Endless Contest:
Theorizing the devolution of advanced
sports media cultures
Todd Joseph Miles
Holden
Professor, Mediated Sociology
Graduate School of International
Cultural Studies
Tohoku University
Sendai, Japan
Opening on a Closing:
The Tour de France
The 95th Tour de France
(which began on July 5th)
will finish this Sunday, July
27th
Opening on a Closing:
The Tour de France
It began this year in the following predicament:
– The 2007 winner American Floyd Landis
was stripped of his 2006 title after testing
positive for synthetic testosterone.
– And 2 teams were banned:
• Astana, the team of eventual winner,
Alberto Contador
– Due to doping scandals over the last
two years
• (Team) Cofidis
– which withdrew after Cristian Moreni
tested positive for testosterone
The Contested Tour
• Kazakhstan's Alexandre Vinokourov
– Also of Astana
– Tested positive for a blood transfusion
– And was removed from the Tour last
year
• Levi Leipheimer
– Also of Astana
– Also banned
The Contested Tour
• Ivan Basso
– 2006 Giro d'Italia winner
– A 2-time Tour podium finisher
– Was also absent, due to a 2-year
ban for blood doping
The Contested Tour
• Manuel Beltran:
– was ejected from the Tour (on July
11, 2008)
– For testing positive for the
performance-enhancer EPO
• Moises Duenas Nevado:
– Ejected from the tour (on July 16,
2008) after testing positive for EPO
Doping and Biking
• Besides Beltran, Floyd Landis,
Roberto Heras and Tyler Hamilton
have all failed doping tests on the
Tour
– all are former Postal riders during
Armstrong's seven Tour wins from
1999-2005
– all failed their tests after quitting
Armstrong’s team
This Paper:
The Inside Dope
• Hopefully this slide’s title doesn’t
refer to the author
• Generally, this is a working paper
• It concerns matters like doping, but
also other forms of what I label
“contest” in sports
This Paper:
The Inside Dope
Better, it concerns the rampant contestation that
sport has introduced into contemporary society.
• It focuses on the contest beyond the actual
games (I.e. outside the realm that sport has
traditionally been about)
• Such contest is abetted to a large degree by mass
media
– The media angle is less empirical here than it
needs to be
– For media is perhaps the central player in
engendering endless contest in contemporary
society
Some Premises/Claims
• Sport is often viewed as a sublimater
of aggressive tendencies (Elias and
Dunning 1986)
– a simulation of combat, if you will
• However, it may, in fact, work to
stimulate even more acrimony and
deeper societal schisms
– With the media as
instigator/conspirator/abettor of these
“divides”
Some Premises/Claims
Sport increases the sense of “contest”
in numerous, unanticipated ways.
Including:
1. the heightened emphasis on
economic haves and have nots:
2. the sudden attention by political,
administrative and legal entities to
rules infractions and enforcement;
3. the exaggerated attention to rules
infractions and conduct violations
4. The heightened emphasis on stating
opinions and taking sides.
Some Premises/Claims
Sport increases the sense of “contest” in
numerous, unanticipated ways. Including:
5. the increased involvement of public
authorities in the activities of private
entrepreneurs;
6. the increased sideshow-like ambiance built
around athletes and sporting events
a) fueled by tabloid media
b) and due to the crossover of athletes into
the realm of celebrity, entertainment, and
show business
Societal Development
and Sports
• These developments can be located
with increasing regularity
• It appears true for societies which are
most “developed”
– i.e. which have achieved the highest rung
on modernity’s ladder (e.g. Maguire 1999)
– with the largest, most extensive and
sophisticated sports media cultures (Miller
et al. 2001)
– and which have evinced the most
advanced stages of “sportization” (Elias
1986).
