Sprints of Citizenship

This chapter examines how the performances of black women athletes at the 1951 Pan-American Games and 1952 Olympic Games made it difficult for the institutions of mainstream American sport to advance an uncontested image of American identity. Due to the conditions of the Cold War, the United States Olympic Committee and Amateur Athletic Union became more committed to using athletes to advertise the believed superiority of American democracy. Because of their race and gender, black women track stars disrupted this project, inserting blackness and femaleness into the image of Americanness through their accomplishments. In doing so, they also demonstrated that sport, despite its conservative connotations, served as a rare cultural space in which black American women could display their capacity and autonomy.

Tumbling into a Crisis: Use of Corporate Apologia after USA Gymnastics Falls off the Balance Beam

In an open letter to U.S. gymnasts on Nov. 5, 2018, United States Olympic Committee (USOC) CEO Sarah Hirshland told its more than 150,000 members “You deserve better” as it launched the Nuclear Clause that would revoke USA Gymnastics (USAG) as a governing body for the sport at the Olympic level [1]. This announcement comes in the wake of USAG’s ongoing crisis that includes a failure to protect athletes from team doctor Larry Nassar, imprisoned for sexually abusing more than 350 female gymnasts; investigations tied to Michigan State University; and the turnover of several USAG CEO’s in just two years. The research question addressed in this study asks how gymnastics can recover from a crisis that was decades in the making and two years in the public spotlight. Benoit’s (1997) Image Repair theory as well as Hearit and Courtright’s (2004) social constructionist approach and apologia discourse inform our critical analysis on how and why USAG has tumbled.

The Education of Sport Coaches: What Should They Learn and When Should They Learn It?

Around the world, there is a growing movement to improve sport coaching education. In recent years, the International Council for Coaching Excellence (ICCE) has begun to address questions related to the education, training and development of sport coaches through the publication of the International Sport Coaching Framework (ISCF) and the Sport Coaching Bachelor Degree Standards (SCBDS). In the United States, because sport coaches can undertake a wide variety of coaching-related educational opportunities, the United States Olympic Committee has taken steps to address the disparity in training through the publishing of the Quality Coaching Framework (QCF). All of these documents provide valuable information about the best principles for educating and training sport coaches. While principles, standards and theories provide valuable overarching information about how to organize education, specific information about what topics should actually be taught in education programs is still lacking. In this manuscript, utilizing principles of participation versus performance sport and professional knowledge, intra- and interpersonal skills, information about what and when to teach important sport coaching topics is proposed.

Speaking to the Spirit of the Games

Chapter Five focuses on the calculated and concerted steps taken by Atlanta’s white business elite and black city government to bid for the Centennial Olympic Games. A diverse cohort of private interests generated the necessary funds to give Atlanta a competitive bid for the Games was formed. This cohort included officers of Atlanta’s fortune 500 companies comprising of the Coca-Cola Company and Delta Airlines, Atlanta businessman Billy Payne, and politicians Mayors Maynard Jackson and Andrew Young. Once awarded the Centennial Games, two movements of paramount importance commenced, representing what the author calls the “olympification” of Atlanta. “Olympification” connotes the policies where urban renewal and gentrification were implemented to get Atlanta ready for the Games. The first of these movements, a joint effort between the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) and the Atlanta Organizing Committee (AOC) worked to prepare the city for the Games is of extreme importance. The second movement, the Atlanta Project, gave way to social change in Atlanta waging war against poverty within the city. Started by the former U.S. president, humanitarian and Georgia native Jimmy Carter, this project had good intentions. But in the end, it did very little for Atlanta’s poor, thus further excluding them from the popular image of Atlanta as black Mecca.

Rules, Rulers, and the “Right Kind” of Competition

This chapter discusses how women physical educators began to reevaluate their collective position against intercollegiate, commercial, and hypercompetitive sports for their students. Particular attention is given to a series of National Institutes on Girls' Sports, jointly sponsored by the Division for Girls and Women's Sports (DGWS) and the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) that took place during the 1960s. At these clinics, educators, recreation leaders, and other interested parties learned the necessary tools to teach sport skills to their respective charges and to encourage them to engage in “the right kind of competition.” The emergent groundswell of support was an important antecedent to the subsequent developments in women's sport.

A Campaign of Truth

This chapter demonstrates how U.S. information officers devised plans to showcase the friendliness and sportsmanship of the U.S. Olympic team and encouraged private businesses to make the hosting cities a showground for U.S. enterprise and culture. In tandem with these efforts, U.S. propaganda depicted communist sport in a highly negative manner. Furthermore, in order to create and implement a propaganda strategy for the winter and summer Olympic festivals of 1952, the U.S. information program also facilitated cooperation with both the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) and the Amateur Athletic Union of the United States (AAU). This intervention challenged a long-held tradition, as the U.S. government began to work in concert with the private sphere in sport-related propaganda to new and uncharted levels under the mounting demands of the Cold War.

Bush-Whacked: A Legal Analysis of the Unauthorized Use of Sport Organizations’ Intellectual Property in Political Campaign Advertising

Many 2004 presidential-election campaign advertisements were strategically targeted to appeal to viewers of sporting event telecasts. The Bush–Cheney campaign’s unauthorized use of the termOlympicin advertisements that aired throughout the 2004 Summer Olympic Games telecasts raised novel legal issues at the intersection of trademark law and constitutionally protected political speech. This article provides an analysis of the legal issues surrounding the Bush–Cheney campaign’s unauthorized use of the termOlympic. This article first examines the viability of trademark, unfair competition, and misappropriation-based claims potentially available to the United States Olympic Committee and other sport organizations. The article then examines some state-based regulations and case law regarding false and deceptive political campaign advertising that suggests a possible legal challenge to future political advertising campaigns that use sport organization trademarks without authorization. In addition to providing implications for sport managers, this article suggests that Congress may need to revisit latitudes afforded political speech to prevent a dangerous trend of political candidates’ misrepresenting their association with sport organizations.