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Sports Institute to examine how sports and society interact — for better and worse
By Brian Fitzgerald
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| Frank Shorr, director of the Sports Institute at BU, and Amy Baltzell (SED’96,’99), an SED clinical assistant professor. Baltzell, a member of the 1992 U.S. Olympic rowing team, will teach the course Sports and Society. Photo by Vernon Doucette | |
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Indiana Pacers players and Detroit fans brawl in the stands and on the basketball court. The father of a high school football player in Texas feuds with his son’s coach, then shoots him with an automatic handgun. And three years after a Reading, Mass., man was convicted of beating another father to death at a hockey practice, “rink rage” in Massachusetts continues — the latest incident involving the Barnstable High School coach who pummeled a referee during a men’s hockey league game, gouging his eyes and slamming his head on the ice several times.
Are sports in the United States a reflection of an increasingly violent society? The Sports Institute at BU will address this question and other issues, including the win-at-all-costs mentality — manifesting itself in baseball’s steroids scandal — in its new course Sports and Society. The course will be offered at the institute’s summer session, which begins June 6.
Taught by sports psychologist Amy Baltzell, an SED clinical assistant professor, the course “is relevant because of what is going on in sports nowadays, from youth leagues to the professionals,” says Frank Shorr, Sports Institute director. “Our students are going to look at how athletes are viewed, how they’re covered by the media, and what part sports plays in society — do we put too much emphasis on it?”
Baltzell (SED’96,’99), a member of the 1992 U.S. Olympic rowing team and the 1995 America’s Cup all-women’s sailing team, “has an outstanding understanding of how sports and society interact,” says Shorr. From 1998 to 2000 she was a core member of the Character and Sport Initiative, a nationwide program developed for secondary school coaches, administrators, parents, and athletes to enhance character in competitive sports culture.
The Sports Institute’s intensive four-week curriculum has been offering courses in journalism, broadcasting, and marketing for three years. However, Shorr, the institute’s founder and one of Boston’s most respected television sports producers, felt that it was essential for journalists to temporarily put down their microphones and tape recorders, take a step back, and think about broader issues that affect the sports they will cover as professionals.
Baltzell agrees. “I think it’s important for future journalists to understand that how they perceive and report athletics has a big influence on how other people experience sports,” she says.
Obviously, to many fans sports has become a religion. Does America care too much about sports? “What’s concerning is the widespread attitude that winning is the only thing that matters,” says Baltzell.
This philosophy in sports is nothing new. “Winning isn’t everything — it’s the only thing,” renowned Green Bay Packers Coach Vince Lombardi famously said in the 1960s. “Just win, baby,” was the rallying cry of the 1970s and 1980s Oakland/Los Angeles Raiders, whose vicious play was celebrated by the media. But Baltzell says the Machiavellian mentality is more prevalent today, and has devastating effects. “This has caused athletes to exaggerate their bodies in all different directions,” she says, “from starvation in the cases of runners, dancers, divers, and figure skaters to overeating by offensive linemen in football and steroid use in baseball and other sports. And this emphasis on winning has changed parents’ treatment of their child athletes. As a sports psychologist, I can’t tell you how many athletes I’ve worked with whose parents seemed to value them only when they win — and are incredibly disappointed with them when they don’t.”
However, the 1960s Packers (four NFL championships) and the 1970s and 1980s Raiders (three NFL championships) were successful. “The win-at-all-costs attitude can produce winning,” Baltzell says. “But it can produce other results, such as athletes’ health being adversely affected, and good values can be destroyed. It can also be a massive distraction to the players. Problems such as performance anxiety have become much more pronounced.”
Hands-on experience
The Sports Institute’s courses are taught by top industry experts: last year, seminars were led by former television commentator Michael Holley, Al Jaffe of ESPN’s Dream Job, New England Patriots radio play-by-play announcer Gil Santos, Sports Illustrated writer Leigh Montville, and Boston Globe writers Jackie MacMullan and Dan Shaughnessy. Guests have included Olympic hockey gold medalist Mike Eruzione (SED’77), director of athletics development at BU, former Celtics player Cedric Maxwell, and Glenn Ordway, host of Big Show on WEEI-AM.
Graduates of the institute are currently working with such organizations as the Boston Red Sox, the Boston Globe, BostonChannel.com, the Washington and Lee University Athletic Department, the Mississippi Delta Democrat Times, and the American Express Sports Marketing Department.
“The Sports Institute provided me with the tools I needed to get into the field I love: sports journalism,” says Ted Lombardi (COM’04), who earned his master’s degree in broadcast journalism at COM. Lombardi, for two years the sports director at WVII-TV in Bangor, Maine, recently returned to Boston and founded the sports Web site backpageboston.com.
“So often journalism is taught in a theoretical way, but unless you’re out there compiling stories and broadcasting them, you’re not learning much,” says Lombardi. “The Sports Institute allows you to do what you would be doing in your first job in sports journalism.”
For more information about the Sports Institute at BU, visit www.bu.edu/com/sports_institute/.
15
April 2005
Boston University
Office of University Relations