About this Paper
• Showing this requires attention to both empirical and
theoretical threads
• It also can benefit from comparison
– Thus this paper will look at cases from both the
United States and Japan
• Doing so, we can see that contest is not a
phenomenon transpiring only in one society
– Although it is manifested in differing ways
– Due to factors such as:
• the cultural history
• The political traditions (and)
• The media institution, itself
• In this way, contest can be seen as both a universal
AND particular phenomenon
About the Cases
All involve the
active contestation
between one or
more of the
following human
elements:
–Athletes
–Coaches
–Management
–Fans
And one or more of
the following
institutional
elements:
–Political
–Legal
–Administrative
–Economic
–Social
Media Role
The role of the media institution is:
– Not as neutral reporter
– Rather, as active stimulus
The Effect is:
– A fueling of contestation between the
various actors, above, is highlighted
Side-effects include:
– A widening of connectivity between
sports and other societal domains: legal,
rational, administrative, economic,
political, popular/cultural
Some Aims
One avowed aim (at least in the
delusional moment of writing my
abstract) was:
– to identify
– then categorize
– the various types of contestation
transpiring in advanced sporting societies
today
– then flesh out some of the ways that this
can be understood vis-à-vis social theory.
A Main Contention
The central role played by the media
institution in simultaneously
assisting:
– societal evolution
– and a certain kind of devolution
(through increased contestation)
Though neither of these may be
clearly/obviously seen by simply
studying isolated cases of
contestation
The Media Assessed
The assessments,
themselves, are of
non-systematic
samples, treated
via qualitative
content analysis.
Includes:
• Talk radio
• Newspaper
• Television
• Internet
news sites
• Blogs
The Cases Considered
The Cases Considered
The U.S
The Mitchell Report
Barry Bonds
Japan
Asashoryu
Daiki Kameda
Roger Clemens
Marion Jones
“Spygate”
Michael Vick
Don Imus
Tim Donaghy
Luis Gonzales
Daniel Rios
Tomohiro Nioka
The Cases Considered: U.S.
Case
Nature of Contest
Forum of Contest
The Mitchell
Report
Regulation of
performance
enhancers
(1) Major League Baseball;
(2) U.S. news media
Barry Bonds
Alleged steroid use
(1) Federal Grand Jury;
(2) Federal Trial;
(3) U.S. news media
Roger Clemens
Alleged steroid use
(1) United States Congress;
(2) U.S. Courts (private
lawsuit);
(3) News and tabloid media
Marion Jones
Admitted steroid use
(1) International Olympic
Committee;
(2) U.S. Federal Trial;
(3) Global news media
The Cases Considered: U.S.
Case
Nature of Contest
Forum of Contest
“Spygate”
Alleged illegal
videotaping of and
stealing signals from
opponents
(1) National Football League;
(2) United States Congress;
(3) News media
Don Imus
Racist remarks on
radio show
U.S. news media (TV, radio,
newspapers, blogs)
Michael Vick
Illegal dog fighting;
gambling; cruelty to
animals
(1)U.S. Federal Court;
(2)News media
Tim Donaghy
Admitted gambling
on matches;
suspected match
fixing
(1) U.S. Federal Court;
(2) National Basketball
Association;
(3) News media
The Cases Considered:
Japan
Case
Nature of Contest
Forum of Contest
Asashoryu
Suspension for half year for
personal behavior
(1) Professional sumo
association;
(2) News Media
Luis Gonzales
One year suspension for
amphetamine use
(1) Japanese professional
baseball;
(2) News media
Daniel Rios
One year suspension for
steroid use
(1) Japanese professional
baseball;
(2) News media
Daiki Kameda
One year suspension for
bad behavior
(1) Japanese Boxing
Federation;
(2) News media
Tomohiro Nioka
Extra-marital affair
(1) Tabloid press/media;
(2) Parent TV broadcaster;
(3) Parent baseball team
The Cases Considered I:
The Mitchell Report
On March 3, 2006, Major League Baseball
Commissioner, Bud Selig, announced that the league
would begin a full-scale investigation into the use of
performance-enhancing drugs
– MLB had banned such drugs as part of the
collective bargaining agreement signed in 2002
The Cases Considered I:
The Mitchell Report
Selig named former Senate Majority Leader, George
Mitchell, to head the open-ended investigation.
