Konnor Manley

Sports, Media, and Pop Culture Paper 2

Everyone is familiar with the idea of Sports. It has come to be such a popular

phenomenon in the world that we live in. It’s curious and crazy how society has latched onto

sports and how much impact they can have on lives. It’s not so strange for people to wonder,

“Wait, I was born in October or November after my parents’ team won? Am I a Super Bowl

baby?” if they belong to a diehard American Football family (Boren). And that is just how it is in

America. This begs a similar question about some other sports with other certain countries.

Maybe big hockey families have experienced some Stanley Cup babies, or even some World

Cup Babies have shown up all over the world. And the idea of Championship babies is just a

thought about a form of celebration when a team wins all the way. Just imagine all the ways

people express anger when their team finishes at a close second place. After an entire season

of work, they come out in second. Teams work more than just the season too; most teams have

spent many years restructuring the team and the management to have one chance at winning

their way to the top, and sometimes they just don’t make it there. If babies are sometimes the

result of a winning celebration, just imagine how terrible the losing celebration can be. And one

can only wonder why this is? The simple answer to this question the accessibility of it in our

everyday lives due to media.

In the current day and age, sport has developed a strong dependence on media to help

bring a stronger awareness and a bigger fan base. The dependency has honestly taken away a

little bit of the essence and original base of sports. Even more so, “fashions now often reflect
sports clothing, partly because of the money injected into sports by fashion houses and partly

because of our desire to emulate our heroes and heroines” (Pearson). There has been a

massive evolution of sports over the years, and a lot of this can be credited to how accessible it

has become to people in their lives. Almost everyone is involved with one sport or another

whether it be American Football, Hockey, Baseball, or Soccer. The popularity of sports has

created heroic figures for kids to look up to and idolize. So in reality, sport has become

somewhat of an obsession for humans throughout their lives because media has made them

incredibly accessible. Over time sport has evolved from a pastime to a main event. There used

to be a time where people would go have a beer with a professional athlete after they have a

game, and the athletes would also have to get up the next morning to go to work. The only

difference between beer league and a professional sport was the skill level, but now there is a

whole world of difference. Sports have become a massive part of the foundation that society is

built on, and there are livings that are built on being involved in sports. People don’t even have

to play the sport to make a living now, some people make livings off of coaching the team or

being the medical staff for the team. There honestly isn’t even such thing as sports teams

anymore because they have become a franchise, organization, or even a representation of a

country. Teams used to play in leagues, but now it has become more of a market or a business

environment. Organizations are super concerned with their image and what they stand for

politically. Unfortunately this doesn’t stop at the organization, it continues into the world of the

fans as well. It is to the point that, “[someone’s] status as a sports fan is questioned as a coded

way to question [their] status as an American.” (If you thought sports were ever separate from

politics, think again). It sounds bad, but sometimes it is not all that bad to have this big
integration. There is a certain, “ability of sports to unite along political lines, racial lines, gender

lines, religious lines, class lines – that have always been there…[everyone was] #BostonStrong

after the marathon bombing.” (If you thought sports were ever separate from politics, think

again). Sport can provide a unity that sometimes only tragedy brings. Especially in light of all the

things that have been happening in the US that are making us #VegasStrong or #TexasStrong.

This unity is crucial in the society that exists, but it is not always what is found.

This competitiveness has been woven into society through the strong presence of sport

in the media and our daily lives. It originated in sports, but has now wondered elsewhere in our

lives. This competitiveness can be good in the business and sports world but not so good when

it wonders too deeply into our personal world. When that sense of competitiveness is brought

heavily into the personal life, divisions can be created and more problems along with it. The

society that has been created has a lot of division and conflicting views. The idea that only one

team should win is terrific in the world of sports and competition, but bad in the world of trying

to understand someone else’s point of view on a conflicting issue. This sense of competition has

become so big that it has led to a lot of people deciding that there is only a right and a wrong,

but no middle ground which is really not good considering how much grey area exists in the

world. This two option ending is constantly encouraged when, “sport narratives are often

organized around a central question: who will win?” (Kennedy 76). This simple question ripples

through the other areas society. Everyone wants to live in a world of simplicity, but the reality

that needs to be accepted is the fact that the world is more complicated than people try to

make it.
 Along with all the changes like teams becoming a franchise more than a team, players

are now more a dollar amount than person. Society focuses so much on their skill and less on

who the player actually is in real life. Everyone gets so caught up in the abilities that these

players have that they forget that this is a real person too. This isn’t the only case; a lot of

people see most celebrities in the same way. They’re seen as almost another type of person

who is well known for an ability that they have, and that is the extent of our knowledge about

them. Celebrities and athletes get put on a pedestal by society usually whether they like it or

not.

