Sports Management – Page 42 – The Sport Journal

Labor and Immigration Issues in Sports

Submitted by: Dr. Anthony Borgese – Associate Professor – City University of New York

Abstract

Every year, international athletes come to play professional sports in the United States. Are they stealing jobs from Americans, or should they be welcomed for their talents? Should they be entitled to special treatment with regard to immigration and labor laws, or should they have to go through the same procedures as any immigrant applying for United States citizenship? The purpose of this article is to determine the historical and cultural framework with regard to the use of sports as a vehicle to achieve immigrant assimilation in the United States. This article also addresses the topic of athletes coming into the United States to “steal” jobs from Americans. Second, this article discusses the legal issues as well as the overlapping labor issues concerning immigration and worker migration. Third, the article is also important in the post-9/11 period because of immigration and security issues.

Introduction

American citizens are wary when newly arrived immigrants set forth on American soil with the hopes of getting a job and living the “American Dream.” The American Dream, to most people, consists of living in freedom, gainful employment with a high salary, a home, a car and a family. There are many views on recently arrived immigrants and the uneducated person usually argues that these immigrants are taking jobs away from American citizens. Citizens get upset because when these immigrants arrive, they have to find jobs in order to survive. Most immigrants take on menial jobs that American citizens do not want, like a bus boy, or a food delivery person. However, most citizens turn the other cheek when the immigrant is a sports star.

Aside from the talent of the sports star, there are various aspects one must consider when trying to attract a non-American citizen to join an American-based sports league or team. Some of those issues include: labor issues, legal ramifications, governmental action, cultural assimilation issues, political wrangling, and unforeseen circumstances that might arise. Labor issues address the feelings of resentment mentioned above where American citizens feel that jobs are being taken away from fellow Americans by immigrants who are willing to work for a lot less. “Workers who had previously protected their wages by agreement not to work for less than their fellow worker were faced with competition from immigrants willing to work for much less” (Carrell and Heavrin, 2004, p.4-5).

There are various legal issues to address. However, it is hard to say with certainty if all of the laws that have been enacted are any serious help to the highly paid athlete. For example, does one think that an athlete is worried about the Fair Labor Standards Act, which governs minimum wage standards, the number of hours in a work week, and overtime pay? This is very doubtful. However, there are legal issues that these foreign born athletes must address and conform. Some of those legal ramifications include immigration status, the payment of taxes and the construction of an enforceable contract. In some cases, child labor laws come into play because the superstar athlete is younger than 18.

The government is a huge factor in labor and immigration issues as well. It is up to the U.S. government to protect its citizens while promoting historical and constitutional ideals. The inscription on the Statue of Liberty reads, “Send us your poor, your tired, your huddled masses.” Immigrants built the United States, and its society. However, the realities of a post 9/11 America must come into play. Security is a huge concern, along with immigration laws. Finally, it would also not be the United States unless economic factors were taken into consideration as well. So, antitrust and political ideologies must be addressed too.

Even after the athlete has arrived, and the political wrangling begins between the country he left and the United States, issues like assimilation come into play. Assimilation, in the context of culture and labor laws, must occur, to some degree, in order for the athlete to be successful in his endeavors. This is where the resentment from Native Americans begins. Xenophobia occurs because the traditional worker arrives with his own cultural values and the American citizens want him to embrace their own cultural values. Assimilation in this context tends to follow historical perspectives. Early immigrants assimilated and molded the concept of what it is to be American. History shows that such is the case.

Regardless, there are many variables one must take into consideration before determining whether or not athletic immigrants deserve to be treated differently. Should their pure talent be the determining factor for being allowed to pursue the American Dream through sports, or should they too be forced to go through the same procedures as any ordinary immigrant? Hopefully, this paper will provide some of the answers.

This paper looks at a variety of labor issues concerning immigrants who come to the United States for sports related activity. It discusses the legal, cultural, political and other extreme circumstances behind this phenomenon. The paper addresses specific instances as well as studies conducted on the practice of allowing immigrants to play a sport in a different country. Finally, the paper concludes with some thoughts and suggestions into the matter and some suggestions for seeking common ground.

Review of Literature

Legal

There are many legal issues the immigrant worker has to familiarize himself with if he is to be successfully employed in the United States. However, some worker concerns like job security, holidays, vacation pay, promotions and age discrimination are not typically things fought for by foreign-born athletes. This is due to the fact that the average career length in professional sports is approximately 3-5 years depending on the sport. In addition, professional sports athletes might be required to play on holidays, such as Thanksgiving Day football. Professional athletes tend to worry about other worker concerns such as drug testing, health plans, profit sharing, grievances and arbitration. Probably the best way to start the review of literature section of this paper is with the Immigration Act of 1990 and the surrounding legal and governmental issues with regard to athletes.

The Immigration Act of 1990 was a major overhaul of the United States immigration policies and laws. As previously mentioned, it is up to the government to protect its citizens and its borders. One of the main thrusts of the Immigration Act of 1990 was that it placed workers coming into the United States into various categories. Of those categories there are two that must be specifically mentioned with regard to this paper; those are the O and P categories.

Specifically, the O category is for “workers with extraordinary abilities”. The P category is for “athletes and entertainers” (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services a.). These athletes must conform to an additional set of requirements in order to be eligible for these category designations. For both the O and P categories, aside from the extraordinary abilities the athlete possesses, he must be a temporary worker only visiting for the sole purposes of performing. In addition, he must be uniquely qualified for the position, and he must have a foreign home that he does not intend on abandoning (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services b.). Basically, what the government wants to know is that he will return to his country once he has finished performing.

One can argue that athletes can fit into either category O or P. They are uniquely qualified workers in the sense that they possess a talent that is better than any American citizen. This is proven by the immigrant’s ability to make the team over all other persons trying out for a position. The O category designation is a little bit more geared to specialized workers in the arts and sciences. However, the United States government created the P category to specifically refer to athletes. So, when it comes to the legal issues surrounding whether or not athletes are legally allowed to come to the United States and play in professional sports leagues, the government has developed immigration laws to allow this to occur. However, the laws do not provide that these gifted persons should be favored over ordinary immigrants seeking entry into the United States.

There are other legal/labor issues involving the immigration status of an athlete into the United States for the specific purpose of engaging in professional sports. Some of those issues, aside from the immigration status, include: contracts and taxation (O’Connor, 2000). O’Connor outlined the specifics of the Immigration Act of 1990 as it pertains to athletes coming into the United States to play professional sports. His report is specifically designed to train lawyers who might represent these athletes.

Contract issues can take on various forms. Most times, these athletes are unfamiliar with contracts in general. O’Connor (2000) points out that a lawyer or representative of the athlete should engage the athlete into two different contracts, one contract to be his legal representative and another contract with the team the athlete will play for. O’Connor suggests that in some cases these individuals need to be taught the nuances of a contract because they have no prior knowledge of how contracts work, but more importantly one does not want the athlete just to walk away from a contract. This idea of understanding and honoring contracts can go on even further because all major professional sports leagues are governed by collective bargaining agreements. So, it is up to the athletes’ representative to explain what collective bargaining agreements are all about as well.

Collective bargaining agreements and sports go hand in hand. The negotiations that occur between labor and management is the gist of what their relationship is all about. The Wagner Act made unions a force to be reckoned with. Two of the many things the Wagner Act achieved are the fact that management had to recognize the employee’s right to form a union, and management had to bargain in good faith. These two rights are the cornerstones for successful collective bargaining agreements in industry as well as in the world of sports.

Another area the athlete needs to be instructed on is taxes. Every good American knows that his taxes are due by April 15th of any given year to pay his fair share of the taxes due from the preceding year of work. O’Connor relates how taxation issues become more complex for the athlete because he is unfamiliar with paying taxes in general, or he is unfamiliar with the American tax system. To make it even more complex, there are state taxation issues for athletes who play in any given state. It is up to the athlete to pay these individual state taxes, so it is in his best interests to find a representative that is knowledgeable in this area.

Another legal aspect of recruiting immigrants to play professional sports in the United States involves child labor laws (Donnelly, 1997). In his report, Donnelly outlines child labor and sports labor issues. The United Sates classifies anyone under the age of 18 as a child, so there are a variety of laws that protect them. Oftentimes athletes recruited to play in the United States are under the age of 18. This phenomenon occurs in some of the big four professional sports of baseball, basketball and hockey, but not so much in football.

Additional legal and child labor factors are raised when the child-athlete needs to sign a professional contract. Anyone in the United States under the age of 18 is not permitted to enter into a legal contract. Legal guardians or caretakers can often take advantage of the child-athlete and walk off with the money earned by the athlete simply because the caretaker is the legal guardian of the child and an administrator of the funds produced from the labor of the child. Other child labor factors include the number of hours a child is allowed to work in a week. Sometimes training and practice hours, in addition to time spent in playing the game, are over the limit for the child-athlete. For the most part, sport leagues get away with exploiting the child as long as they play within the terms of their respective collective bargaining agreements.

Some other governmental restraints on sports and immigration concern the recruitment of college coaches. When recruiting a college coach, all NCAA Division I schools seek the best coaches in the world for their teams. Equal opportunity programs and Title IX laws call for colleges to get the best coaches available for their teams. However, sometimes these laws interfere with immigration laws. A 1984 article by Abbott and Smith revealed that Title IX and equal opportunity laws were making women’s programs more equal to men’s programs, but immigration laws prevented the very best from coming to the United States (Abbott and Smith, 1984).

Cultural

There are many cultural aspects of an immigrant coming to the United States to participate in professional sports or sports in general. An article by Gems (2001) discusses these phenomena from a historical perspective. Gems wrote about how early unions desired to increase leisure time as a fringe benefit. The pressure the unions brought on companies like Spaulding and Pullman led to their sponsoring of sports related employee teams. This may be a reason that during the times when workers were having vicious strikes the Pullman strike was on the calm side. “The Pullman strike was peaceful and well organized…” (Carrell & Heavrin, p.10). Regardless, the sponsoring of the employee teams and the use of sports to acculturate newly arrived immigrants all happened because companies wanted to “Americanize” immigrant workers through sport (Gems, 2001).

The theme of using sport to assimilate recently arrived immigrants continued with a study by Stodolska and Alexandris. Stodolska and Alexandris also discussed the role of sport to “Americanize” recently arrived immigrants to the United States. Their findings showed that after the introduction of sports, the immigrants fell into one of three categories. Those categories are: (1) groups that embraced and assimilated to white culture, (2) groups that assimilated to a subculture of their own ethnic community, and (3) groups that preserved their own ethnic values and promoted their ethnic group solidarity (Stodolska & Alexandris, 2004).

Other studies argue that some professional sports followed the immigration patterns of the United States. This is similar to what Carrell and Heavrin noted with the history of craftspeople in the United States. “The original craftspeople came from free laborers, those immigrants who paid their way to the New World and established homes and families and passed on their trade to their children” (Carrell & Heavrin, p.3). An article by Gilbert (1999) traces the glut of Irish born baseball players in the Major League in the 1890s. Gilbert argues that there were many Irishmen in the league at that time because the earlier patterns of immigration into the United States allowed the new generation of Irish-Americans to become assimilated and partake in professional sports (Gilbert, 1999). Early labor unions were comprised of cheap, immigrant workers, and as they assimilated into the United States, they took on jobs in better industries while climbing the social ladder.

The Irish were not the only immigrants who assimilated into sports. After the Irish, the major immigrant group came from Italy. Italians moved up the social ladder after the Irish did. An article by Mormino (1982) discusses how Italians assimilated into sports in the St. Louis area in the decades of the 1920s and 1930s. The assimilation factor parallels what these immigrant groups were trying to achieve on the union front and the gains they hoped to make in labor-management relations.

Political

There are a variety of political issues that surround immigrants coming to the United States to play professional sports. Some athletes see their talent as a way out of their country. For example, how many athletes try to get out of Cuba each year? Success stories like that of Orlando “El Duke” Hernandez of the New York Mets show that Cuban immigrants will go out of their way to play professional sports in the United States. Meanwhile, little-known, hopeful defectors, like Elian Gonzalez, must be returned to the country of their birth. The political ramifications do not end there.