– Mitchell was a director of the Boston Red Sox
– Also Chairman of The Walt Disney Co., the parent of
ESPN
– He insisted his affiliations would have no effect on
the investigation
The Cases Considered I:
The Mitchell Report
Mitchell’s 20 month investigation ended up naming 86 baseball players
involved in using performance enhancing drugs
Highlights included
• 7 MVPs and 31 All-Stars were named
• 87 players named; 34 active in 2007
• Former player Jose Canseco (who wrote a best-selling book, Juiced
confessing his steroid use) was named 105 times
• Barry Bonds was named 103 times
• Lenny Dykstra’s use between 1988 and 1993
• The case of 1996 MVP Ken Caminiti
• The 1998 case of Mark McGuire
• The complicity of players, executives and reporters
• Media coverage at the time
The Cases Considered
II: Barry Bonds
Barry Bonds, a
prominent
name in the
Mitchell
Report, is the
all-time home
run leader in
MLB
Here we see him in “before” and “after” shots -from early in his (pre-steroid) career and then later
(post-steroids)
The Cases Considered II:
Barry Bonds
Bonds, who refused to cooperate with the Mitchell
Commission, was featured in the book A Game of
Shadows, written by two investigative reporters
from The San Francisco Chronicle.
That book alleged that there have been two Barry
Bonds:
– The likely Hall-of-Famer
• Who, for 13 years, averaged 32 home runs
and a batting average of .298
– And the most prolific home run hitter of all time
• Who for the next 6 years averaged 49 home
runs and a batting average of .328
The Cases Considered II:
Barry Bonds
A Game of Shadows documented:
• how Bonds was able to increase his productivity
• during what is usually the twilight of a player’s
career
– Between the ages of 35 and 40
• assisted by steroids
The Cases Considered II:
Barry Bonds
• Based on the evidence
presented in that book a
grand jury was convened
• Bonds testified. He denied
the allegations that he
knowingly took steroids.
• He was subsequently
indicted for lying to a grand
jury and obstruction of
justice.
• A free agent this year, no
team has been willing to
pick Bonds up as an active
player.
The Cases Considered II:
Barry Bonds
• The indictment was based on data obtained
from BALCO, a bay area facility asserted to
have prescribed steroids to numerous elite
athletes
– The indictment cited 19 occasions in
which Bonds allegedly lied under oath.
• His trial is pending
• If convicted, he could be sentenced to up
to 30 years in a Federal penitentiary
The Cases Considered
III: Roger Clemens
One name prominent in the Mitchell
Report was that of Roger Clemens
The Cases Considered III:
Roger Clemens
Clemens is:
• A 7-time Cy Young Award winner (best
pitcher in the league)
• Eighth on the all-time win list with 354 career
victories
• A league MVP and All-Star
• Long considered a sure Hall of Fame entry
The Cases Considered III:
Roger Clemens
According to the Mitchell report, Clemens may
have been supplied with Human Growth
Hormone by his personal trainer.
Clemens denied these charges
However a fellow teammate close friend, and
work-out partner, Andy Pettitte, admitted that
he was injected with HGH by the same trainer
The Cases Considered III:
Roger Clemens
McNamee told Mitchell investigators that:
• he injected Clemens with Winstrol through
the end of the 1998 season
• and that Clemens' performance showed
remarkable improvement
Records show that Clemens had a record of 5
wins and 6 losses through the first 2
months of the season, then went 15 wins
against 0 losses in 22 starts; with an
Earned Run Average of 2.29
The Cases Considered III:
Roger Clemens
McNamee also told investigators that:
• “during the middle of the 2000 season, Clemens
made it clear that he was ready to use steroids
again.”
• Thus, during the latter part of the regular
season, McNamee injected Clemens in the
buttocks four to six times with testosterone.
