Sports Studies Commons^™

Does Transition Experience Improve Newcomer Performance? Evidence From The National Basketball Association, Joseph R. Radzevick

Management Faculty Publications

A substantial body of research has highlighted the effects of experience on individual performance in groups. However, the challenges individuals confront after moving between groups require the adoption of more finely grained categorizations of experience to understand how they will help or hinder performance in novel group environments. This article develops a distinct form of experience here termed transition experience to deal specifically with insights individuals accumulate as they shift membership between different groups and contrasts its impact with that of the frequently examined component of related task experience. Player movement data from the National Basketball Association is used to …

The Rams Move On, Richard C. Crepeau

On Sport and Society

The City of Angels, Los Angeles, the second largest city in the United States, the second largest television market, the city of cars and air pollution, the city waiting for the next big earthquake, etc. etc. etc. It is a city that has not had a team in the National Football League for over twenty years. It is remarkable that the so-called New National Pastime had no presence in LA for two decades and still claimed this high position in American sport.

Rumination And Performance In Dynamic, Team Sport, Michael M. Roy, Daniel Memmert, Anastasia Frees, Joseph R. Radzevick, Jean Pretz, Benjamin Noël

Management Faculty Publications

People high in rumination are good at tasks that require persistence whereas people low in rumination is good at tasks that require flexibility. Here we examine real world implications of these differences in dynamic, team sport. In two studies, we found that professional male football (soccer) players from Germany and female field hockey players on the US national team were lower in rumination than were non-athletes. Further, low levels of rumination were associated with a longer career at a higher level in football players. Results indicate that athletes in dynamic, team sport might benefit from the flexibility associated with being …

Ua19/16/1 Wku 2016-17 Media Guide, Wku Athletic Media Relations

WKU Administration Documents

2016-17 men's basketball media guide produced by WKU Athletic Media Relations, includes athletic records and statistics, photographs, schedule and information regarding opponents.

Ua19/16/1 2016-17 Wku Track & Field Cross Country Record Book, Wku Athletic Media Relations

WKU Administration Documents

WKU track and field media guide for 2016-17 season.

Aau Basketball - Participants' Perceptions Of Their Aau Experience, Hakeem R. Willis

Masters Theses

In the United States, the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) has become the focal point for college recruiters in searching for top talent amongst middle and high school basketball athletes. Financially, AAU basketball can be expensive, making it difficult for families to allow their children to compete. However, players feel that AAU participation is worth the investment because of the benefits, which includes collegiate exposure. The purpose of this study was to examine the perceptions of former AAU basketball players' experience. The research question used to guide this study was: what are former AAU basketball players' perceptions of academic requirements, time/money, …

Women's Professional Sports: A Case Study On Practices That Could Increase Their Profitability, Danielle H. Mcardle

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Women’s professional sports leagues have often been considered a risky business endeavor. Critics cite low attendance, lack of sponsorships, lack of media rights deals, and numerous other reasons for why women’s professional sports leagues are not profitable. In analyzing the current landscape of women’s professional sport leagues, this paper uses a case study approach to develop a strategy that will highlight lessons learned from past women’s professional sports leagues, current professional sports leagues, sponsorship agreements, fans, social, digital, and mobile marketing strategies, and management practices to show how the business of women’s sports could be made into a more profitable …

Crime In The Nfl: Does An Arrest History Lead To Better Performance?, Austin D. Crist

CMC Senior Theses

Teams in the National Football League will do whatever it takes to win football games, even if that means having players with a criminal arrest history on their roster. However, does being arrested result in improved performance? Do NFL players with an arrest history perform better than those without one? I examine the effect a criminal arrest record has on player performance in the NFL from 2000-2014, using the top 30 ranked players within each position group. The position I chose to analyze were: Quarterbacks, Running Backs, Wide Receivers, Defensive Linemen, Linebackers, and Defensive Backs. My findings show that having …

The Sacrificial Ram, Charles Ebbers

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Every January and February, Montana and other western states auction tags to hunt big horn sheep, moose, mountain goats, bears and other big game species to the highest bidder, at a series of hunting shows in Nevada. Some states call them “governor’s tags,” while others like Montana call them auction tags.

The purpose of the auctions is to raise funds for state conservation programs meant to keep wildlife populations healthy. In Montana, the funds raised are species specific, meaning that the proceeds from a bighorn sheep tag must be used to help bighorn sheep. Yet, the revenue from these tags …

Concussion The Film, Richard C. Crepeau

On Sport and Society

Several months ago there was a minor flap over the fact that the National Football League was given the right to delete parts of the film “Concussion” before its general release to the public. At the time many, including myself, feared that the NFL would defang the bite of the film. It did not. In fact it’s hard to imagine what the NFL censored in “Concussion” given the devastating nature of the final product which is now in release.