Some researchers believe that sport is a “social technology,” that organizes the world to solve its political and social problems (Dyerson, 1998). Dyerson also believes that the struggle of sports athletes mirrors how the United States grew as a country. Dyerson (1998) argues that there are many civil rights issues that parallel the rise of sports in the United States. Most detractors of Dyerson argue that sports are now part of big business and to argue that it can solve the political and social ills of the world is absurd (Mason, 2000).

Another study with regard to political ideologies and sport comes from Hemphill. Hemphill (1992) discussed the “Freedom in Sport.” Specifically, Hemphill talks about sport as an “extension of play,” and how play is embraced in the United States, but not necessarily around the world. In addition, Hemphill argues that sport is an “extension of alienated capitalist labor” (1992). It is within these two points that political ideologies in sport can be analyzed for countries throughout the world. It is also within these two points where the political wrangling between countries occurs. It is hard in some instances for a country to see a beloved hero leave for the United States to become rich and famous. On the other hand, some countries embrace the idea that their athletes have made it to the pinnacle of professional sports.

Other Circumstances

What this paper has discussed so far are the legal, cultural and political situations where foreign-born athletes come to the United States to play sports, specifically professional sports. However, sometimes there are extenuating circumstances that bring athletes into the U.S. immigration and sports spotlight. Sometimes these other circumstances might be able to fit in one of those other categories, but most often they are special cases. Let us start with the Olympics.

Sometimes foreign-born athletes wish to come to the United States to become citizens and represent the U.S. in the Olympics. Jarvis discussed the requirement for an athlete to do just that (2000). First, the athlete must have at least five years of residency in the United States. Second, that requirement can be shortened to three years if the athlete marries an American citizen (Jarvis, 2000). Even though these athletes are not paid, they do have non-monetary aspirations, such as American citizenship. In these cases, they are not taking away jobs of Americans, but spots on the Olympic squad that American-born athletes would have occupied. However, these instances are rarely met with resistance from Americans because the foreign-born athlete must possess some talent in order to make the Olympic team.

Another non-monetary aspect of immigrants coming to the United States to participate in sports is at the collegiate level. Every year, colleges seek to recruit the best available players to participate on their teams. However, this is becoming a little bit harder in the post-9/11 world. Gardner and O’Toole (2002) outlined the myriad of problems with recruiting international students to play collegiate sports. Some of those problems include being stopped at security checkpoints to ascertain passport and visa validity. In addition, laws have been made that tighten the once loose visa market for international athletes looking to play college sports.

Since the subject of 9/11 was mentioned, what happens when security, labor, sports and immigration issues come together? The result is the plight of Kwame James. The average reader is not going to be too familiar with Mr. James, but he might just be the greatest foreign-born, American hero. Mr. James was one of the people who stopped the notorious, “shoe-bomber,” Richard Reid. Reid was intent on blowing up an American Airlines plane that was filled with people. Mr. James, and some others, subdued Reid and prevented an attack. James is a Canadian born athlete with hopes of becoming an American citizen. Just for his bravery in this instance, he should be awarded U.S. citizenship, but what makes Mr. James’s story even more intriguing is that he is a minor league basketball player with NBA aspirations. Mr. James’ problems were outlined in an article by O’Connor (2003). O’Connor recants the story and the plight of Mr. James and introduces another legal fact of sports and immigration—there are no work permits for athletes in training (2003).

The problems with not allowing work permits for athletes in training prove that it is difficult for the college athlete, who is considered in training and non-professional, to come to the United States with the hope of playing professional sports. However, this requirement makes it very difficult for professional teams in the United States to develop foreign-born talent. In Mr. James’s case, he has alternatives. He saved a bunch of Americans from death in the plane incident. He attended school in the U.S. and therefore can try to find a job in his field of study. Finally, he can try to marry an American citizen. However, what about the professional sport teams that are looking for foreign born talent? Sports teams cannot recruit that type of athlete unless the teams are willing to sign the athlete to a professional contract. Basically, the requirement of no work permits for athletes in training forces teams to take a chance on an athlete that may or may not pay dividends for them down the line.

Finally, in the case of other circumstances, what should be done when a foreign- based professional sports franchise moves its entire team to a new location in the United States? For example, this is the case with the Montreal Expos moving to Washington D.C. Of course the players will be allowed to play in the United States, but what about the hundred or so office workers that have been with the team since its inception? The various factors were addressed by Adams.

Adams wrote about the various front office positions that are not within the legal definition for immigration as stated before, specifically that the immigrant should be uniquely qualified and no other person could perform the job as well. This is easy to do with a highly talented athlete, but it is very difficult to prove that the Montreal Expo ticket manager is uniquely qualified and no other American can perform the duties of this position as well (Adams, 2004). Other positions throughout the organization were lost to Americans. Groundskeepers, salespersons, and a host of other jobs were lost due to the fact that they are not highly skilled positions and Americans could fill them. I can personally guarantee that there was no major uproar by team officials looking to keep these jobs for their workers. Conversely, there were no Americans feeling bad that these people had lost their jobs either.

Studies

Most of the studies on immigrants coming to a country to play sports, and the migration of workers for sports related endeavors have been conducted by Maguire. Unfortunately, Maguire does not study the effects on the migration of workers into the United States, but he does study the effects on the phenomena of athletes going from their birth country to another country to play professional sports, and he proves that that migration is a global issue (Maguire, 1994).

One of Maguire’s earliest studies was about Americans migrating to England to play in professional British Basketball Leagues (Maguire, 1994). In this study and all of his other studies, Maguire looks at the problems and tensions associated with migrants in global sport processes. In 1996 Maguire studied the migration of Canadian hockey players into England to play professional hockey. In that study, Maguire assessed labor rights, work permits and salary caps as they pertain to these players and their relationship with English citizens. These are some of the exact same issues discussed in this article, and are just as problematic in the United States.

Another major study of Maguire’s, and problem for the government of England, lies in the number of soccer players recruited to play in the Premier League in England. The Premier League is one of the best soccer leagues in the world, and teams recruit players from around the world. In their study, Maguire and Pearton (2000) looked at the implications of soccer players in the Premier League as a part of globalization and worker migration. Maguire and Pearton conclude that the recruitment of these soccer players parallels workers migrating to countries where work is abundant. In addition, Maguire and Pearton address the economic, political and social factors these soccer players affect when they go to England to play professional soccer.

Summary and Conclusions

Playing professional sports is a dream for many people throughout the world. The idea of being able to be well compensated to play a game, and something that you love, is a goal that only the truly talented can achieve. However, how are the local citizens to act when immigrants come into their country to take jobs away from the locals and make a great deal of money at the same time? The answer is, for the most part, local citizens embrace the athlete and his or her talents and hope that these athletes embrace the American way.

This paper has outlined a variety of labor aspects that the foreign-born athlete must take into consideration when he heads to the United States to play sports, whether it is professionally or not. The athlete must consider the legal aspects first and foremost. The issue of immigration and the laws that surround the foreign-born athlete to legally come to the United States must be adhered to. Some people might believe that these athletes receive special treatment, but that special treatment is with regard to getting them into the United States to play professional sports. However, all of the special treatment these athletes receive is within the letter of the law. This is clear because the United States has specific designations of these types of immigrants as outlined above. So, from a legal perspective, the United States government embraces these athletes.

The cultural aspect of these athletes coming into the Unites States might be where the feelings of resentment kick in. Xenophobia is the fear of foreigners and this fear runs rampant when immigrants come to the United States. However, this fear is usually seen when immigrants compete with Americans for jobs, something that does not occur in a sports context. The average fan is not really going to care if Yao Ming or Sammy Sosa adopts the ways of the average American. Also, the average American is not talented enough to make a professional sports team, so it is not like these athletes are competing with Americans for jobs. If there was an American more talented than these foreign-born athletes, then he is going to make the team. So, the cultural aspects involved with hoping a foreign-born sports star assimilates to the cultural norms of American is not a real factor Americans worry about. The emphasis is on the athlete’s ability to perform. Anything short of this is a non-factor, including cultural aspects.

The political aspects of the immigrants coming into the United States only gets difficult when there are differences in the political ideologies between the two countries to begin with. If the country where the migrant comes from is at odds already with the United States, then those feelings of hatred are reinforced. On the other hand, if the political climate between the two countries is good, or even fair, then there is not a problem. This is proven by the large amount of baseball players in Major League Baseball that hail from the Dominican Republic.

As with any situation there are always extenuating circumstances. This paper outlined the various situations that may arise when someone seeks United States citizenship. Specifically, this paper has outlined the residency requirements for athletes who wish to become American citizens in order to represent this country in the Olympics. If the athlete is talented, then he will be allowed to enter the United States, provided he meets the requirements set forth by the governing bodies. This paper also discussed the plight of Kwame James, an athlete, but actually a better hero than athlete. His case for immigration should be judged on his heroics and not necessarily his athletic ability.

Then there is the case of the non-highly skilled worker seeking to migrate to the United States. Again, it is in these instances that this author believes that American resentment takes place. There would have been a major uproar if your average American could not vie for the various front office positions that became available when the Montreal Expos moved to Washington, D.C.. If the Expos were allowed to bring all of their employees with them, then labor groups would have become very irate and fought to give those jobs to American citizens.

So, are these foreign-born athletes really stealing jobs from American citizens? Absolutely not. Making a professional sports team better should entail getting the best athletes from around the world. Professional sports leagues have embraced this idea by implementing worldwide drafts. The National Basketball Association does it, and Major League Baseball favors it as well (Carrell & Heavrin, 2004). Owners, managers, employees and fans want to win, want the team to be competitive, and want to field the most talented athletes in the world.

Are these athletes given special treatment? This is obvious, and expected, to get the athlete to come to the United States. However, being a professional sports star does not guarantee U.S. citizenship. There is no indication that these athletes receive special attention when, and if, they decide to become citizens of the United States.

References

Abbott, A. & Smith, D.R. (1984). Governmental constraints and labor market mobility. Work & Occupations, 11(1), 29-53.

Adams, R. (2004). Law keeps bulk of Expos staff from moving. The Sports Business Journal, p.47 Retrieved from, www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=article.preview&articleID=42295

Carrell, M.R., & Heavrin, C. (2004). Labor Relations and Collective Bargaining. Upper Saddle River, N.J: Pearson Prentice Hall.

Donnelly, P. (1997). Child labour, sport labour. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 32(4), 389 – 406.

Dyerson, M. (1998). Making the American Team, Sports Culture and the Olympic Experience. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press.

Gardiner, A., & O’Toole, T. (2002, July 11). Foreign athletes face more scrutiny, USA Today, p. C12.

Gems, G. R. (2001). Welfare capitalism and blue-collar sport: The legacy of labour unrest. Rethinking History, 1(5).

Gilbert, T. (1999, September). When baseball was Irish. World of Hibernia. Retrieved April 21, 2008, from http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb3593/is_199909/ai_n8540240

Hemphill, D.A. (1992). Sport, political ideology and freedom. Journal of Sport & Social Issues, 16(1), 15 – 33.

Jarvis, L. (2000). American dreams. Women’s Sports & Fitness, 3(3).

Maguire, J., & Pearton, R. (2000). The impact of elite labour migration on the identification, selection and development of European soccer players. Journal of Sports Sciences, 9(18).

Maguire, J. (1996). Blade runners: Canadian migrants, ice hockey, and the global sports process. Journal of Sport & Social Issues, 20(3), 335 – 360.

Maguire, J. (1994). Preliminary observations on globalization and the migration of sport labour. Sociological Review, 42(3), 452-480.

Mormino, G. R. (1982). Playing fields of St. Louis: Italian immigrants and sports: 1925-1941. Journal of Sport History, 9(2), 5-19.

O’Connor, I. (2003, February 12). Shoe-bomb hero deserves to stay. USA Today, p. C03.

Stodolska, M., & Alexandris, K. (2004). The role of recreational sport in the adaptation of first generation immigrants in the United States. Journal of Leisure Research, 36(3), 379-413.

United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. (n.d.a.) Retrieved April 5, 2008, from http://uscis.gov/graphics/services/visas.htm#P-

United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. (n.d.b.) Retrieved February 5, 2005, from http://uscis.gov/lpBin/lpext.dll/inserts/slb/slb-1/slb-21/slb- 456?f=templates&fn=document-frame.htm#slb-act101a15pi-

U.S. Sports Academy2013-11-25T19:45:42-06:00July 10th, 2009|Contemporary Sports Issues, Sports Management, Sports Studies and Sports Psychology|Comments Off

NCAA Website Coverage: Do Athletic Departments Provide Equitable Gender Coverage on Their Athletic Home Web Pages?

