A Tale of Two Cities: COVID-19 and the Emotional Well-Being of Student-Athletes Using Natural Language Processing

Student-athletes at the Division I institutions face a slew of challenges and stressors that can have negative impacts in eliciting different emotional responses during the COVID-19 pandemic. We employed machine-learning-based natural language processing techniques to analyze the user-generated content posted on Twitter of Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) student-athletes to study changes in their sentiment as it relates to the COVID-19 crisis, major societal events, and policy decisions. Our analysis found that positive sentiment slightly outweighed negative sentiment overall, but that there was a noticeable uptick in negative sentiment in May and June 2020 in conjunction with the Black Lives Matter protests. The most commonly expressed emotions by these athletes were joy, trust, anticipation, and fear, suggesting that they used social media as an outlet to share primarily optimistic sentiments, while still publicly expressing strong negative sentiments like fear and trepidation about the pandemic and other important contemporary events. Athletic administrators, ACC coaches, support staff, and other professionals can use findings like these to guide sound, evidence-based decision-making and to better track and promote the emotional wellness of student-athletes.

The Solid South

When Harvey Schiller was SEC commissioner in the 1980s, Host convinced him and the SEC athletic directors to adopt a corporate sponsorship program. This generated greater revenue to support the athletics programs at member institutions. When Roy Kramer became the new SEC commissioner, he immediately took steps to expand the conference. After football coach Bobby Bowden vetoed Florida State’s invitation to the SEC, Arkansas and South Carolina joined the conference. At the same time, Host was involved with a possible deal that would move UK to the Atlantic Coast Conference. As the SEC expanded, Host Communications did too, signing both the University of Tennessee and Alabama. Host acquired the rights to Auburn as well, but a disagreement with football coach Terry Bowden ended that partnership. Host also helped broker a deal to bring Jackie Sherrill to Mississippi State. All told, the SEC was vital to HCI’s success.

The ACC’s Challenge to “You Know Who”

If there was any college team that could take the NCAA title from UCLA, it seemed likely that would be one of the talented squads from the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC). Three teams were especially talented. The University of Maryland, coached by Charles “Lefty” Driesell, billed itself as the UCLA of the East. Coach Dean Smith’s University of North Carolina was a proven team. And North Carolina State University, coached by Norm Sloan, was deep in talent and desire.

Brand management in top-tier college athletics: examining and explaining mark-usage policies

Purpose – The practice of an interscholastic athletic department reproducing the logo of a collegiate team for its own use is becoming increasingly visible. In response to this growth, many collegiate licensing departments have begun actively enforcing zero-tolerance policies that prohibit third parties from using their respective colleges’ trademarks. Conversely, other institutions have exercised discretion by allowing high school programs to use their athletic departments’ logos only after receiving assurances from the high school that it will adhere to strict usage guidelines. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach – The paper provides a thorough discussion on the concept of brand dilution and its application to sport. More specifically the study gives an account of the strategies employed by trademark specialists to protect (and in some cases, enhance) the equity of their brands. To identify these strategies, a qualitative questionnaire was employed, which was completed by 13 brand managers representing institutions from the Atlantic Coast Conference, Big 12 Conference, Big Ten Conference, Mid-American Conference, Missouri Valley Conference, Pac-12 Conference, and the Southeastern Conference. Findings – Qualitative questionnaire responses from collegiate brand managers suggest that licensing departments differ in their perceptions of the outcomes associated with allowing logo replication in high school athletic departments. Originality/value – Perceived consequences of two enforcement strategies – prohibitive and cooperative – are highlighted, as are implications and directions for future research.

Racial Integration as an Innovation: Empirical Evidence from Sports Leagues

This paper treats racial integration as an innovation in economic process in which economic entities find it advantageous to utilize potentially more productive inputs previously unavailable due to law, custom, or managerial discretion. Data on the racial integration of Major League Baseball and Atlantic Coast Conference basketball are employed to address this issue. The central question examined is which type of team integrated first—losers or winners? The results strongly support the idea that entrepreneurship trumps competitive rivalry; that is, winning teams led the process of racial integration.

Concussion Incidence in Elite College Soccer Players

A unique aspect of soccer is the use of the head for directing the ball. The potential for resultant head injuries has been the focus of discussions worldwide. Prior work has attributed neuropsychologic deficits to the cumulative effects of heading, without evaluating concussion rates in soccer players. We prospectively studied the seven men's and eight women's varsity soccer teams in the Atlantic Coast Conference during two seasons to document concussion incidence. The 29 concussions diagnosed over the 2 years in 26 athletes, 17 (59%) concussions in men and 12 (41%) in women, resulted from contact with an opponent's head (8, 28%), elbow (4, 14%), knee (1, 3%), or foot (1, 3%); the ball (7, 24%); the ground (3, 10%); concrete sidelines (1, 3%); goalpost (1, 3%); or a combination of objects (3, 10%). Twenty concussions (69%) occurred in games; none resulted from intentional heading of the ball. The basic incidence was 0.96 concussions per team per season. The overall incidence was 0.6 per 1000 athlete-exposures for men, and 0.4 per 1000 athlete-exposures for women. By concussion grade, there were 21 (72%) grade 1, 8 (28%) grade 2, and no grade 3 concussions. These findings suggest that concussions are more common in soccer than anticipated and that acute head injuries may have potential for long-term neuropsychologic changes.