Now, this is not all to say that sports have had a negative impact on our

Society/American Pop Culture. There are plenty of good things to have come out of having a

society that is so involved in sports. For example, in 2008, about “57 percent of US adults who

planned to watch the Super Bowl were watching as much as (or even more than) for the game

itself” (Kennedy 130). At the time the cost for a 30 second slot in the Super Bowl Commercials

was just a hair under $3 Million (Cost of Super Bowl Advertising Breakdown by Year). The

amount of money generated from that event is astronomical because it isn’t just money paid to

air commercial, it is also the money that companies made because people enjoyed their

commercials. Sports have helped not just in terms of generating money; it also helps in terms of

the health of children. It is estimated that, “as a group, children under eight spend an average

of 25 minutes per day playing video games” (Conrad). Just imagine what these numbers would

be without sports because sports are a great way for kids to go be with friends and enjoy

playing around outside instead of having their heads buried in the latest tablet. I remember

when I was a kid, I didn’t really play much in terms of video games because I was always outside
playing wiffleball or street hockey with my friends from dawn to dusk on days I didn’t have to

be in school. But now, most kids have a played on a video game console by the time that they

are eight years old, but imagine how few kids would actually be going and playing outside if

sport wasn’t as big in our society as it currently is (Conrad). So, in some ways, sport really has

been an enormous help to our society and more specifically the children and next generations

of it.

The idea of sport and various forms it takes, have all changed and evolved drastically

from when it began all the way to where it is now. It has come from being just a simple pass

time to the point where, “watching sport can entail total absorption into the competition, with

the events on the screen the capacity to move one physically—from the edge of one’s seat,

hands tensely clamped to one’s mouth, to leaping in the air, shouting, punching the air and

even crying.” (Kennedy 25). Athletes have gone from a local friend to a national celebrity. Sport

has evolved so much from where it began to where it is now, and it is very likely that it will keep

evolving because so will so society and sport is a big part of society. There are definitely some

negative traits that go along with have a society so built on sport, but there are also up sides to

it. Although, the real question here is, “Has the presence of sport made society better off, or

worse off?” It’s a question that can only be answered by individuals and not as a group because

everyone views society and where society is differently. There are no wrong answers here and

that is what people need to practice more often rather than seeing everything as a “you’re

right” or “you’re wrong” type of situation. So who knows the answer to that question, maybe in

the future society will move away from sport, or maybe it will move even further into it and

build more off of sport. Nobody knows right now, but everyone is on the path to finding out.
 Works Cited

Boren, Cindy. “The Super Bowl of football is also the Super Bowl of baby-Making.” The

Washington Post, WP Company, 1 Feb. 2016, www.washingtonpost.com/news/early-

lead/wp/2016/02/01/the-super-bowl-of-football-is-also-the-super-bowl-of-baby-

making/?utm_term=.5843fc486ebf.

Conrad, Dr. Brent. “Internet, Video Game, and Television Stats for Children.” Statistics on

Children's Use of TV, Internet, & Video Games - TechAddiction,

www.techaddiction.ca/media-statistics.html.

“Cost of Super Bowl Advertising Breakdown by Year.” Superbowl-Ads.com Article Archive,

superbowl-ads.com/cost-of-super-bowl-advertising-breakdown-by-year/.

“If you thought sports were ever separate from politics, think again.” ESPN, ESPN Internet

Ventures, www.espn.com/espnw/voices/article/18614895/if-thought-sports-were-ever-

separate-politics-think-again.

Kennedy, Eileen, and Laura Hills. “Analyzing Media Sport.” Sport, Media and Society, Berg

Publishers, 2009, p. 25.

Kennedy, Eileen, and Laura Hills. “Sport and the Press.” Sport, Media and Society, Berg

Publishers, 2009, p. 76.

Kennedy, Eileen, and Laura Hills. “Sport in Advertising.” Sport, Media and Society, Berg

Publishers, 2009, p. 130.

Steve Pearson. The People History. “Early Beginnings to the Current World Of Sports

History.” Modern Sports History including Culture the Beginnings and Major Events,

www.thepeoplehistory.com/sports.html.