Submitted by: Coyte G. Cooper and Brandy D. Cooper – West Virginia University

Abstract

The purpose of the current research was to perform a content analysis on the gender coverage provided on intercollegiate athletic home Web pages. One of the primary reasons why the research is necessary is because it focuses on a not-for-profit media outlet with Title IX and ethical constraints due to the fact that the athletic departments are a part of their coinciding universities. Overall, when in comparison to the NCAA athlete and team independent standards, the results demonstrated that women were underrepresented in comparison to men within each of the units of measurement (e.g., advertisements, articles, multimedia, and photographs) presented within the study. The implications of the results are discussed further within the text. The data within the current study was collected from a dissertation that was performed by the author while attending Indiana University.

Keywords: intercollegiate athletic websites, gender coverage, college athletics

The Internet is a contemporary communication medium that provides sport organizations with the opportunity to communicate with both current and potential fan bases (Lombardo, 2007). In today’s realm of sports media, the Internet has become a major media source for fan consumption. Currently, there are hundreds of millions of Internet users worldwide, and the number of individuals accessing the World Wide Web increases at a rapid rate each year (Internet World Stats, 2007). Particularly, the Web has become a primary outlet for news consumption. While only four percent of the population went online to access news in 1995, today nearly 26% of the population accesses news content on the Web on a weekly basis (The Pew Research Center [TPRC], 2007). Furthermore, of the individuals accessing the Internet regularly, 46.5% claimed that sports were a primary entertainment source while browsing the Web (TPRC, 2007).

The mass consumption of sports news on the Internet alone makes it essential for scholars to focus on the sports coverage being provided on the Web. In addition to the growing interest, the Internet is also a unique medium, because it provides athletic teams and programs with an outlet to promote their product to fan segments. As a result, intercollegiate athletic programs have the ability to control the coverage being provided to each of their individual teams on their athletic home Web page. Thus, the athletic departments also have the unique opportunity to control the gender coverage being provided on their individual websites.

Since the athletic programs are part of their coinciding universities, the expectation would be that the athletic departments are providing equitable gender coverage on their websites due to Title IX constraints. Under Title IX, athletic institutions are required to provide women with equal opportunities within the general benefits and services program areas (Policy Interpretation, 2007). More specifically, in the “laundry list” of items stated under the third category of Title IX, athletic programs are expected to provide equitable promotions for women (National Association for Girls and Women in Sport [NAGWS], 2007). While the Internet coverage makes up only a portion of the promotional activities within the athletic department, it is still a viable concern when focusing on gender equity within college athletic programs. Furthermore, due to the fact that the universities are part of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), you would expect that the gender coverage would be equitable from an ethical standpoint as well. The current research attempted to understand the coverage provided on intercollegiate athletic websites by examining the gender coverage provided during an academic school year.

Review of Related Literature

In today’s society, the media has a major influence on the beliefs of individuals residing within our culture (Duncan, Messner, Williams, & Jensen, 1994; Kane, 1988). In fact, Coakley (1998) explained that by ignoring certain aspects of female participation in sport, the sports media is essentially shaping the public’s opinion on the value of female sports. Cunningham, Sagas, Satore, Amsden, and Schellhase (2004) added that “if girls and women are not represented in an equitable fashion by the media, then girls are not afforded the necessary exemplars to emulate” (p. 861). Thus, as a result, there is a chance that the future participation in sports can suffer, and as a result Pedersen (2002) explained that “females can lose out on the benefits provided in sports that can help them develop both professional and personal skills” (p. 420).

When focusing on past gender studies within sports settings, research has shown that women receive inequitable coverage allocations within each of the media outlets examined (Bishop, 2003; Cunningham, 2003; Duncan & Sayaovong, 1990). Recently, scholars have indicated that a difference exists in the gender coverage provided within for-profit (Cuneen & Sidwell, 1998; Fink & Kensicki, 2002) and not-for-profit (Huffman, Tuggle, & Rosengard, 2004) media outlets. Sagas, Cunningham, Wigley, and Ashley (2000) explained that a primary difference in the two types of media outlets is that for-profit sources tend to cater to the wants and needs of their customers in order to remain profitable. Cunningham et al. (2004) added the following:

Given the dependence upon consumers and consumer preferences among for-profit media sources, an alternative approach is to study the representation of men and women in not-for-profit media outlets, such as university newspapers, athletic department Internet Web sites, and/or the NCAA News, a publication of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (p. 862).

The NCAA News is a not-for-profit media outlet that has received attention from scholars in past research. Overall, research within the publication has demonstrated more favorable results for women when in comparison to for-profit media outlets (Shifflet & Revelle, 1994). Cunningham et al. (2004) confirmed the improvement in gender coverage in not-for-profit media outlets when reporting that women received 42.4% of the article coverage and 39.7% of the photographic coverage within the publication. The coverage rates presented in the study represent two of the most favorable coverage allocations for women in any media outlet.
An additional emphasis in research on not-for-profit media outlets has been the examination of gender coverage in media outlets with campus affiliation. Outside of the previous studies on the NCAA News (Cunningham et al., 2004; Shifflet & Revelle, 1994), the research on media outlets with a campus affiliation has demonstrated some of the most favorable coverage rates for women within intercollegiate athletic settings (Wann, Schrader, Allison, & McGeorge, 1998). One of the primary reasons for the more favorable coverage rates for women is the influence of Title IX on publications with campus affiliation. Additionally, Huffman et al. (2004) explained the following:

Because student journalists working for campus media belong to a generation that grew up with Title IX and because they live in college communities that include male and female student athletes, these student journalists might be more likely than professional media practitioners to cover athletes in a way that results in gender equity (p. 480).

While the coverage allocations have improved for women within not-for-profit media outlets, research has demonstrated that women are not fully represented within the campus media sources. In an analysis of campus newspapers, Wann et al. (1998) found that women were underrepresented when in direct comparison to both the female participation and enrollment rates at each of the coinciding universities examined in the study. In a similar study, Huffman et al. (2004) reiterated the previous results when demonstrating women received 27.3% of the overall newspaper coverage. Thus, despite small improvements, the results confirm that women are not fully represented within campus newspapers.

Recent research has also extended the analysis of media outlets with campus affiliation by focusing on the gender coverage provided on intercollegiate athletic websites (Sagas, Cunningham, Wigley, & Ashley, 2000). Sagas, Cunningham, Wigley, and Ashley (2000) provided an initial analysis when concluding that women’s softball teams were not fairly represented when in comparison to men’s baseball teams. Additionally, in a follow-up study, Cunningham and Sagas (2002) again demonstrated that the women’s softball team received less coverage than the men’s baseball team. On a positive note, the study demonstrated no difference in the coverage provided to the men’s and women’s basketball teams.

The purpose of the current study was to analyze the overall gender coverage provided to each of the teams contained within athletic departments on intercollegiate athletic websites. An analysis of the overall gender coverage provided on intercollegiate sites to each of the teams in the athletic department is essential for a couple of key reasons. First, as shown in the review of literature, it is clear that there is a limited amount of research available on the gender coverage provided on intercollegiate athletic websites. Further analysis would be beneficial in building new information on the media outlet. Second, in the limited research available, scholars have focused solely on the comparison between two to four similar female and male sport teams. Thus, the analysis of the coverage provided to each of the various teams housed within a college athletic department would provide new insight into the overall gender coverage rates offered on intercollegiate athletic websites. As a result, the current research provides additional depth that is useful to the literature on sports media coverage. Through an analysis of past related studies, the following hypotheses were created to guide the current research:

(1) Women will receive significantly less total overall [1A, 1B, 1C, 1D] coverage on intercollegiate athletic home Web pages than men, when in comparison to coinciding NCAA athlete and team gender participation rates.
1A) Advertisement
1B) Article
1C) Multimedia
1D) Photographic

(2) Women will receive significantly less non-scroll [2A, 2B, 2C, 2D] coverage on intercollegiate athletic home Web pages than men, when in comparison to coinciding NCAA athlete and team gender participation rates.
2A) Advertisement
2B) Article
2C) Multimedia
2D) Photographic

Methodology

The current research was a content analysis of the gender coverage provided on intercollegiate athletic home Web pages over an academic year. Particularly, the current research involved the analysis of the following four units of measurement on each individual athletic home Web page: advertisements, articles, multimedia content, and photographs. The decision was made to include the four categories, because it offers an opportunity to segment the coverage being provided on the websites. Thus, there was an opportunity not only to understand the overall gender coverage, but also to understand the gender coverage within higher quality coverage areas. Due to the nature of websites, there was an opportunity to further segment the coverage due to the fact that the sites offer advertisements and multimedia content. The advertisement content was characterized by the block advertisements provided to individual teams on athletic websites. The multimedia content was characterized as the audio and video content dedicated to individual teams on the home Web pages.

Sample
The data were collected from 30 athletic home Web pages during an academic school year. The data collection process involved a random selection of 30 programs from the NCAA Division I-A database. The sampling frame selected for the analysis was the 2005-2006 academic school year. Particularly, the following stratified samples were chosen to obtain a sample representative of each sports season presented during the school year: fall (October – December), winter (January – March), and spring (April – June). As recommended by Riffe, Lacy, and Fico (2005), a one-week random sample was taken from each of the sports seasons. Thus, the study included an analysis of 630 home Web pages during the academic year.

Data Collection
The data collection process involved a series of protocol that were developed to ensure reliability in the study. In order to accurately assess the coverage within each unit of measurement, the following measures were created to guide the coders during the data collection process: gender, location, and square inch coverage. As recommended by Malec (1994), the gender measure only included female and male, and did not include the “combined” and “neither” categories. In addition, the current research utilized a location measure that identified the area of the Web page where the coverage occurred. Similar to the front page newspaper coverage examined by Pedersen (2002), the study examined the non-scroll coverage directly available upon immediate access to the media outlet. In this case, the coverage was coined as “non-scroll” coverage, and this was characterized by the unit of measurement coverage appearing on the website prior to scrolling down the webpage. When multiple rotating stories were presented, each of the storylines were collected and considered as non-scroll coverage.

Data Analysis
Upon the completion of the data collection, the data were combined and calculated for data analysis. In order to examine the gender coverage differences, the Chi Square test was utilized in order to analyze the coverage within each of the units of measurement. Riffe, Lacy, and Fico (2005) explained that the Chi Square test is the most common statistical method used in content analysis research. Additionally, as stated by Pedersen (2002), it is necessary to develop an independent standard in order to compare the results to the expected outcome. The current research utilized the same independent standards adopted by Cunningham et al. (2004) in their analysis of the NCAA News: (1) NCAA individual athlete gender participation rates, and (2) NCAA team gender participation rates. The NCAA Sports Sponsorship and Participation Rates Report (NCAA Sports, 2006) was used to calculate both the percentage of athletes (women = 42.1%; men = 57.9%) and teams (women = 53.2%; men = 46.8%) participating in the NCAA. The rates were calculated according to the teams that were included in the study.

Results

Overall, the analysis of 630 intercollegiate athletic home Web pages produced 43,866 square inches for analysis. As shown in Table 1, the results demonstrated that the units of measurement each received the following square inch coverage allocations: advertisements (7,712 square inches), articles (19,311 square inches), multimedia (1,522 square inches), and photographic (15,321 square inches). Similarly, when focusing on location of the units of measurement, the results revealed that 57% of all of the coverage was considered non-scroll coverage. The results of the overall and non-scroll coverage for each of the units of measurement are presented in the following sections.

Table 1
Gender Coverage Allocations within the Four Units of Measurement

Gender	Advertisement	Article	Multimedia	Photograph
Men	5420(70.3%)	11587(60.0%)	1189(78.1%)	9240(60.3%)
Women	2292(29.7%)	7724(40.0%)	333(21.9%)	6081(39.7%)
Total	7712(100%)	19311(100%)	1522(100%)	15321(100%)

Note. Data in Square Inches and Percentages.

