Our American society was partly influenced by the role of sports. The popularity of the entertainment was a channel to provide principles such as justice, fair play, and teamwork that became our social glue that brings the country together. To understand how sports affected America, you have to understand it correspondence to the social history as both affected each other.
The typical American sports of baseball, basketball and football originally came from other European countries bringing settlers with their traditions and old life across the ocean in the seventeenth to nineteenth century. This was a form of entertainment that help revolutionize the game that continued through industrialization had hit in Twentieth century, providing different ways of playing the game. This kept residents occupied as the country was changing in ways that lost of entertainment became evident through time.
With introduction of newer technology and displacing farmers caused migrating towards the cities; leaving for better jobs, money and a promise for a better life. Cities were growing with many immigrants were coming to find homes and places to work. People living on top of each other causing restlessness; lack of work-life balance that never fully brought in play until after the industrial revolution. This resulted many exhausting themselves out by working upwards of 60 or more hours a week harming many businesses as turn overs and high absences were being reported.
Business owners and cities officials debated on how to keep their production levels high and in turn give their employees and residents a life outside work. The realization of entertainment was high on the list of needs that could help the future of the country. This turn became that parks started emerging for the city residents giving them opportunity to play and resulting a playground movement. It was a commodity for the cities and urbanization; eventually led to the growth of playing sports that later became professionalized.
Urban planners were designating places such as public, semi public and private faculties around the cities to accommodate the urban population as this was possible to do when large land was available and cheap to build. It bought new sense of belonging to its social class and economic statuses that affected how you lived. For instance, public facilities were typically free and used by the lower class whereas the semi public and private facilities required admission fees to join. These places were harder to get into unless you had a higher social rank and money to pay for these amenities. This led to social change of feeling like a community.
Sports soon became an agent of urban culture. These games were refashioned and elaborated in the course that evolved over time, from unorganized to become professional game with ethic rules that became paralleled to worker’s lives. Baseball became a success as the game was revolutionized by the mass population attendance. It started from local players to professional and better players around. The owners of the teams recognized the desire for this and started charging admissions.
The realization of having cities were evident as mass of people would help the growth of sports. This also helped American football and basketball’s growth as many places started small but the realization of smaller cities didn't help which caused many teams stop playing or moving to larger cites. The smaller market issues are related to its market size, they need the viewers and the funding to support a team. It became increasingly important of having a fan base as it is critical to bring more attendance to games as well as more revenues for the gates. If there were fewer fans, money would be lost in that case.
Urban areas are so important to the essentials of the game as a mass of people are needed to support the team; if teams are being underfunded, it affects their ability to perform thus resulting a move to a larger city or location. This happened several times between 1950s to today where teams are being forced to leave in a wake that cities become financial destitute. The economic scale for them goes down and having to market itself cost money. This is a case that is currently happening in Minnesota Vikings that they are shopping elsewhere since the revenue is not coming in for the team. The duel perspective is important in this case as Minnesota’s environmental element is being changed by the teams uncertain future; the team is being affected by city’s economic status. We don't exactly know how the role will play for the future but to try to recruit Favre could help only slightly but in long term it may do more harm than good.
The sports games and role of attachment is probably become more flexible as the country is changing where residents no longer stay in one place but migrate around. In my case, originally from Illinois following Greenbay Packers and now currently living in Charlotte, North Carolina, I find myself [among many young Generation of X and Y] that you can move wherever you want but also follow a sport from afar not near where you used to live. Football among other sports have been successful pulling fans from all over; for instance Charlotte never had a football team until 2000 and many of the residents are for Dallas Cowboys among other teams, resulting lower fan base here in Charlotte for the Panthers.
I fully believe the history of the game is relevant to how we understand the sport. We have to understand the past to understand where the future is going. It is also important to know social economic with baseball and other professional sports. The discussion of history in classroom and debates has been an asset to our understand of the background. Although the readings have been repeats in several formats, it feels as if they are stating the same themes but in different wording. I think we could find fewer reads but in extended formation could provide better understanding of the history.
The book, “Home Team” is an introduction to other readings and has better examples in my opinion although the other readings implement to the main source. In classroom slide shows have been great to pinpoint the major themes from all the readings. My favorite discussion has been migration of teams and how they have influenced economically. I think we should discuss more of how the migration affected the cities after the move; how did they market themselves after their loss of sport team? Did they find another? It was in the readings but I think a discussions should be more in depth about the scenarios. In over all, it has been by far the interesting class in my caseload and most looked-forward class for each week.
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