Concussions, Richard C. Crepeau

On Sport and Society

ESPN reported this week that the NFL had pulled funding for concussion research because one of the principal researchers was Dr. Robert Stern of Boston University who has been critical of the NFL. The grant was awarded by the National Institute of Health(NIH) and the NFL denied pulling out of the grant saying that the NIH made all funding decisions and that the NFL has no veto power over the use of the $30M it had donated to the NIH in 2012 with no strings attached. It turns out however that it did retain a veto over the use of …

Bowling For No Reason, Richard C. Crepeau

On Sport and Society

Are you ready for some football? Are you ready for some mediocre football? Are you ready to watch teams that couldn’t break even have their time in the spotlight at some nondescript bowl game?

Pearl Harbor, Richard C. Crepeau

On Sport and Society

This piece on Pearl Harbor and Baseball was the fifteenth of this series of essays on Sport and Society. It dates from December of 1991 the 50th Anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor and was written as a radio commentary for WUCF-FM an NPR affiliate in Orlando. It aired on December 6, 1991.This seemed like a good time to retrieve it from an HD floppy disc and air it out one more time.

Extravagance, Richard C. Crepeau

On Sport and Society

In a recent analysis of the money flow in intercollegiate football, The Washington Post, laid out in considerable detail the not so surprising conclusion that revenue at the Power Five Conferences has increased dramatically over the past decade, while spending has exceeded the growth of revenue. Nationally between 2004 and 2014 some 48 athletic departments increased their income from $2.67B to $4.49B. Despite the apparent windfall 25 of those departments ran a deficit in 2014, and two of them, Auburn and Rutgers, lost more money in 2014 than they did in 2004.

Spectator Attendance Strategies: A Best Practices Examination Of Mls Expansion Franchises, Bryce Schomburg

Recreation, Parks, and Tourism Administration

The expansion of Major League Soccer (MLS) has dramatically raised league awareness throughout the nation. This impact was influenced by the additional consideration organizations have paid to the role of spectator attendance within professional sports. The purpose of this study was to examine the best practices for spectator attendance strategies employed by recent MLS expansion franchises. The following organizations were evaluated for the comparative analysis: Seattle Sounders, Portland Timbers, and New York City FC. These organizations were analyzed through a best practices comparison guide developed by the researcher. Data were collected from the selected teams’ websites, third party organization analysis, …

A Comparison Of Athletic Identity And Career Maturity Of Female Student-Athletes At Different Levels Of Competition, Simeon Hinsey

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study explored the relationship between the athletic identity and career maturity of women’s basketball student-athletes. Differences in athletic identity and career maturity were also investigated based on a women’s basketball student-athlete’s level of competition, race, year in school, socioeconomic status, and professional athletic career aspirations. In order to examine the relationship between these variables, a convenience sample of 209 women’s basketball student-athletes from NCAA Division I (n = 62), NCAA Division II (n = 40), NCAA Division III (n = 50), and NAIA (n = 57) institutions located in the southeastern region of the United States participated in the …

Thanksgiving, Richard C. Crepeau

On Sport and Society

As with all American traditions, if it happened once or twice it is one. Therefore I present my traditional Thanksgiving piece.

A Month To Remember, Richard C. Crepeau

On Sport and Society

For the past several weeks I have seen a multitude of stories from the wild world of sport that have struck me as something about which I wanted to write and set my brain whirring. Unfortunately for a number of reasons I have not been able to find the time to expound on any of them.

Gaming The System: The Exemption Of Professional Sports Teams From The Fair Labor Standards Act, Charlotte S. Alexander, Nathaniel Grow

Faculty Publications By Year

This article examines a little known exemption to the Fair Labor Standards Act relieving seasonal recreational or amusement employers from their obligation to pay the minimum wage and overtime. After evaluating the existing, confused case law surrounding the exemption, we propose a new, simplified framework for applying the provision. We then apply this framework to a recent wave of FLSA lawsuits brought by cheerleaders, minor league baseball players, and stadium workers against professional sports teams. The article concludes by considering the policy implications of exempting this class of employers from the FLSA's wage and hour requirements.