Article Coverage
The analysis of the article unit of measurement helped demonstrate the article coverage provided to women and men on intercollegiate athletic websites. In comparison to the other four units of measurement presented in the study, the results demonstrated that women received a slightly more favorable coverage allocation within the article unit of measurement. Overall, women received 40.0% of the total article coverage included in the study. Despite receiving a slightly higher coverage allocation, the Chi Square comparison (Table 3) revealed a significant difference than men when in comparison to the 42.1% female athlete participation rate (x² = 34.95, df 1, p < .05) and 53.2% female team participation rate (x² = 1351.86, df 1, p < .05).

Further analysis of the article unit of measurement demonstrated that women received a less favorable coverage allocation when focusing on the location of the coverage. In comparison to the number of female athletes active at the intercollegiate level, the results showed that the 36.4% non-scroll article coverage rate provided to women was significantly below the 63.6% coverage allocation offered to men (x² = 1351.86, df 1, p < .05). Similarly, when in comparison to team participation rates, the results illustrated that women were once again underrepresented when in comparison to men (x² = 868.57, df 1, p < .05).

Advertisement Coverage
In the analysis of the advertisement unit of measurement, the results demonstrated that women received 29.7% of all of the advertisement coverage included on the intercollegiate websites. In comparison, males received 70.3% of the overall advertisement coverage included during the study. As shown in Table 4, when in comparison to the overall female athlete (x² = 484.87, df 1, p < .05) and team participation rates (x² = 1707.68, df 1, p < .05), the advertisement allocation provided to women was significantly less than the advertisement coverage provided to men on the athletic sites.

Similar to the previous article unit of measurement, women received an even less favorable coverage allocation when focusing on the non-scroll advertisement coverage. In fact, the difference between the overall advertisement coverage and the non-scroll advertisement coverage represented an 8.8% decrease in coverage. When in comparison to athlete participation rates, the results confirmed that women received significantly less advertisement coverage in prime locations when in comparison to men (x² = 638.99, df 1, p < .05). Further analysis demonstrated that women were further underrepresented when in comparison to NCAA team participation rates (x² = 1452.13, df 1, p < .05).

Multimedia Coverage
Overall, when in comparison to the other units of measurement, the multimedia coverage area contained the least favorable coverage allocations for women. Particularly, as illustrated in Table 5, the investigation showed that the 21.9% multimedia coverage allocation provided to women was significantly less than the 78.1% coverage allocation provided to men (x² = 254.50, df 1, p <.05). Furthermore, when in comparison to team participation rates, the results demonstrated that women received slightly less favorable coverage allocations x² = 597.16, df 1, p < .05). Thus, women received even less coverage within units of measurement with a higher potential to influence fan consumption habits.

Similar to the article and advertisement coverage, the analysis of non-scroll multimedia coverage revealed a coverage allocation slightly below the 21.9% overall multimedia coverage rate provided to women. Overall, the Chi Square analysis helped determine that the 20.4% non-scroll multimedia coverage rate provided to women was significantly less the 79.6% coverage rate provided to men (x² = 164.56, df 1, p < .05). Similarly, the analysis also confirmed that females were severely underrepresented as well when in comparison to the NCAA team participation rates (x² = 367.64, df 1, p < .05).

Photographic Coverage
Overall, when in comparison to the other units of measurement, the photographic coverage area represented the second most favorable unit of measurement coverage for women. Despite demonstrating a more favorable coverage allocation, the 39.7% photographic coverage allocation provided to women was significantly lower than the 60.3% coverage allocation provided to men when in comparison to the individual athlete independent standard (x² = 36.5, df 1, p < .05). Similarly, the results also confirmed that women were underrepresented in comparison to men when focusing on the NCAA team coverage rates (x² = 1123.05, df 1, p < .05).

Despite still remaining underrepresented when in comparison to men (x² = 100.33, df 1,
p < .05), the 37.7% non-scroll photographic coverage allocation provided to women was the most favorable non-scroll unit of measurement rate provided to women during the investigation. While the coverage allocation is somewhat favorable, the results showed that females still received significantly less coverage than men when in comparison to the 53.2% female NCAA team participation rate (x² = 1248.36, df 1, p < .05). Thus, as a result, women received significantly less coverage than men in each of the units of measurement examined during the study.

Discussion

Similar to the study performed by Cunningham et al. (2004), the essential question when analyzing the gender results is to ask the question whether the glass is half full or whether the glass is half empty. In other words, the significance of the results provided to females within the study was dependent upon how you chose to interpret the data. On one hand, there was a unique opportunity to demonstrate a favorable response when the data were compared to past content analyses focusing on gender coverage in sports media outlets (Bishop, 2003; Fink & Kensicki, 2002). On the other hand, the results were not as promising when the data were compared to NCAA athlete and team gender participation rates (NCAA Sports, 2006). Depending on the area of focus, the glass could have either been half full or half empty.

A Revisited Perspective – Half Empty
An ideal starting point for analyzing the coverage allocations provided to women in the current study involved the direct comparison of results to present NCAA gender participation rates. When focusing on the comparison with NCAA athlete (42.1%) and team (53.2%) gender participation rates, the results revealed that the women were underrepresented in comparison to males in each of the units of measurement analyzed. In addition to the investigation of overall coverage allocation and units of measurement coverage allocations, the current research added depth by focusing on the coverage provided to women in prime website locations. Similar to a study performed by Pedersen (2002), the results of the study confirmed that women received slightly less favorable coverage allocations when focusing on the non-scroll coverage. Thus, the results confirmed that women received less attention than men in locations with more potential to reach fan segments.

In addition to the analysis of non-scroll coverage, the current research also provided additional insight by further segmenting the types of coverage offered on intercollegiate athletic websites. Overall, the segmentation provided the opportunity to examine the gender coverage being provided in the units of measurement with a higher potential to influence fan consumption habits. Thus, the lower coverage allocations within the advertisement (29.7%) and multimedia (21.9%) units of measurement for females is somewhat disappointing considering the coverage areas tend to draw more attention than your traditional article and photographic units of measurement.

The lack of coverage allocated to females on websites is a critical issue for a variety of different reasons. As illustrated by Cunningham et al. (2004), when females are not provided equitable coverage, then younger generations of athletes are not provided with role models to emulate. Thus, there is an opportunity that future participation interest in female sports will suffer because athletic departments are sending the message that female athletic teams are not important. Furthermore, with a potential lack of opportunities, females can lose out on important professional skills that are learned through participation in sports. In order to ensure that females are provided with an equal opportunity to succeed within intercollegiate athletics, athletic departments must provided equitable coverage allocations to female athletes.

A Varying Perspective – Half Full
An additional perspective on the gender coverage that was provided during the study is that the results were promising when in comparison to past content analyses on sports media outlets (Huffman et al., 2004). As previously mentioned, the results can potentially be seen as a step forward for women when judging them based upon past research focusing on for-profit media outlets. For example, when in comparison to the 10% of overall article and photographic coverage provided to women in Sports Illustrated (Fink & Kensicki, 2002), the article (40%) and photographic (39.7%) coverage provided to women in the current study helps demonstrate an overall improvement in the type of coverage being offered to female athletes.

An additional area of consideration when evaluating the results from the current study involves the direct comparison to content analyses examining not-for-profit media outlets (Sagas et al., 2004; Shifflet & Revelle, 1994). When in comparison to the not-for-profit media outlets, the results of the study are still somewhat promising. Overall, while the 40% article coverage rate is slightly lower than the allocation reported by Cunningham et al. (2004), the results confirmed an identical photographic coverage rate (39.7%) when in comparison to the previous study. Despite the fact that the article coverage is slightly lower than that which was reported by Cunningham et al. (2004), the results are still very promising considering the fact that the study focused on the coverage being provided on intercollegiate athletic websites. In contrast, the previous study by Cunningham et al. (2004) had focused on the gender coverage within the NCAA News. Thus, the results overall helped confirm that the glass seems to be half full due to the fact that women were being taken seriously within the not-for-profit intercollegiate athletic websites.

Conclusion

In future years, it is critical that minority groups of athletes receive an equal opportunity to succeed within intercollegiate athletic environments. In order to ensure equitable participation opportunities, athletic departments must monitor coverage on their home Web page to ensure that females are receiving fair coverage allocations. Particularly, there needs to be an emphasis on higher quality coverage areas to ensure that female sport teams are being provided with significant advertisement and multimedia content. Additionally, it is critical that females are provided with sufficient amounts of non-scroll coverage so that they are recognized as important entities to athletic programs in future years.

In addition to the previously addressed concerns, the gender coverage on intercollegiate athletic websites is also important for another crucial reason: the intercollegiate websites set gender coverage precedence for independent media outlets without NCAA affiliation. After all, when athletic departments provide inequitable gender coverage on their home websites, they are sending a message to independent media outlets that female sports participation is not important. As a result, independent media outlets such as Sports Illustrated and USA Today have even less incentive to cover female athletics in their publications. Thus, it is critical that athletic departments understand the importance of setting a positive precedence for independent media outlets.

In the future, it will be important that scholars continue to focus on the gender coverage being provided on intercollegiate athletic websites. A limitation of the current research is that it focused on the gender coverage on the websites during an academic year. In order to provide additional insight, future research should examine the gender coverage over a longer time frame to determine whether the coverage provided to females is improving over time. Additionally, scholars could also provide additional depth to the study by investigating the gender coverage provided during the summer months.

In addition to the investigation of intercollegiate athletic websites, future studies should also focus on identifying the gender coverage being provided on a variety of different sites featured on the Internet. For example, scholars could focus on the units of measurement coverage provided on conference websites to determine the message being sent by NCAA conferences. Furthermore, in addition to the gender coverage provided on sites with NCAA affiliation, future research should also examine the individual team coverage being provided on websites. The identification of individual team coverage not only provides data to alleviate gender inequalities, it offers an opportunity to understand the men’s nonrevenue teams receiving inequitable coverage allocations.

References

Bishop, R. (2003). Missing in action: Feature coverage of women’s sports in Sports Illustrated. Journal of Sport & Social Issues, 27(2), 184-194.

Coakly, J. J. (1998). Sport in society: Issues and controversies. Boston: McGraw-Hill.

Cuneen, J., & Sidwell, M. J. (1998). Gender portrayals in Sports Illustrated for kids advertisements: A content analysis of prominent and supporting models. Journal of Sport Management, 12(1), 39-50.

Cunningham, G. B. (2003). Media coverage of women’s sport: A new look at an old problem. Physical Educator, 60(2), 43-50.

Cunningham, G. B., & Sagas, M. (2002). Utilizing a different perspective: Brand equity and media coverage of intercollegiate athletics. International Sports Journal, 6, 134-145.

Cunningham, G. B., Sagas, M., Satore, M. L., Amsden, M. L., & Schellhase, A. (2004). Gender representation in the NCAA News: Is the glass half full or half empty? Sex Roles: A Journal of Research, 50(11/12), 861-870.

Duncan, M. C., Messner, M. A., Williams, L., & Jensen, K. (1994). Gender stereotyping in television sports. In S. Birrell & C. L. Cole (Eds.), Women, culture, and sport. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.

Duncan, M. C., Messner, M. A., & Jensen, K. (1994). Gender stereotyping in televised sport: A follow-up to the 1989 study. Champaign Ill.: Human Kinetics. Retrieved May 8, 2007, from http://www.aafla.org/Publications/ResearchReports/ResearchReports3_.htm.

Duncan, M. C., & Sayaovong, A. (1990). Photographic images and gender in Sports Illustrated for kids. Play and Culture, 3, 91-116.

Fink, J., & Kensicki, L. (2002). An imperceptible difference: Visual and textual constructions of femininity in Sports Illustrated and Sports Illustrated for Women. Mass Communication & Society, 5(3), 317-339.

Huffman, S., Tuggle, C. A., & Rosengard, D. S. (2004). How campus media cover sports: The gender-equity issue, one generation later. Mass Communication & Society, 7(4), 475- 489.

Internet world stats: Usage and population statistics. (2007). Top 20 countries with the highest Internet users. Retrieved February 23, 2007, from the World Wide Web
http://www.internetworldstats.com/top20.htm

Kane, M. J. (1988). Media coverage of the female athlete before, during, and after Title IX: Sports Illustrated revisited. Journal of Sport Management, 2(2), 87-99.

Lombardo, J. (2007, March 5). Blazers first with social networking site. Street & Smith’s Sports Business Journal, 9(43), 3.

Malec, M. A. (1994). Gender (in) equity in the NCAA News? Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 18(4), 376-378.