The Cases Considered III:
Roger Clemens
A nationally
televised
congressional
hearing
disintegrated
along partisan
lines
• Democrats argued that Clemens should be found guilty of lying
to Congress
• Republicans argued that he was a hero and role model who, if
found guilty, should receive a presidential pardon (from former
baseball executive, George W. Bush).
The Cases Considered III:
Roger Clemens
The entire Clemens affair further disintegrated into
a variety of tabloid stories, about:
• Clemens’ wife getting her own steroid injections
• The wives of Clemens and Jose Canseco
comparing breast implants in front of their
husbands at a party
• And Clemens alleged affair with a country and
western singer who, when she first befriended
the pitcher, was only 16.
The Cases Considered III:
Roger Clemens
The abiding image of this case, to date, was how
it quickly descended into tabloidization,
sensationalization, and lurid demonization
The Cases Considered IV:
Marion Jones
Another BALCO athlete was
Marion Jones
• At the 2000 Sydney
Olympics, Jones finished
with three golds and two
bronzes
• She was featured on the
covers of Vogue, Time
and Newsweek magazines
• She received multimillion dollar contracts
for her efforts.
The Cases Considered IV:
Marion Jones
• Seven years later she
publicly confessed to
taking drugs before her
Sydney triumphs
• She was sentenced to 6
months in prison for
lying to federal
prosecutors about her
steroid use.
• She was also stripped of
her Olympic medals
• And fined.
The Cases Considered IV:
Marion Jones
• In sentencing her to prison the judge stated:
– "athletes in society ... serve as role models to
children around the world. When there is a
widespread level of cheating, it sends all the
wrong messages.”
• And:
– "People live with their choices … and the choice
not to play by the rules has been compounded
by the choice to break the law."
The Cases Considered IV:
Marion Jones
In response to the sentencing, USA Track & Field
President Bill Roe issued this statement:
– (The Jones case is) "a vivid morality play that
graphically illustrates the wages of cheating in
any facet of life, on or off the track.”
– This highlights why cases of cheating occur
• I.e. their chance for huge positive payoff
– Also highlights why the media is so interested
• The idea that it is a “morality play” not unlike
a Shakespearean drama or Hollywood movie
sprung to life
The Cases Considered V:
“Spygate”
• In 2008 a claim was made by a former video
assistant on the New England Patriots
– Considered the team of this decade in the
(American) Professional Football League (NFL)
• The claim was that New England coach Bill Belichick,
had authorized the filming of rival’s practices and
the interception of their sideline hand signals during
games in 2007
– Both violations of league rules
• In a nod to the famous political espionage chapter in
United States politics (“Watergate”) this affair was
dubbed “spygate” by the U.S. sports/news media
The Cases Considered V:
“Spygate”
• Although Coach Belichick denied these claims, certain
circumstantial evidence suggested it might be true
– His personality -- which is notoriously conflictual,
conspiratorial, secretive, and paranoid
– The fact that the heart of the allegation concerned the
championship game of 2002 -- where his team defeated
the heavily favored St. Louis Rams
– And the existence of videotape which proved the point
• One influential member of the U.S. Congress, Senator Arlen
Specter (R - Pennsylvania) was so incensed as to demand
Congressional Hearings into this affair
– Although this seems also to stem from the fact that his
home team had lost in playoffs to the Patriots in recent
years
The Cases Considered V:
“Spygate”
• Ultimately the NFL conducted its own internal investigation and
then imposed what could be viewed as pre-emptive sanctions
– Fining Coach Belichick (U.S.) $500,000
– Fining the Patriots (U.S.) $250,000
– And taking the Patriots 2008 First-round draft pick away
– Though not as severe as some might have wished, these were
certainly not cosmetic penalties
– The media’s general reaction, though, was: the Patriots are so
talented they didn’t need that draft pick anyway and Belichick
is so financially well off, even if his team doesn’t pick up the
tab, he can afford the fine
– Moreover, this sort of contest perfectly matched the sort of
crotchety “I’ll play the game on my terms” demeanor of the
man and his New England team
• In short, it was a good story full of the kind of conflict that
the audience likes
The Cases Considered VI:
Don Imus
On Thursday, April 5, 2007, “shock jock” Don Imus
uttered words on his CBS morning radio show
that ultimately led to his dismissal…
The Cases Considered VI:
Don Imus
He referred to the NCAA championship women's basketball team on, as "some
rough girls from Rutgers. They got tattoos.” Then he went on to call them
"some nappy-headed hos.”
