Discussion Assignment Sports ScienceA+ work, no plagarism

Respond to classmates

In any forums provide a total of 2 replies of at least 150 words. Respond to each student

Olejan

After watching the video of Dr. Harry Edwards it’s certainly clear that his passion has been fighting for and defending the need to have sociology in sport and he supports his practice and passion through decades of experience and research. Sociology in sport has not always been scene as an academic research area for a career investment, and instead sport was mainly relegating to physical education, the idea of sociology in sport was beneath sociologist and did not meat their standards as an area of career focus or analysis. Through watching the video, I strongly believe in the view that Dr. Harry has regarding sociology in sport simply because of the mass scale at which sports relate to so many people and countries of various ages, sizes, or ethnicities. Perhaps I have this opinion due to the era in which I have grown up in and social media, tv, and convenient traveling have made the sports world so much more accessible and viewed. However, I still see how Dr. Harry would have had this view in the 70’s as well, because sport has always been an influence on people who not only play it but watch it, and sport has grown and adapted through history just as the people and technology have.

A quote that really sunk in for me and made me understand just what mind set and stance Dr. Harry was coming from was the speech he gave to the committee at Cornell which later led to his dictation. Dr. Harry stated “How can we believe as sociologist that a di-ad (two person relationship) or a tri-ad (three person relationship) is worthy of analysis that includes volumes and 100’s of dictations, but 100 million people watching the Superbowl is not worthy on investigation from a sociological perspective.” It truly is incredible to think the amount of people who not only tune in weekly for regular season games, in all sports, but then the number of people not only in the U.S. who watch the championship games, and even the people who don’t watch of follow sports still know the highlights and outcomes just from new, social media, or word of mouth. Sport is almost an unavoidable phenomenon now that is even being instilled in children at young ages through travel sports. The field of sports have grown so much as the understanding of how sport influences behavior, characteristics, beliefs, and even academics is being discovered, through this course and the other ones I need to take, I look forward to better understanding this sociology of sport.

Arree

Dr. Harry Edwards Sociology of Sports Origins video contained a lot of great content for a five-minute video. His argument to convince the administrators and other sociologists that sports sociology was sound. He asked the sociologists how a relationship concerning two to three people is worthier of analysis than an event that captures the attentions of millions of people.  He spoke several times about how many of his decisions were driven by the events of 1967-68.

 

Personally, I believe sports sociology is important because the ability that sports have to unite people of different backgrounds is seconds to none. I grew up in a rural community that is about 95% Caucasian. I graduated in 2015 with 40 kids and not one single person was of a different ethnic background. I went to play college basketball at a local junior college and I was one of two Caucasian people on the team. All of my roommates were African Americans from different regions of the country. They are some of my best friends to this day and we spent a tremendous amount of time talking about the world and politics. They showed me movies about race relations and we shared stories about our backgrounds and talked about the differences in our upbringings. We were able to genuinely trust each other from the hours that we put in playing the sport of basketball. Getting through tough practices, riding the bus, winning and losing games, the hardships that come with being a college athlete, they were all shared. I learned more about life in that year than any other year. It was culture shock but I was open to learning new experiences. After four years of playing collegiate basketball I’ve been fortunate to make a variety of friends that I still stay in contact with.  Without the sport of basketball, it would be highly unlikely that our relationship would’ve formed and even more unlikely that we would have become such good friends. Sports have a unique ability to transcend cultures and bring people together as one.