NCAA Sports Sponsorship and Participation Rates Report. (2006). The Online Resource for the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). Retrieved February 21, 2008, from http://www.ncaa.org/library/research/participation_rates/1982-2006/1982_2006_participation_rates.pdf

National Association for Girls and Women in Sport. (2007). Title IX – The law and its implications. Retrieved October 25, 2007, from http://www.aahperd.org/nagws/template.cfm?template=titleix/law.html

NCAA Members by Division. (2007). The Online Resource for the National Collegiate Athletic Association. Retrieved October 25, 2007, from http://web1.ncaa.org/onlineDir/exec/divisionListing

Pedersen, P. M. (2002). Investigating interscholastic equity on the sports page: A content analysis of high school athletics newspaper articles. Sociology of Sport Journal, 19(4), 419-432.

Policy interpretation: Title IX and intercollegiate athletics (2007). U.S. Department of Education. Retrieved October 25, 2007, from http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/t9interp.html.

Riffe, D., Lacy, S., & Fico, F. G. (2005). Analyzing media messages: Using quantitative content analysis in research (2nd ed.). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Sagas, M., Cunningham, G. B., Wigley, B. J., & Ashley, F. B. (2000). Internet coverage of university softball and baseball websites: The inequity continues. Sociology of Sport Journal, 17, 198-205.

Shifflet , B., & Revelle, R. (1994). Equity revisited. Journal of Sport & Social Issues, 18(4), 379-383.

The Internet news audience goes ordinary. (1999, January 14). Pew Research Center. Retrieved October 25, 2007, from http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=72

Title IX, Educational Amendments of 1972 (Title 20 U.S.C. Sections 1681-1688). (1972). U.S. Department of Labor. Retrieved October 25, 2007, from
http://www.dol.gov/oasam/regs/statutes/titleix.htm

Wann, D. L., Schrader, M. P., Allison, J. A., & McGeorge, K. K. (1998). The inequitable newspaper coverage of men’s and women’s athletics at small, medium, and large universities. Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 22(1), 79-87.

U.S. Sports Academy2016-04-01T09:42:22-05:00April 24th, 2009|Contemporary Sports Issues, Sports Management, Women and Sports|Comments Off

Is Revenue Sharing Working for Major League Baseball? A Historical Perspective

Submitted by: Michael R. Elanjian and Dessislava A. Pachamanova – Babson College

Abstract

This article attempts to evaluate whether the system of revenue sharing in Major League Baseball since 2000 (after the Blue Ribbon Panel report) has had a statistically significant effect on team revenues, payroll, attendance, and performance. Analysis of data for two distinct time periods, 1995-2000 and 2001-2007, suggests that since the adoption of the current revenue sharing system (1) the ratio of the highest to lowest team revenue has decreased; (2) the marginal effect of revenue on performance as measured by percentage of wins during the regular season has improved in a way that has benefitted lower-revenue teams; (3) the payroll expenditures of the lowest revenue quartile teams have increased significantly; and (4) attendance levels for the lowest revenue quartile teams have increased slightly. Historical trend analysis suggests, however, that the system is working slowly.
(more…)

U.S. Sports Academy2016-10-12T14:59:55-05:00April 24th, 2009|Contemporary Sports Issues, Sports Management, Sports Studies and Sports Psychology|Comments Off

Is That a Real LeBron Ball? RFID and Sports Memorabilia

Submitted by: David C. Wyld – Southeastern Louisiana University

Abstract

The sports memorabilia marketplace today is a multibillion-dollar, global market. However, it is fraught with hazards, due to the large percentage of counterfeit memorabilia, which some estimates peg at 90% of all items on the market. This article overviews the sports memorabilia market and the growing problem of counterfeit items. Then, it examines the prospect for radio frequency identification (RFID) to be used to provide a verifiable chain of custody for articles of sports memorabilia – from the point the item is signed through all subsequent transfers. The article concludes with an analysis of the implications of the introduction of such track and trace authentication technology into this fragmented marketplace and the benefits for all parties involved in sports collectibles.

Keywords: radio frequency identification, chain of custody, authentication, sports memorabilia

Introduction

Autograph seekers. They are a part of every professional – and often amateur – athlete’s life. They are a fixture at sports teams’ training camps, host hotels and stadiums, and anywhere these signature collectors know that athletes will have to pass through on their way to or from an event. They also are a part of the well-known athlete’s every move, as autograph seekers can make it uncomfortable, even impossible, for athletes and their families to enjoy a meal in public or a trip to an amusement park. Many of these autograph hunters are kids, looking to get that one autograph of the professional baseball or football star they admire–the one whose poster they have hanging over their bed. Some of the signature hounds are adults, looking to have literally any athlete they can find sign any team item such as a ball, a bat, a helmet, a jersey, a game program, or so forth, in order to turn an ordinary item into a collectible.

The motivation of many of these autograph seekers is indeed innocent, hoping to have a memento of their favorite athlete or sports team for their wall or mantle. The kid who admires his or her favorite sports star, whether it’s Tiger Woods, Brett Favre, Kobe Bryant, Alex Rodriguez, or David Beckham, can have a lasting memory not just from the signed item but from their brief encounter with a sports legend. All too often however, the motive for the autograph seeker is money. Indeed, the chance is there to cash-in on an athlete’s celebrity, and the players and their teams know it. The worst of the lot are grown-ups who hire children to seek out star’s autographs on a paid basis; they work on the premise that the “cute kid factor” might entice the sports star to stop and sign an item for a 9-year-old child that they wouldn’t for a 40-year-old man. As Baseball Hall of Famer Robin Yount commented, “There is money to be made out there on autographs, (and) you see more people doing it these days for that reason — the business end of it” (Olson, 2006, n.p.).

Yet, the real truth of the matter is that while a signed article can be a point of personal pride, even perhaps a family heirloom, the actual value of the item to knowledgeable sports memorabilia collectors is very limited. That is because of the need to provide verifiable proof of the autographed item’s authenticity. Yes, you may have been at the New Orleans Saints’ training camp in Jackson, Mississippi (as my sons and I were this past summer) and personally witnessed star running back Reggie Bush autograph a football. However, if you were to want to sell the ball, as opposed to displaying it on a shelf in your son’s room, there’s no irrefutable proof that could assure the first buyer, let alone subsequent buyers in the future, as to the validity of Bush’s signature. Not that this stops autograph seekers from trying day after day to get that elusive personalization of basketballs by LeBron James, footballs by Peyton Manning, baseballs by Derek Jeter, and item after item by a myriad of stars. So disruptive to athlete’s lives are some autograph hounds that teams today commonly limit access to their players, not just out of concern for their economic well-being but for their physical safety as well (Maske and Lee, 2007). And, some athletes, such as Michael Jordan, make it publicly known that they will not sign an autograph except through the special events (and often private signing days) for agencies they have contracted with to represent them in what has become an increasingly lucrative market for athletes, supplementing, or even exceeding, what they make on the field by simply signing their names (Johns, n.d.; Fisher, 2000).

The sports memorabilia market today is a global marketplace, estimated to generate revenues in excess of $5 billion annually (Friess, 2007). Items of sports memorabilia are sold in a variety of venues, including physical and online stores, shows and auctions, and in private sales (Smith, n.d.). Small, independent “mom and pop” sports memorabilia stores were once a staple of strip malls across America. According to industry observers, the number of such stores has plummeted from approximately 4,700 a decade ago to just over a thousand today (Keteyian, 2006). Much of this decline can be traced to the shifting of buying and selling sports memorabilia to eBay and other major online auction sites, much as has occurred with other collectibles, such as coins, stamps and antique items (National Auctioneers Association, 2008). However, the ease of access and widening of the marketplace has fostered an explosion of online memorabilia sales. One can see evidence of this by punching in any well-known athlete’s name on eBay, and whether you search for David Beckham, Muhammad Ali, Tiger Woods, or even a lesser known star, you will come-up with dozens, even hundreds, of autographed items up for sale at any given time.

However, the move to greater online sales has only worsened the problem with counterfeit sports memorabilia (Van Riper, 2007). Indeed, it is a market unlike any other, due to the giant presence of counterfeit items. In fact, one law enforcement official described the sports memorabilia market today as being “like the Wild, Wild West” (Keteyian, 2006). Market analyst Havoscope (2008) has concluded that over half of the sports memorabilia market is comprised of counterfeit items. The official estimate from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is that 70% of all signed sports collectibles on the market in the U.S. are counterfeit (Fisher, 2000); forged signatures on items which themselves may or may not be what they are purported to be (after all, even official merchandise from sports leagues and special events, such as Super Bowls, World Cups, or World Series, can be faked). Industry observers believe the true figure to be even higher, ranging to upwards of 90% of all sports collectibles (Prova Group, 2006)! Thus, this is perhaps the ultimate example of a caveat emptor (buyer beware) market.

Anyone can buy a piece of sports memorabilia to hang on the wall or show in a display case, and, if you’re happy with the price you paid for it, all the better. However, unless you personally witnessed the athlete signing the football or the baseball bat, the odds are that the item is not worth any more than what you would have paid for an unsigned version at a local sporting goods store. Thus, there is a great need to have a solution that can assure buyers and sellers of the authenticity of an item, not just presently, but into the future. As we will examine, the certification process today itself is problematic and only contributes to the problem.

For the first time, the advent of radio frequency identification (RFID) technology provides an opportunity for the sports memorabilia marketplace to have the ability for buyers and sellers alike to rely upon a readily accessible and verifiable “chain of custody” for autographed items from the time they are signed by the athlete through all subsequent sales and transfers. In doing so, trust can be built into what has historically been an untrustworthy marketplace, assuring confidence and supporting the genuineness and value of items of sports memorabilia. The author presents both an overview of the sports memorabilia marketplace and RFID technology and follows up with a look at how RFID is being used today to authenticate and to track autographed items of all forms. The article concludes with a look ahead at the implications of the introduction of this new technology and a discussion of what lies ahead.

The Sports Memorabilia Market

A baseball is just a ball until it is signed by a star player. A jersey is just a big shirt until it is worn by an all-star. Then, such items are worth a lot of money, right? Oh, that it were that simple. The terms sports memorabilia and sports collectibles are all too often used interchangeably in the marketplace. According to the recent publication, A Comprehensive Guide to Collecting Sports Memorabilia, the two terms can be differentiated in the following manner: “Photos, cards, jerseys or related sports equipment that have been signed by an athlete are considered memorabilia when that signature has been certified by a reputable distributor. Replica and authentic sports products that are unsigned, or are signed but not authenticated, are considered collectibles” (SportsMemorabilia.com, 2008, n.p., emphasis in the original).

The sports memorabilia market can be segmented into two very distinct segments: trusted sources and other. Trusted sources include both sports memorabilia shows and sports marketing agencies (Fisher, 2000). In the former category, there are a growing number of such events, where athletes are available, generally on a paid basis, to sign a limited number of items, both brought in by fans and bought at the show. At these shows, items are signed, with witnesses present and able to authenticate the athlete’s signature on a certificate of authenticity (COA). This certification is what raises the status and value of an item from being a sports collectible to becoming an item of sports memorabilia (Branton, 2008). The second trusted source is the sports agencies that contract with athletes to be exclusive purveyors of their autographed merchandise. In the United States, the market leaders are companies such as the following:

ALL Authentic (http://www.allauthentic.com/)
Mounted Memories (http://www.mountedmemories.com/)
Steiner Sports (http://www.steinersports.com/)
Upper Deck (http://www.upperdeck.com/) (Johns, n.d.).

Take Upper Deck for instance. This sports marketing agency has multi-million dollar contracts with current and former athletes from a whole host of sports, including basketball (NBA players Michael Jordan, LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, Dwight Howard, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Magic Johnson), baseball (Albert Pujols, Ken Griffey Jr., Cal Ripken Jr., Sandy Koufax, Nolan Ryan, and Stan Musial), football (Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Tony Romo, Troy Aikman, John Elway, and Joe Montana), and golf (Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus). Upper Deck is a market leader not just because of its status as the exclusive retailer for these star athletes of today and yesterday, but also for its 5-step certification process that stamps the item with a unique hologram and provides the owner with a certificate of authenticity and registration with the Upper Deck database. The company is even using with what it calls its PenCam™ technology, which the company had the misfortune to launch on September 11, 2001 (Henninger, 2002). The PenCam provides further authentication assurance by providing a video capture from–you guessed it–a pen equipped with a tiny video camera that captures the actual signature of the athlete on the item as it is being rendered, which is then recorded and accessible on the company’s database (The Upper Deck Company, 2008).

