Abstract In 1906, medical doctors published a study on the Harvard collegiate football team. They noted, “The percentage of injury is much too great for any mere sport.” Of particular concern were head injuries, which the doctors believed were significant. Subsequent research over the last century-plus has confirmed early worries. Yet the heavy cultural and financial investment in collegiate football has meant a century-long public-relations campaign to increase the social tolerance for the sport's violence and danger. While calls for football's abolishment were regular and strong in the first decades of the game's development, by the 1930s these discussions fell away. Critics were placated by the National Collegiate Athletic Association's continual tinkering with the rules and promises to increase the game's safety, which ultimately has resulted in millions of dollars of research focused on sport-related traumatic brain injuries.

This work built upon previous research examining meritocracy in elite sport by examining the socioeconomic and racial composition of the high schools of 1,881 players on National Football League (NFL) rosters in 2016. The NFL player data from pro-football-reference.com and perceived race data coded from player pictures are matched to school data for 23,785 public high schools in the Common Core of Data and 3,333 private high schools in the Private School Universe Survey. Using t tests of differences in group averages and General Linear Model analysis of variance, the authors found large statistically significant racial disparities within the NFL with Black NFL players attending high schools with an average of twice as many students in poverty and five times as many Black students than the high schools attended by White NFL players. Overall, NFL players attended high schools with lower socioeconomic status student bodies than the general student population, suggesting more meritocracy. However, analysis by player race shows the difference driven by the racial composition of the NFL compared with the general student population, suggesting this meritocracy is more complex; Black NFL players attended higher socioeconomic status schools with more White students than the general Black student population, and White NFL players attended higher socioeconomic status schools with fewer Black students than the general White student population.

Distance running is a popular form of physical activity within the United States and the world. Many distance runners experience some form of injury, causing them to seek treatment and advice from a variety of medical professionals. The authors explored how a small group of medical professionals advised and treated patients in regard to engaging in distance running. The authors found that with diverse personal experiences in running, medical professionals are clearly impacted by their own embodied experiences of, and personal beliefs about, distance running in how they treat and advise patients. Therefore, they draw from diverse medical epistemologies in their clinical judgments, including their own embodied experiences, clinical observations, evidenced-based research, narrative medicine, and intersectionality.

Purpose In order to understand how collegiate athletics fits within the wider problem of sexual violence on college campuses, the purpose of this paper is to start with an examination of the overall scope of the issue of sexual violence in the USA and the larger culture that produces it. Next, the relevant laws and adjudication of sexual violence operant in American colleges are outlined. Finally, college athletics is placed into this bigger context by highlighting a number of particular cases to illustrate a broader understanding of collegiate athletes involved in sexual violence. Design/methodology/approach The author examines the history of rape laws and adjudication and the federal laws relevant to institutions of higher education. The author investigates the debate over adjudication of sexual violence within the criminal justice system or through campus systems. The author read previous literature to determine links between sexual violence and collegiate athletes and highlights particular cases that have gotten significant media attention for clues to the rape prone culture that can be fostered within collegiate athletics. Findings This analysis highlights how collegiate athletics can be a context that creates a rape prone culture and that universities and the criminal justice system need further reform to overcome long-standing beliefs in rape myths which perpetuate sexual violence, discourage reporting by victims of sexual violence, deter bystander intervention and underplay the impact of sexual violence on victims. Thus, structural changes are needed within collegiate athletic cultures as well as on college campuses to address sexual violence. Practical implications College campuses and athletic departments must address climates that create rape prone cultures. There remains a need for systematic data collection of perpetrators of sexual violence, along side data collection of experiences of sexual violence. College campuses and athletic departments must have in place procedures and policy that adhere to federal law, whereby athletes are not treated differently from non-athletes and victims are offered appropriate services that recognize the trauma of sexual violence. Further progress toward a standard of affirmative consent is needed to move toward greater sexual autonomy for everyone. Originality/value There is evidence that collegiate athletes are disproportionately represented among the population of sexual violence perpetrators on college campuses. Thus, it is vital to understand this population and that connection. The value of this work is to explicate the complicated adjudication process between university disciplinary processes and the criminal justice system.

Many of us want to engage in public application of our academic work, to not just understand the world, but to take part in addressing issues we investigate. Perhaps the metaphor of ‘taking a knee’ can be useful as we consider for ourselves, individually and collectively, how to do this work. Specifically, this paper considers the metaphorical meanings of ‘taking a knee’ to pause, reflect and consider ways to engage. The work of Ibram Kendi suggests that we look to how the economic, political and cultural self interest of powerful groups of people shape public life—including laws, policies and social norms to further their own self interests. In particular, this work considers the issue of the social construction of race in protests at sporting events during the national anthem and public responses to those events, finding as Kendi would predict, both progress toward racial equality and the advancement and evolution of racist ideas. Lastly, this investigation extends Kendi’s work by examining Title IX and athlete sexual assault, through firm scholarly research, as an example of both progress toward equality and also re-entrenchment of sexism and sexist ideologies, at the same time, by following the trail of self-interest.

Background: Throughout this mediated society, young people, in particular, are mass consumers of corporatized media. The mediation of sport has long been critically examined within sociology and physical cultural studies [(e.g. Mcdonald, M.G., and S.Birrell. 1999. Reading Sport Critically: A Methodology for Interrogating Power. Sociology of Sport Journal 16: 283-300)]. Due to our society's media consumption, physical education (PE) teachers and students are mediated and socially constructed individuals, which influences one's ability to teach and learn within a school environment.Purpose: In this paper, we critically examine and analyze movie content of PE, primarily in the U.S. We explore the representations for what they tell us about the place of PE in society and compare them to best practices in regards to appropriate content and methods.Data collection and analysis: A critical analysis of 43 movies with PE content was conducted spanning the years 1939-2012. All PE scenes were transcribed verbatim for dialogue, action and sound. Using the constant comparative method [Corbin, J.M., and A.L.Strauss. 2008. Basics of Qualitative Research: Techniques and Procedures for Developing Grounded Theory. 3rd ed. London: Sage], a systematic analysis of the movie scenes and transcripts was implemented to examine them for themes. Trends were reviewed over time and across genres, offering a systematic analysis of all scenes related to PE.Findings: Two major themes represent the findings of the critical readings: (a) bullying in PE and (b) constructions of masculinity. Furthermore, a comparative analysis ensues on the depictions and representations of content and methods in PE and how those relate to best practices in the profession. Collectively, PE has changed over time from being depicted in romantic ways as a lighthearted space, to a space of discipline and fear, to an irrelevant and/or comedic space. Instances of physical educators being depicted as caring and competent within a plethora of less positive portrayals of physical educators as cruel, inept and/or inappropriate were also found. We argue that these public narratives of PE over time reflect collective feelings and imaginings of PE, which impact beliefs and attitudes about the profession, and therefore policy impacting PE offerings.

On November 9, 2015, the president and chancellor at the University of Missouri resigned in response to protests and threat of the football team's boycott (Svrluga, 2015). The unrest and racial disharmony that surfaced at Mizzou had been building for years and, in fact, has been evidenced since on many other campuses across the United States (Gross, 2015). In this article, we use performance ethnography (Denzin, 2003) to demonstrate social activism as enacted by college athletes historically and in recent years. Denzin advocates using performance ethnography as a way to imagine and perform “a society in which differences are honored” (p. xiii). Thus, our resistance can be “shaped by how we read, write, perform, and critique culture” (p. xiii). The authors are graduate students and faculty members who are invested in enacting social justice at our individual colleges and universities.