Comparing them to the Tennessee team they beat for the Women College
basketball title, Imus termed the teams as, respectively, "the jigaboos versus
the wannabes."
The Cases Considered VI:
Don Imus
• Imus, was once voted one of America’s 25 Most Influential
People in America by Time magazine and is a member of
the National Broadcaster Hall of Fame.
•
Nonetheless, the firestorm of criticism -- particularly from
minority groups and led by African American Reverends Al
Sharpton and Jesse Jackson -- led to Imus’s immediate
ouster by CBS radio.
• Within 8 months, however, Imus had returned to the
airwaves on ABC Radio.
The Cases Considered
VII: Michael Vick
Michael Vick was a prototypical new generation
quarterback in American football player: a player with
foot speed, physical toughness, balance, acrobatic
ability, and a powerful, accurate throwing arm
The Cases Considered
VII: Michael Vick
• On April 25, 2007 the media reported that evidence had been gathered
by law enforcement agents about illegal dog-fighting on one of Vick’s
rural properties.
• Vick was indicted on federal dog fighting charges and pled guilty to one
count of running an interstate dog fighting ring. He admitted:
– to providing most of the financing for the operation;
– sharing in the proceeds from these dog fights; and
– that he knew his colleagues killed several dogs who didn't perform
well enough.
• In 2007 he was sentenced to 23 months in Federal Prison.
• State trial awaits his release from Federal prison
The Cases Considered VIII:
Tim Donaghy
Tim Donaghy was a basketball
referee who worked in the
National Basketball
Association (NBA) for 13
seasons (1994 to 2007)
– He officiated 772 regularseason games and 20
playoff games
The Cases Considered VIII:
Tim Donaghy
• Donaghy resigned from the league on July 9, 2007
just before it was announced that the Federal
Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was investigating
allegations that he bet on games that he officiated
between 2005 and 2007.
• It was also claimed that Donaghy made calls that
affecting the point spread in those games.
• On August 15, 2007, Donaghy pleaded guilty to two
federal charges related to the investigation.
• He was sentenced on July 14, 2008.
The Cases Considered VIII:
Tim Donaghy
• On June 12, 2008, during the NBA Finals, Donaghy
further stirred the pot by alleging in a brief to the
sentencing judge that league referees affected the
outcomes of two playoff series in the past decade.
– 2002 Los Angeles Lakers - Sacramento Kings
Conference Finals
– 2005 Dallas Mavericks - Houston Rockets playoff
series
The Cases Considered VIII:
Tim Donaghy
• The reason, Donaghy alleged, was to boost league
revenue and television ratings.
– The implication was that these improprieties were
sanctioned -- even suggested -- by the league
hierarchy.
The Cases Considered VIII:
Tim Donaghy
• One effect of the allegations was to deflect
attention from the NBA Finals.
• Game fixing became the focus of basketball talk.