Items from trusted agencies do command premium prices, due to the fact that buyers and sellers alike have a very reliable chain of custody for their items of sports memorabilia. However, the vast majority of the sports memorabilia market is a murky, “other” place. In most cases, both offline and online, it is a very untrustworthy market, filled with intentionally counterfeited signed sports paraphernalia and fake items that are being bought and sold by mostly unknowing participants (SportsMemorabilia.com, 2008).

The entire sports memorabilia market in the U.S., and indeed around the world, is still reeling from the 2001 bust of a major fraud ring. In Operation Bullpen, the FBI arrested almost two dozen individuals, most of which served prison time for their involvement in the counterfeit sports memorabilia scheme. The enterprise, which operated across more than a dozen states, had expert forgers who could quickly produce entire lots of phony memorabilia. The 2001 raid yielded thousands of fraudulently signed baseballs, jerseys, helmets, photos, and other articles. The damage however, had already been done, and it continues to this day. In all, the FBI estimates that over $100 million in fake memorabilia was sold through the scheme, much of which is still on the market today, being traded by often-unsuspecting buyers and even sellers. The FBI found that not only could the forgers create knock-offs that could fool even the most knowledgeable sports memorabilia authenticator or collector, they uncovered that the criminals had turned the authentication process to their advantage. This is because the crooks were equally adept at falsifying the COAs and holograms put in place in the industry to assure the genuineness of the items (Nelson, 2006).

While 2001s Operation Bullpen was the largest fraud scheme uncovered in the sports memorabilia market to date, criminal arrests continue to plague the industry, with several cases reported in 2008 (Coen, 2008). The FBI estimates that such fraud makes for over a half a billion dollars in annual losses, impacting thousands of customers, and making it more difficult both for athletes to retain the value of their names and for legitimate firms to compete in a skeptical marketplace (Smith, n.d.; Johns, n.d.).

One of the major problem points for the whole memorabilia sales and trading process is the certificate of authenticity that accompanies an item. Ostensibly in place to provide a potential buyer with the assurance that the item he or she is considering purchasing is a genuine article, but today, the effect is almost the opposite. This is because of rampant fraud in the creation of these COAs. Today, there is no industry standard for certification process or for the paper COA itself. Thus, there are rampant problems with these documents. Some fraudulent memorabilia sellers create their own fake COAs to accompany their fake items (SportsMemorabilia.com, 2008; Smith, n.d.; Johns, n.d.). While there are several reputable third-party certification services, who will analyze an item and its history to determine its authenticity, there are also disreputable ones, known to certify, in the words of one law enforcement official, “almost anything” (Franks, 2006).

What is clearly needed today is a true chain of custody capability to authenticate items of sports memorabilia from the athlete’s signature through all future trades of the article. With the rampant fraud issues, which can only be exacerbated by both the high dollars attached to many athletes’ items and the accelerating technology that can be used to create both forged articles and proofs of authenticity, there is certainly a common interest for memorabilia collectors, athletes, sports marketing agencies, and the stores, shows and auctions (both online and offline) where the items are bought and sold to develop, for lack of a better term, a fool-proof solution. RFID presents the prospect for just such an incontrovertible chain of custody solution for this marketplace.

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID)

Conceptually, RFID is quite similar to the venerable bar code. Both are automatic identification technologies intended to provide rapid and reliable item identification and tracking capabilities. The primary difference between the two technologies is the way in which they read objects. With bar coding, the reading device scans a printed label with optical laser or imaging technology. However, with RFID, the reading device scans, or interrogates, a small electronic tag or label using radio frequency signals. The specific differences between bar code technology and RFID are summarized in Table 1. There are five primary advantages that RFID has over bar codes. These are as follows:

Each RFID tag can have a unique code that ultimately allows every tagged item to be individually accounted for.
RFID allows for information to be read by radio waves from a tag, without requiring line of sight scanning or human intervention.
RFID allows for virtually simultaneous and instantaneous reading of multiple tags.
RFID tags can hold far greater amounts of information, which can be updated.
RFID tags are far more durable. (Wyld, 2005)

Table 1

RFID and Bar Codes Compared

Bar Code Technology	RFID Technology
Bar Codes require line of sight to be read	RFID tags can be read or updated without line of sight
Bar Codes can only be read individually	Multiple RFID tags can be read simultaneously
Bar Codes cannot be read if they become dirty or damaged	RFID tags are able to cope with harsh and dirty environments
Bar Codes must be visible to be logged	RFID tags are ultra thin and can be printed on a label, and they can be read even when concealed within an item
Bar Codes can only identify the type of item	RFID tags can identify a specific item
Bar Code information cannot be updated	Electronic information can be over-written repeatedly on RFID tags
Bar Codes must be manually tracked for item identification, making human error an issue	RFID tags can be automatically tracked, eliminating human error

RFID is being introduced today across a variety of industries to better identify and control individual items, ranging from health care applications (Wyld, 2008 a, b) to the food service and gaming industries (Wyld, 2008c). Major retailers, such as Wal-Mart and Target in the United States and Metro and TESCO in Europe are making major investments in RFID technology, believing that this is the future of retail inventory control, supplanting the venerable bar code method of item identification (Wyld, 2007a, Wessel, 2008). Today, we are seeing exciting in-store applications in bookstores (Collins, 2006), pharmacies (O’Connor, 2008), electronics retailing (Swedberg, 2007a), and grocery stores (Swedberg, 2007b), bringing about new possibilities in customer service, business intelligence, and inventory management.

The RFID Solution for Sports Memorabilia

RFID has seen ongoing development in sports-related applications, being utilized in a variety of manners, from timing marathon runners and race cars to helping golfers find errant golf balls, and even off the field in the important areas of ticketing and event staff tracking (Wyld, 2006). Now, RFID is poised to become the latest weapon for retailers to deploy in this arms race against shoplifting, especially in light of the increasingly aggressive and sophisticated threat coming from the organized retail crime element.

The leading company today attempting to apply an RFID-based solution to authenticating sports memorabilia is the Irving, Texas-based Prova Group (http://www.provagroup.com/). Prova is currently marketing its patented Autograph Certification SystemTM for use at signing events and trade shows (Anonymous, 2008a). The concept, according to Daniel Werner, the firm’s Vice President of Marketing: “Prova decided early on to create a system that works at the moment of the signing that would put authentication in a database and lock that information onto an RFID tag” (quoted in Swedberg, 2007c, n.p.). As such, the tag is applied to the item prior to signing, and then, at the point of signing, the tag is read by and entered into the Prova database, recording who, when, and where the autograph took place. Once an item is registered in Prova’s Online Registry, the registered owner is able to print a certificate of authenticity on demand and to share the tagged item’s complete history, its chain of custody, with interested buyers or other collectors. Further, if a collector wishes to add additional signatures to an item (such as having an entire championship team autograph a football or basketball or adding the autograph of a current star, say Tony Romo, to a ball previously signed by a historic quarterback, such as Bart Starr or Joe Namath), the Prova RFID tag can record each separately and provide proof of authenticity for each autograph (Branton, 2008). The Prova system makes use of two form factors of high-frequency, 13.56 MHz passive tags for different sized collectibles, the smallest of which measures 1 inch by ¼ inch. Both of the tag forms are supplied by X-ident Technology (http://www.x-ident.com/), based in Düren, Germany. The system has been employed at special events where up to 4,000 items of memorabilia have been authenticated by Prova. And now, the firm is shifting from fixed reader stations to hand-held readers from Toronto-based Sirit (http://www.sirit.com/) to enable easier certification, as well as seeking ways to minimize the amount of data that has to be input to certify each individual autograph to speed the process (Swedberg, 2007c).

Analysis

Interjecting RFID into the sports memorabilia market certainly parallels other auto-ID technological applications, most notably pharmaceuticals (Faber, 2008) and government-issued forms of identification, including passports (O’Connor, 2007) and driver’s licenses (Anonymous, 2008b). With these application areas, there is a significant threat of counterfeit items. While there is undoubtedly a far greater threat of personal harm from the use of fake prescription drugs or the use of phony passports or ID cards than a forged signature of Alex Rodgriquez on a photo or baseball card, RFID has proven to be an effective solution in these areas. Furthermore, the high dollars involved means that the return on investment (ROI) potential is significant, as the ratio of the cost of the tag to the value of the item it is affixed to can be quite low indeed. Indeed, with an unauthenticated item basically being worthless, the need to shift to an auto-ID solution is quite clear. While the sports memorabilia industry is highly fragmented, with large agencies and thousands of small sellers, and perhaps millions of collectors, a coordinated strategy is highly unlikely. However, if the major sports marketing agencies choose independently or collectively to implement Prova or another provider’s RFID solution, this would go a long way toward making RFID-based authentication a reality in the sports memorabilia industry. As shown in Figure 1, this would help protect the interests of all legitimate players in the marketplace. In doing so, an industry, best known today for being susceptible to anyone with a box of baseballs and a SharpieTM pen, can restore trust and value to its marketplace.

Figure 1: The Value of RFID to the Sports Memorabilia Industry

References

Branton, F. (2008, July). RFID tags enable mobile authentication platform [Electronic version]. Integrated Solutions Magazine. Erie, PA: Jameson Publishing. Retrieved August 20, 2008, from http://www.integratedsolutionsmag.com/index.php?option=com_jambozine&layout=article&view=page&aid=5789

Coen, J. (2008, August 5). Burr Ridge auctioneers subpoenaed in sports memorabilia fraud probe, sources say: Authorities said to be investigating possible ‘shill bidding’ to drive up prices on collectibles [Electronic version]. The Chicago Tribune. Retrieved September 15, 2008, from http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-sports-auction-probeaug05,0,7860148.story

Collins, J. (2006, April 18). Bookstore RFID-enables its operations: One of Holland’s largest booksellers has integrated RFID into the operations of its brand-new store [Electronic version]. RFID Journal. Retrieved November 20, 2006, from http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/articleview/2273/

Faber, P. (2008, January 21). RFID strategy–Pharmaceutical e-pedigree – Biggest supply chain topic of 2008: This chain-of-custody record will be used to assure the integrity and safety of the nation’s drug supply. Industry Week. Retrieved March 19, 2008, from http://www.industryweek.com/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=15664

Fisher, E. (2000, September 18). Bona fides: Insight on the News. BNET Business Net. Retrieved May 17, 2006, from http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1571/is_/ai_65493875

Franks, T. (2006, June 21). Certificates of authenticity: Are they worth the paper they are printed on? Fine Art Registry. Retrieved July 28, 2008, from http://www.fineartregistry.com/articles/franks_teri/certificate_authenticity_worth_06-21-2006.php

Friess, S. (2007, October 1). For troubled stars, a fickle memorabilia market [Electronic version]. The New York Times. Retrieved October 10, 2008, from http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/01/us/01oj.html

Havoscope (2008).Havoscope Black Market Counterfeit Goods Index. Retrieved July 28, 2008, from http://www.havocscope.com/Counterfeit/sportsent.htm

Henninger, W. (2002, March 4). Upper Deck regroups behind gizmo after a PR launch that wasn’t [Electronic version]. Street & Smith’s Sports Business Journal. Retrieved May 16, 2008, from http://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/article/13370

Johns, K. (n.d.). Sports memorabilia fraud on the rise again. ArticleDashboard.com. Retrieved September 29, 2008, from http://www.articledashboard.com/Article/Sports-Memorabilia-Fraud-On-The-Rise-Again/9425

Keteyian, A. (2006, July). Searching for a piece of sports history?: Our online advice is… The Hall of Fame Network. Retrieved September 18, 2008, from http://www.hofmag.com/content/view/320/30/

Maske, M., & Lee, M. (2007, December 6). Pro leagues reassess security: In wake of Taylor’s death, athletes warned to be wary [Electronic version]. The Washington Post, E09. Retrieved August 28, 2008, from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/05/AR2007120502453.html

National Auctioneers Association (2008). 2007 Auction industry growth $270.7 billion: Auction industry grows 5.3% in 2007. NAA Auctioneer. Retrieved August 10, 2008, from http://www.auctioneers.org/core/contentmanager/uploads/pdfs/auctionindustryresults/2007industryresearchresults.pdf

Nelson, K. (2006). Operation bullpen: The inside story of the biggest forgery scam in American history. Benicia, CA: Southampton Books.

