $10 billion industry didn’t know—and what the league sought to shield from them—is that no amount of padding could protect the human brain from the force generated by modern football.

From the number-one best-selling author of This Town comes a thrillingly raw and hysterical account of the billionaires, crooks, charlatans and scoundrels that own and run the NFL. American Football - with its celebrity players, billionaire owners, and cheerleaders with flawless teeth - is more American than apple pie. Which is why celebrated New York Times journalist Mark Leibovich has chosen football as the vehicle through which to examine the troubled state of Trump’s America.

Tough Mudder is not a race. It's a challenge. Unlike other endurance events, Tough Mudder encourages team spirit. The course's design forces you to seek help from others - and with 20 obstacles, 40 tons of ice and 500,000 litres of grade-A mud set over 10 to 12 miles, you're going to need it. This revival of community is the key to the company's success. In It Takes a Tribe, founder Will Dean explores the mental, physical and social principles behind the experience and reveals how he built a global tribe.

As a columnist for Time magazine, among many other publications, Tom Callahan witnessed an extraordinary number of defining moments in American sport across four decades. He takes us from Roberto Clemente clinching his 3,000th, and final, regular-season hit in Pittsburgh; to ringside for the Muhammad Ali - George Foreman fight in Zaire; and to Arthur Ashe announcing, at a news conference, that he'd tested positive for HIV.

From the tennis court to the boxing ring, the athletics track to the football pitch, the visibility of women in sport has been gathering pace. Women's competitions are increasingly popular. In Roar Sam takes a deep dive into the experiences of some of sport's most high-profile female athletes—some have overcome heartbreaking adversity to reach the top of their game; others have succeeded in the face of prejudice. Featuring a series of candid interviews from some of sport's most successful women, Sam lifts the lid on what it takes to reach those heights

Professional wrestling has always been wrapped in mystery. After a century of masquerading as legitimate sport, at last pro-wrestling has begun to show the potential of its form. At its core, it is live combat theatre, and no one has done more to codify and analyze this mesmerizing art form than Mike Quackenbush. To aid a generation of evolving performers to meet the demands of modern audiences, here is Toolbox - Building Better Pro-Wrestling.

On the west bank of the Mississippi lies the New Orleans neighborhood of Algiers. Short on hope but big on dreams, its mostly poor and marginalized residents find joy on Friday nights when the Cougars of Edna Karr High School take the field. For years, this football program has brought glory to Algiers, winning three consecutive state championships and sending dozens of young men to college on football scholarships. Although he is preparing for a fourth title, Head Coach Brice Brown is focused on something else: keeping his players alive.

Every year, more than 3.5 million children under age 15 require medical treatment for sports injuries, nearly half of which are the result of simple overuse. Journalist Mark Hyman investigates the evolution of youth sports from mere games to full-on quests to turn children into tomorrow's superstar athletes by pushing them beyond physical and emotional limits. Opening up a crucial discussion about the perils of youth-sports culture today, Hyman offers the solutions and answers we need.

Becoming a Sustainable Runner is not just another running guide on developing the physical attributes to run faster or longer. What it will help you achieve is a newfound purpose that merges your passion for running with your concern for your health, your community, and the environment. It weaves together concepts of internal and external sustainability in a way that will help you run, think, and act in a way that is in line with your values.

Every decade brings change, but as Michael MacCambridge chronicles in The Big Time, no decade in American sports history featured such convulsive cultural shifts as the 1970s. So many things happened during the decade—the move of sports into prime-time television, the beginning of athletes’ gaining a sense of autonomy for their own careers, integration becoming—at least within sports—more of the rule than the exception, and the social revolution that brought females more decisively into sports, as athletes, coaches, executives, and spectators.

Few people watch sport for its politics. Yet what happens on the field of play often reflects the problems in our society. Such was the case in the '80s, when black footballers emerged from the dressing room to find bananas being hurled from the stands, and racially motivated attacks and police harassment were the norm. Today, things have improved. Crowds are less hostile and stars like Anthony Joshua and Sir Mohamed Farah are among our most revered sporting heroes. But for athletes of colour, success on the field seldom converts to power away from it.