– Rather than celebrating the renewal of the
storied rivalry between Boston and Los Angeles
• the two cities which had won 1/2 of all NBA
titles in league history
The Cases Considered IX:
Asashoryu
• Asashoryu is the “bad boy of
sumo”
• The first Mongolian to ever
achieve “Yokuzuna”, sumo’s
highest rank
• He was the first man in the
sport’s history to win all 6
official tournaments in a
single year
• He has won 22 tournament
championships to date
The Cases Considered IX:
Asashoryu
• Asashoryu is sumo’s “bad boy” because he constantly flaunts
its traditions and thumbs hs nose at the strict codes of
behavior which regulate activity outside the ring
• An avid K-1 fan, he has often spoken of quitting sumo for the
more celebritized world of martial combat
• He stunned the sumo world in 2007 when, while taking time
off from sumo to recuperate from (alleged) injuries, he was
found playing in a charity soccer match back in Mongolia
• The media frenzy that followed led to his suspension from
sumo for 2 tournaments.
The Cases Considered X:
Daiki Kameda
• The Kamedas are an entire
presentation in themselves.
• A family of three boys,
trained (and managed) by
their father
• They are gruff, uncouth,
follow their own unique
training regimen, and play
by their own rules
• They also fancy themselves
celebrities
The Cases Considered X:
Daiki Kameda
• Their rise to prominence in
boxing’s lighter weigh
classes has been
supported and packaged
by Japanese television
broadcaster TBS
• Thus, numerous evening
specials and morning
show segments feature the
fighting family from Osaka
The Cases Considered X:
Daiki Kameda
• Daiki, who is only 18, is known for his cool
demeanor, his ever-present sunglasses, his
tinted hair, poor manners, and his penchant for
singing songs over the PA after his victorious
bouts
• In October 2007, however, he was suspended
for one year for his behavior during a WBC
flyweight title match
The Cases Considered X:
Daiki Kameda
• During the match his
father and brother
advised him to gouge
his opponent’s eyes
and hit below the belt
• And as it was clear
he was losing to his
33 year-old
opponent, he tried to
lift and throw him,
rather than box.
The Cases Considered X:
Daiki Kameda
• In an editorial, the newspaper,
The Asahi Shimbun declared
that the Kamedas have
helped taint the "simple,
stoical" sport of boxing with
"elements of entertainment"
that don’t differ much from pro
wrestling.
• Daiki’s elder brother later met
the media and issued an
apology on behalf of the entire
family
The Cases Considered
XI: Luis Gonzalez
• On April 30, 2008, Luis Gonzalez of the
venerated Yomiuri Giants, was handed a oneyear suspension for failing a drug test
– Gonzalez is a Venezuelan native
– He’d played for the Colorado Rockies from
2004-2006,
– His positive test was for clobenzorex,
amphetamine, and p-hydro-xyamphetamine
The Cases Considered
XI: Luis Gonzalez
• Gonzalez was immediately released by the Giants, whose
executives held a press conference to, in part, publicly
apologize for the disgrace they had visited (through their
player) on Japaense professional baseball
– The executives performed a ritual, collective,
synchronized bow for photographers and reporters
• This was the second suspension for illegal substances in
Japanese professional baseball history
– The first was in 2007 when pitcher Rick Guttormson of
the Softbank Hawks testing positive for Finasteride, a
hairgrowing agent
– Guttormson was suspended for 20 days
The Cases Considered
XII: Daniel Rios
• One month later, a third illegal performance
enhancement case led to another suspension and
firing
• Tokyo Yakult Swallows right-hander Daniel Rios was
suspended for one year by the Nippon Professional
Baseball Association following a failed drug test
– He actually was tested twice (in late May and late
June)
– His positive test was for hydroxystanozolol, a
metabolite of the anabolic steroid stanozolol
• Although Rios denied and wrong-doing, Yakult
immediately released him
The Cases Considered
XII: Daniel Rios
• Rios is a native of Spain
• He played briefly with the New York
Yankees in 1997 and the Kansas City
Royals in 1998
• He then pitched in South Korea for 6
seasons
The Cases Considered
XIII: Tomohiro Nioka
On July 6, 2008, Tokyo Giants’
baseball player, Tomohiro Nioka
was seen in a love hotel with
Mona Yamamoto, a popular TV
announcer of mixed
Norwegian/Japanese heritage.