O’Connor, M. C. (2008). Wegmans eyeing RFID for prescription management: The supermarket operator is planning to test whether placing RFID tags on customers’ prescription orders will make locating and ringing up the orders faster and more accurate. RFID Journal, January 10, 2008. Retrieved May 15, 2008, from http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/articleview/3844/

O’Connor, M. C. (2007, August 16).One year later, U.S. e-passport’s architect says system is a success. RFID Journal. Retrieved April 25, 2008, from http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/articleview/3567/1/1/.

Olson, D. (2009, March 27). Sign of the times: A story about athletes, autographs and industry. OnMilwaukee.com. Milwaukee’s Daily Magazine. Retrieved July 27, 2008, from http://www.onmilwaukee.com/sports/articles/autographs.html

Prova Group (2006). White Paper: Buyer’s guide to autographed collectibles: How to be protect yourself from fraud and counterfeit Items. Retrieved August 30, 2008, from http://www.provagroup.com/Portals/15/BuyersGuide.pdf

RFID News: Radio Frequency Identification Technology for Logistics, Tagging and EPC (2008a, August 18). RFID solution prevents counterfeit collectibles. Retrieved September 17, 2008, from http://www.rfidnews.org/2008/08/18/rfid-solution-prevents-counterfeit-collectibles%20

RFID Update: The RFID Industry Daily (2008b, September 18). RFID driver’s licenses gain traction in the US. Retrieved September 30, 2008, from http://www.rfidupdate.com/articles/index.php?id=1676&from=rss

Smith, D. D. (n.d.). Investigating sports memorabilia fraud. SportsMemorabilia.com. Retrieved July 18, 2008, from http://www.sportsmemorabilia.com/articles/investigating-fraud

SportsMemorabilia.com (2008).A Comprehensive Guide To Collecting Sports Memorabilia. SportsMemorabilia.com. Retrieved March 29, 2008, from http://www.sportsmemorabilia.com/resources/sports-memorabilia-101.html

Swedberg, C. (2007a, June 20). Best Buy eager to use RFID to eliminate checkout lines: The greatest obstacle to deployment, according to Best Buy CIO Bob Willett, is the current cost of tags and readers. RFID Journal. Retrieved July 28, 2007, from http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/articleview/3422/1/1/

Swedberg, C. (2007b, June 20). Canadian grocery pilot finds ROI in RFID: By implementing RFID, retailers and suppliers should markedly reduce out-of-stocks and improve promotional execution, according to a seven-month project involving Loblaw and four of its suppliers. RFID Journal. Retrieved May 25, 2008, from http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/articleview/3428/1/1/

Swedberg, C. (2007c, December 21). RFID gives sports memorabilia stamp of authenticity: Prova Group offered its RFID-enabled authentication service to thousands of collectors at a recent sports collectibles convention, providing electronic guarantees that autographs were genuine. RFID Journal. Retrieved January 30, 2008, from http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/articleview/3828/

The Upper Deck Company (2008). White Paper: Customer service, frequently asked questions—PenCam visual authentication. Retrieved October 2, 2008, from http://www.upperdeck.com/marketing/faq_pencam.aspx

Van Riper, T. (2007, August 8). Sports business: Why 756 will not equal millions [Electronic version]. Forbes. Retrieved August 3, 2008, from http://www.forbes.com/2007/07/25/sports-baseball-collecting-biz-cx_tvr_0725collectibles.html

Wessel, R. (2008, September 26). To future-proof its Future Store, Metro Group opted for EPCglobal standards: The retailer claims that its Future Store’s butcher shop uses one of the world’s first full-blown EPCIS software stacks. RFID Journal. 2008. Retrieved October 5, 2008, from http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/articleprint/4346/-1/1/

Wyld, D. C. (2008a, June). The implant solution: Why RFID is the answer in the highly unique orthopedic supply chain, providing ROI for suppliers and assurance for patients and their surgeons. ID World, 12-15.

Wyld, D. C. (2008b, March). Playing a deadly game of match: How new efforts to use RFIDin blood banking and transfusion can save patient lives and safeguard the blood supply chain. Global Identification, 24-26.

Wyld, D. C. (2008c). Radio frequency identification: Advanced intelligence for tablegames in casinos.Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, 49(2), 134-144.

Wyld, D. C. (2007). RFID 101: The next big thing for management. The Engineering Management Review, 35(2), 3-19.

Wyld, D. C. (2006, October). Sports 2.0: A look at the future of sports in the context of RFID’s “weird new media revolution.” The Sport Journal, 9(4). Retrieved November 2, 2006, from http://www.thesportjournal.org/article/sports-20-look-future-sports-context-rfid-s-weird-new-media-revolution

Wyld, D. C. (2005). RFID: The Right Frequency for Government – A research report from The IBM center for the business of government. Retrieved October 3, 2005, from http://www.businessofgovernment.org/main/publications/grant_reports/details/index.asp?gid=232

And in the end, the value of sports memorabilia can be protected. But also, the intrinsic value of the autograph experience can be as well. After all, as Olson (2006) commented: “For the true fan, the value of an autograph isn’t the signature itself. It’s the shared moment between a fan and his hero” (n.p.).

Author’s Note

David C. Wyld, the Robert Maurin Professor of Management and director of the e-Commerce and e-Government Initiative Department of Management, Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond, Louisiana.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to David C. Wyld, Department of Management, SLU – Box 10350, Hammond, LA 70402-0350. Email: dwyld@selu.edu

U.S. Sports Academy2016-10-20T13:53:27-05:00April 16th, 2009|Contemporary Sports Issues, Sports Management|Comments Off

Desirable Qualities, Attributes, and Characteristics of Successful Athletic Trainers – A National Study

Submitted by: Timothy J. Henry, Robert C. Schneider, and William F. Stier Jr. – The State University of New York at Brockport

Abstract

In an effort to determine the importance of desirable qualities, attributes and characteristics necessary for the success of interscholastic athletic trainers a Likert-type scale survey was mailed to all head athletic trainers of NCAA Division III institutions in the United States. The survey consisted of 24 statements allowing for the following responses: essential, very important, important, not very important, and irrelevant. The qualities that were deemed the most desirable by head athletic trainers were trustworthiness (76.2%), honesty (73.5%), dependability (66.4%), and possessing high ethical standards (66.4%). The two characteristics that were found to be the least essential were being a risk-taker (2.1%) and being a visionary (6.4%).

Introduction

Certified athletic trainers (ATCs) are allied health care professionals who specialize in preventing, recognizing, managing, and rehabilitating injuries that result from physical activity. The ATC works as part of a complete health care team and functions under the direction of a licensed physician and in cooperation with other health care professionals, athletics administrators, coaches, and parents (NATA, 2006c). In order to become a certified athletic trainer, an individual must graduate from a Commission on Accreditation of Athletic Training Education (CAATE) approved Athletic Training program and successfully pass the Board of Certification Examination (NATA, 2006b).

The Board of Certification, Inc. (BOC) regularly conducts a role delineation study among a sample of certified athletic trainers. This study determines the current role, or standards, of the profession. This role delineation study may also be considered a job analysis and determines the minimal competencies to practice as an athletic trainer. It also serves to define the contemporary standards of practice for the athletic training profession (NATA, 2006a). The information gathered by this job analysis is used as a template for the NATA Educational Council to develop the Educational Competencies for Athletic Training. These competencies define the minimum skills and characteristics that entry-level athletic trainers should possess and define the educational content that students enrolled in an accredited athletic training program must master. The competencies are broken down into 12 content areas (Table 1) (NATA, 2006a).

“Athletic trainers are the critical link between the sport program and medical community” (Anderson and Hall, 2000, p. 6) and fulfilling this job requires the athletic trainer to fill many roles. In addition to the educational knowledge outlined by the educational competencies, ATCs must possess other qualities and attributes in order to succeed in the all-encompassing role of athletic trainer. Arnheim and Prentice (2000) describe some of these qualities as stamina and ability to adapt, empathy, sense of humor, communication, intellectual curiosity, ethical standards, and being active in professional organizations. Gaedek, Toolelian & Schaffer (1983) describe communication with other athletic trainers, physicians, physical therapists, and so forth as one of the primary attributes an ATC must possess.

Attaining a position in athletic training and, ultimately, success as an athletic trainer can be dependent upon several factors. Employers look for candidates who have both a formal and informal educational background (including certification from the BOC) as well as a demonstration of other skills and attributes that might have been obtained through experience as well as through formal educational courses (Gaedeke, Toolelian & Schaffer, 1983). When looking at employers’ hiring criteria for athletic trainers, the prevailing criterion predicting employment and salary is the educational status of the applicant (Kahanov and Andrews, 2001). This study by Kahanov and Andrews (2001) found that the four most important criteria for hiring were personal characteristics, educational experience, professional experience, and work-related attributes. Educational experience included a college minor, grade point average, membership in a fraternity, and college reputation. The personal characteristics included self-confidence, maturity, interpersonal skills, assertiveness, enthusiasm, technical skills, ability to articulate goals, oral communication skills, leadership skills, initiative, ambition, problem-solving skills, writing skills and personal appearance. Smith (2006, p.47) states that “certification and experience are important, but possibly even more critical are personality, character, and people skills”. Certified athletic trainers hold the key to a successful program, whether it is a professional team, a school, a physician’s office, a hospital, or a clinic. Thus, it is imperative to hire the right person for the job (Smith, 2006).

Although the literature contains many studies highlighting hiring criteria and desirable knowledge areas for ATCs, very few studies have investigated the personal characteristics and qualities of certified athletic trainers as viewed by employers in specific employment settings. The purpose of this study was to investigate the desired personal qualities, attributes, and characteristics of certified athletic trainers in the division III setting as viewed by head athletic trainers in these settings. To date, this is the only national study that surveyed all of the division III head ATCs asking them what personal qualities, attributes, and characteristics they believed to be important for the success of ATCs.

Methodology

Population:

The population surveyed included head athletic trainers of all NCAA division III colleges and universities. The mailing addresses of the colleges and universities were obtained from the NCAA headquarters located in Indianapolis, Indiana. Of the 410 surveys mailed out, 185 were returned for a return rate of 45.1%.

Survey Instrument:

The survey instrument utilized in the study was approved by the Institutional Review Board at the surveying institution. The instrument was developed based upon the professional literature and as well as communication with experts in the area of athletic training. Twenty-four specific skills and competencies were identified and included in the survey.

Procedures:

After approval of the survey instrument, all surveys were mailed to the NCAA division III head athletic trainers. A return envelope that was pre-stamped, and addressed to the principal investigator, was included in the mailings. Anonymity of the head athletic trainer, as well as the college and university surveyed, was ensured.

The head athletic trainers were asked to provide their opinions as to the level of importance of the personal qualities, attributes, and characteristics included on the survey that were related to the success of the athletic trainers in providing health care to student athletes. By responding to a 5-point Likert scale, essential, very important, important, not very important, irrelevant, the head athletic trainers provided their opinions as to the level of importance of specific skills and competencies found in successful athletic trainers.

Findings

The findings are displayed in Table 2 and revealed varied opinions regarding the importance of personal qualities, attributes, and characteristics that Division III head athletic trainers believed to be essential, very important, important, not very important, and irrelevant in order to be successful as an athletic trainer at the Division III level. Most of the items were identified as either essential or very important; however, some were not viewed as highly.