Larry Brown Etc., Richard C. Crepeau

On Sport and Society

Larry Brown was awarded the hat trick this week by the NCAA. For the third time in his college coaching career Brown is the head basketball coach at a university whose basketball program was found to have violated NCAA regulations. The first came in the early eighties at UCLA where his program was found to be guilty of getting “improper inducements” from UCLA boosters. The second came in the late eighties at Kansas where recruiting violations and improper use of travel funds were on the list of achievements

Goodell, Richard C. Crepeau

On Sport and Society

The opening of the new NFL season also marks the fifth anniversary of the elevation of Roger Goodell to the position of NFL Commissioner. It also marks the resolution of the biggest issue that he has dealt with in his role of leadership of the most popular and successful sports league in the United States.

Tennis, Richard C. Crepeau

On Sport and Society

Nearly every year the U.S. Open Tennis Championships seem to offer some remarkable match, a stunning upset, or tennis at an extremely high level. This year it showcased all three.

Missouri, Richard C. Crepeau

On Sport and Society

On Monday the protests on the campus of the University of Missouri came to their climax with the resignation of Tim Wolfe the president of the Missouri system, and Chancellor R. Bowen Loftin of the Columbia campus. For the past several months students have been protesting a range of arbitrary and unpopular actions initiated by President Wolfe. African American students contributed the charge of “racial insensitivity’ to the growing list of complaints about President Wolfe.

Pharoah And Roger, Richard C. Crepeau

On Sport and Society

In the world of sport or in the world generally, how often can you say that today there are two major pieces of good news? Yesterday was such a day.

Brady And Goodell, Richard C. Crepeau

On Sport and Society

The success of the NFL derives in part from its mastery of the electronic media as the league is able to blanket that world at all times and places. There is no off-season for the NFL. On the rare occasion, there can be drawbacks to this dominance. The last seventy-two hours is not what the media mavens at the NFL would call “a good run.”

Hall Of Fame Denial, Richard C. Crepeau

On Sport and Society

This past Tuesday the U.S. Justice Department announced that it was dropping the obstruction of justice case against Barry Bonds. He had been charged with perjury and obstruction of justice in 2007 for testifying to a grand jury that he had never knowingly used anabolic steroids or human growth hormone, Bonds’ testimony was given to the grand jury in 2003 as part of a federal investigation into steroid use by athletes popularly known as the BALCO case. Estimates of the cost of this failed pursuit of Bonds run upwards of $100M.

Women's World Cup, Richard C. Crepeau

On Sport and Society

It was a remarkable performance. Two goals in five minutes, four goals in sixteen minutes. Five overall in a 5-2 World Cup Victory in front of over 53,000 fans in Vancouver. According to NPR early reports put the peak U.S. television audience at nearly 23 million viewers. It is the highest rating and largest audience for any U.S. World Cup match in U.S. television history. The overnight rating approached the ratings of the recently concluded NBA Finals. The game had such excitement that even FOX’s commentators and announcing team could not put a damper on the event.

Boom & Bust: The Perils Of Guaranteed Long Term Contracts. Evidence From Ops100 Performance Over The Contract Cycle, Heather M. O'Neill

Business and Economics Faculty Publications

This study focuses on panel data of 256 MLB free agent hitters under the 2006-2011 Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) to demonstrate that hitters, on average, increase their offensive production, measured by OPS100, during the last year of their contract and subsequently underperform the first year of the newly signed long term contract. The contract year phenomenon arises from the incentive to land a lucrative guaranteed contract for players not intending to retire. Signing a long term guaranteed contract creates an incentive to shirk (underperform) the first year of the new contract because performance and pay become unlinked and the need …

A Social Marketing Plan For The Arkansas Miracle League, Abby Stuart

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Miracle League is a baseball league specially designed to allow disabled children, teens, and adults have the same opportunity to play baseball as able-bodied individuals on a field specifically designed to accommodate all disabilities. This thesis offers the Miracle League of Arkansas a specified Social marketing plan. In order to assist Miracle League in the acquisition of new players, volunteers, and donors, research was compiled and conducted to implement a successful Social marketing plan for the spring 2016 Miracle League season. This Social marketing plan gives Miracle League recommendations on how to appeal to parents of potential Miracle League players, …

Intangible Benefits Of Team Identification, And The Factors Which Generate It, Toward Intercollegiate Athletic Programs In Students' College Adjustment, Junmo Sung

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Intercollegiate athletic programs have been used to facilitate Social interactions between students within the complex nature of the college environment. In particular, many researchers have discussed the benefits of intercollegiate athletic programs in higher education, examining positive aspects of team identification such as the enhancing sense of belonging, personal self- esteem, happiness, and decreasing stress, anxiety, depression, and loneliness in Social life. With the benefits of the program, it is important to scrutinize the benefits of intercollegiate athletic programs in students’ college adjustment in higher education. Therefore, the goal of this dissertation was to provide better understanding of the intercollegiate …