Six items were reported as the most important personal attributes for successful ATCs. These items had the highest percentage of responses as essential to the success of athletic trainers at the Division III level:

Trustworthiness (76.2%)
Honesty (73.5%)
High ethical standards (66.4%)
Dependable (66.4%)
Adaptable (62.7%)
Communicator (61.6%)

In addition to the attributes reported as essential, three items were reported as being highly desirable (either essential or very important) by 90% of the respondents:

Leadership (93.7%)
Decisiveness (91.8%)
Consistency (91.2%)

Head athletic trainers viewed the following as having the least impact (essential or very important) among all of the selected skills and competencies on success of the Division III ATCs:

Risk taker (19.9%)
High energy level (45.6%)
Visionary (46.9%)

Discussion

This study examined the desirable personal qualities and attributes necessary to be a successful athletic trainer at the Division III level. The most desirable characteristics reported by head athletic trainers in this study, honesty, trustworthiness, and high ethical standards, can be grouped together as ethical qualities. Each of these attributes is important to the ability of the ATC to provide high quality health care to the physically active. All members of the NATA are required to observe the NATA Code of Ethics, which provides an outline of ethical behavior that should be followed in the practice of athletic training. The Code is comprised of 5 principals and presents aspirational standards of behavior that all members should strive to achieve (NATA, 2006c). ATCs typically deal with many controversial and sensitive issues in which honesty, trustworthiness, and high ethical standards are of the utmost importance. Some of these sensitive situations may include athletes with diseases or conditions, such as HIV or hepatitis, athletes with sexually transmitted diseases, athletes with season-ending or career-ending injuries, and athletes that may be using, or are suspected of using, performance enhancing substances. In each of these scenarios, the ATC may find themselves exposed to extremely sensitive and confidential information. Confidential information that is obtained as part of the professional relationship that an ATC has with an athlete might be personal, private, and sensitive. The ATC should handle this sensitive information carefully to avoid ethical, as well as legal, breaches of confidentiality. Another issue related to the ethical standards of athletic trainers is the high profile of athletes and of the athletic industry in our society. The accessibility of the media and the public’s desire to know everything possible about their teams and athletes can be a significant threat to an athlete’s privacy and to the confidentiality of information to which the ATC is privy (Ray, 2005). The fact that the respondents in this study valued the ethical attributes establishes the importance of the Code of Ethics in the daily practice of the ATC.

Trustworthiness is not only important when dealing with the confidentiality issues, but it is extremely important in establishing a good rapport between the athlete and the athletic trainer. The athlete needs to respect the athletic trainer as a person before they can trust the athletic trainer in the rehabilitative setting. The ATC must gain the trust of the athlete before the athlete will follow the protocols and programs designed for them by their athletic trainer (Arnheim and Prentice, 2000).

Other attributes that were deemed highly desirable were adaptability and dependability. Arnheim and Prentice (2000, p. 16) report, “The athletic trainer must be able to adapt to new situations with ease.” This is due to the large number of athletes and teams that they are typically responsible for covering. Practice and game schedules are frequently canceled or modified, depending on factors such as weather, facility availability, team condition, travel schedules, and so forth. In many cases, ATCs are at the mercy of the coaches and administrators in determining these schedules and may not be consulted as to their opinions in those matters. Due to the unique skills which the ATC provides, they are difficult to replace and they must be present at all practices and contests in order to provide the high quality health care that the athletes deserve.

The ability to communicate is an attribute that was deemed essential by 61.6% of the respondents; however, we expected a higher percentage of the head athletic trainers to list this as essential. Athletic trainers are often described as a liaison between athletes, coaches, team physicians, and other allied health care professionals. This role requires the ATC to serve as an educator, psychologist, counselor, therapist, and/or administrator and is dependent upon a constant flow of oral and written communication (Arnheim and Prentice, 2000). Lockard (2005) stressed the importance of having positive relationships by stating that because athletic trainers deal with a variety of people, they need good social and communication skills.

Personal attributes that were deemed desirable by the respondents were decisiveness and leadership. Decisiveness is a characteristic that does not appear in any of the previous literature relating to desirable personal attributes or hiring characteristics for an ATC. During the course of any typical day for an ATC, many situations arise in which the athletic trainer must make important decisions. Referral decisions are an inherent part of the injury management domain of athletic training, especially those dealing with potentially catastrophic injuries. These decisions must be made spontaneously in many cases with the well-being of the athlete at stake.

The importance of leadership in our study is similar to the findings of Kahanov and Andrews (2001). They listed leadership as one of 16 characteristics that were viewed as important by employers when hiring ATCs across different job settings, although leadership was not rated as highly as other characteristics in their study. As mentioned previously, the ATC is typically the leader or coordinator of the sports medicine team (NATA, 2006e). Smith (2006) stated that certified athletic trainers hold the key to a successful program, whether it is a professional team, a school, a physician’s office, a hospital, or at a clinic.

The personal attribute that was reported to be the least important in the Division III setting was being a risk-taker. This finding is not surprising when considering the myriad of legal and ethical issues confronting ATCs today. Risk management is an important term to all ATCs today, and the athletic trainer is intimately involved in developing safe athletic programs in all types of settings. Lyznicki et al. (1999) found the implementation of risk management programs by athletic trainers to be important in that it minimized liability in secondary schools. Chen and Esposito (2004) recognized the importance of risk management and acknowledged the need for athletic trainers to formulate a risk management plan.

Another personal attribute that was not deemed essential to the success of athletic trainers at the division III level was high energy level. Only 16.2% of the respondents reported this to be essential, while 39.4 % rated this as very important. This finding is extremely surprising and is contrary to many commonly described views of the ATC. ATCs typically work extremely long hours and are asked to cover numerous sporting events every day. Arnheim and Prentice (2000, p. 16) state, “Athletic training is not the field for a person who likes an 8-to-5 job. Long, arduous hours of often strenuous work will sap the reserve strength of anyone not in the best of physical and emotional health. Athletic training requires abundant energy, vitality, and physical and emotional stability.” In recent years, the NCAA and other administrators have begun to recognize the long hours and busy days of ATCs and have implemented changes in the sports medicine coverage provided by ATCs. The NCAA recently implemented the guidelines for appropriate medical coverage for intercollegiate athletics (NATA, 2003), which generally increases the number of ATCs required to meet the health care needs of student athletes on NCAA college campuses. This document suggested to collegiate administrators that they need to hire more certified athletic trainers to cover the ever-increasing health care needs of their student athletes. This recently implemented guideline may have in fact alleviated some of the long hours and strenuous days that had become commonplace for the ATC. With the addition of more staff, head ATCs may now feel that having a high energy level is not as important as it was traditionally viewed.

Being a visionary is another characteristic that was not reported as desirable as some of the others. Athletic training is a relatively young profession and the physically active community is just beginning to recognize the role and importance of ATCs in providing health care to the physically active. The recent evolution of athletic training is due to the long-term vision of many early athletic trainers; however there are still many hurdles for ATCs to clear in order for athletic training to become fully integrated into the larger sports medicine field. Some of the important issues currently confronting NATA members are third party reimbursement, expanding employment settings, and refining the educational process. These are issues that many ATCs are concerned with and are highly intertwined with the long-term vision and strategic plan of the NATA. (NATA, 2006d). It is somewhat surprising to the authors that being a visionary is not deemed more desirable by head athletic trainers at the division III level.

Conclusion

The most important personal characteristics and attributes for ATCs at the division III level were related to ethical issues and included honesty, trustworthiness, and possessing high ethical standards. Other highly desirable characteristics were being adaptable, dependable, and a good communicator.

The least important personal attribute was being a risk-taker. Other attributes that, surprisingly, were not deemed as highly desirable were having a high energy level and being a visionary.

Table 1: Athletic Training Professional Competencies Areas

Risk Management and Injury Prevention

Pathology of Injuries and Illnesses

Orthopedic Clinical Examination and Diagnosis

Medical Conditions and Disabilities

Acute Care of Injuries and Illnesses

Therapeutic Modalities

Conditioning and Rehabilitative Exercise

Pharmacology

Psychosocial Intervention and Referral

Nutritional Aspects of Injuries and Illnesses

Health Care Administration

Professional Development and Responsibility

Table 2: Desirable Qualities, Attributes, and Characteristics of Successful Athletic Trainers

Qualities, Attributes, and Characteristics	Essential (%)	Very Important (%)	Important (%)	Not Very Important (%)	Irrelevant (%)
Honesty	73.5	20.5	1	1	4
Punctuality	45.9	42.1	8	2.1	1.6
Decisiveness	56.2	35.6	4.3	1.8	2.1
Trustworthiness	76.2	17.8	2.8	0	3.2
Consistency	47.5	43.7	5.7	1	2.1
Enthusiastic	12.4	52.4	29.9	2.1	3.2
High energy level	16.2	39.4	40.2	3.7	.5
Role model	28.6	43.2	23.9	2.7	1.6
Leadership	35.6	48.4	11.8	2.1	2.1
Persistence	20	50.4	25.9	2.1	1.6
Helpfulness	26.4	23.2	47.2	.5	2.7
Altruism	12.4	51.5	28.6	5.4	2.1
High ethical standards	66.4	28.9	1	.5	3.2
Visionary	6.4	40.8	44.3	7.5	1
Patience	35.1	45.6	15.6	1.6	2.1
Risk taker	2.1	17.8	44.7	30.8	4.6
Loyal	23.7	43.7	27.3	3.2	2.1
Dedicated	43.7	42.9	8.1	3.2	2.1
Adaptable	62.9	29.9	4	.5	2.7
Diplomatic	24.3	50.5	21	3.7	.5
Professional visual image	30.8	43.7	19.1	3.2	3.2
Communicator	61.8	31.3	3.7	.5	2.7
Empathetic	28.1	50.5	17.2	2.1	2.1
Dependable	66.4	29.9	.5	.5	2.7

Note: The values represent mean percentages of the Likert-type-scale responses.

References

Anderson, M. K., Hall, S. J, & Martin, M. (2000). Sports injury management and the athletic trainer. In Sports injury management. (2nd ed.) Baltimore, MD: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.

Arnheim, D. D, & Prentice, W. E. (2000). The athletic trainer and the sports medicine team. In Principle of athletic training. (10th ed.) New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Chen, S., & Esposito, E. (2004). Practical and critical legal concerns for sport physicians and athletic trainers. Sport Journal, 7(2), Retrieved December 3, 2006, from http://www.thesportjournal.org/2004Journal/Vol7-No2/ChenEsposito.asp

Gaedeke, R., Toolelian D., & Schaffer, B. (1983). Employers want motivated communicators for entry-level marketing positions. Market News. 5, 1.

Kahanov, L., & Andrews, L. (2001). A survey of athletic training employers’ hiring criteria. Journal of Athletic Training, 36(4), 408-412.

Lockard, B. C. (2005). Athletic trainers: Providing healthcare for athletes of all kinds.

Occupational Outlook Quarterly, 49(1), 38-41.

Lyznicki, J. M., Riggs, J. A., & Champion, H. C. (1999). Certified athletic trainers in secondary schools: report of the council on scientific affairs, American Medical Association. Journal of Athletic Training, 34(3), 272-276.

National Athletic Trainers’ Association. (2006a) Athletic training educational competencies. (4th ed.). Dallas, TX: NATA.

National Athletic Trainers’ Association. (2006b). Athletic training education overview. Retrieved on November 20, 2006 from www.nata.org/consumer/docs/educationfactsheet05.pdf

National Athletic Trainers’ Association. (2006c). NATA Code of Ethics. Retrieved on January 30, 2007 from http://www.nata.org/codeofethics/code_of_ethics.pdf

National Athletic Trainers’ Association (2006d). Strategic Plan. Retrieved on January 27, 2006 from www.nata.org

National Athletic Trainers’ Association. (2006e). What is a certified athletic trainer?. Retrieved on November 20, 2006 from www.nata.org

National Athletic Trainers’ Association. (2003). Recommendations and guidelines for appropriate medical coverage of intercollegiate athletics. Retrieved on November 1, 2006 from www.nata.org/statements/support/amciarecsandguides.pdf

Ray, R. (2005). Ethics in sports medicine. In management strategies in athletic training. (3rd ed.) Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.

Smith, L. (2006, November). Big job small staff. Training and Conditioning, pp. 47-51.

Author’s Note

Timothy J. Henry, Associate Professor and Athletic Training Program Coordinator, The State University of New York at Brockport; Robert C. Schneider, Associate Professor, Department of Physical Education and Sport, The State University of New York at Brockport; William F. Stier, Jr., Distinguished Service Professor and Graduate Director, Department of Physical Education and Sport, The State University of New York at Brockport.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Timothy J. Henry, Department of Physical Education and Sport, The State University of New York at Brockport, 350 New Campus Drive, Brockport, NY 14420. E-mail: thenry@brockport.edu; Fax: 585-395-2771; Work Phone: 585-395-5357.

U.S. Sports Academy2016-10-20T11:37:32-05:00April 16th, 2009|Contemporary Sports Issues, Sports Coaching, Sports Management|Comments Off