The Cases Considered
XIII: Tomohiro Nioka
• For Yamamoto this was the second brush with scandal. She
had been fired from her earlier job as anchor on TBS’s late
night news program (NEWS 23) when it was learned that
she was having an affair with a married politician.
• In the case of Nioka, who is also married, with a 1 year-old
child, Yamamoto took the brunt of criticism.
– Just back in her own show after a 2 year exile, she was
promptly suspended.
The Cases Considered
XIII: Tomohiro Nioka
• For the most part this has been tabloid fodder.
• Nioka’s team’s response:
– “His behavior was very senseless. We apologize to
our fans. He is sorry for his own actions now. Since
he is one of our key players, we decided to let him off
with just a verbal warning this time.”
Making Sense of the
Cases
Making Sense of the
Cases
• Individually, these cases are all fascinating
• However, collectively, they cohere in some
telling ways
• Above all, within their own societal contexts (i.e.
the United States and Japan), these cases tell us
much about the nature and perception of
contest in the respective societies
Making Sense of the
Cases
• In America, off-field “contest” is manifested in
rational terms: via legal and administrative
processes, rules, interpretations and resolutions
• In Japan, off-field “contest” exist no less; yet
they are manifested in emotional terms: via
recourse to moral claims, to discussion of
national and cultural integrity and the adherence
to codes of practice and history
Making Sense of the
Cases
• These cultural “systems” are mirrored and
buttressed by their media systems
– Which convey communications and processes
that pass through, respectively, rational and
emotional (cultural) filters
– But whose writers and reporters, themselves,
are primed to think and respond, to shape and
“bend”, the stories in these particular
directions
Making Sense of the
Cases
• Thus is it that Japanese sporting discourse can
easily give way to national/ist dialogue about
what it means for a traditionally insular society
to accommodate itself (for better and worse) to
the influx of foreign elements:
– Games, players, practices, ways of orienting
oneself in the world
Making Sense of the
Cases
• Just as American sporting discourse can easily
become hijacked by rival political programs:
– The liberal discourse of increased governmental
and administrative regulation to eliminate
cheating
– The conservative discourse of increasing moral
education in order to eliminate an endemic
culture of self-aggrandizement at any (often
illegal) cost
Making Sense of the
Cases
• The cultural systems are not completely hermetic, of course
• Forces of globalization not only bring players and sporting cultures
into contact with one another
• So, too, are institutional values and practices brought into
dialogue, and co-mingled
– Thus were the legal-rational anti-drug policies of the American
and European golf associations adopted this year by the
Japanese professional golf association
– So, too, are these perspectives now under consideration for
adoption in Japan’s most traditional, most “national” sport:
Sumo
Making Sense of the
Cases
• The cultural systems are also not completely distinct
from each other
• Driven increasingly by commercial media, sports in
both countries have become:
–
–
–
–
–
Mainstreamed and society-centered entertainment
Increasingly vehicles for info-tainment
A domain nurturing the cult of celebrity
A site for commercialization of its key figures
A vehicle for the manufacture of heroism: both
artificial and mundane
• One would wonder if this is not also occuring in other
societies/cultures, as well
The Causes of Endless
Contestation
The Causes of Endless
Contestation
• The cases cited above provide details, above all, of how
people associated with sports have screwed up
• This is no surprise as there are clear incentives for
cheating in sports.
– For instance, Strulik (2008) has explained the rise of
“doping cultures” through socio-economic modeling
– It postulates that the doping decision of professional
athletes is both a costs/benefits calculus (in terms of
potential rank improvement) but also the approval
by fellow athletes
The Causes of Endless
Contestation
• In short, reputation is a major factor.
• We know that fame and economic incentive are also
elements that influence decisions to cheat; to act in
excess.
• Which, in turn, leads to regulation (by government)
and attention by news media
• And, if one of commercial media’s major dictums is that
“sex sells”, well, so, too, is that true of conflict
– Contest is akin to the publishing dictum: “If it
bleeds, it leads”
The Causes of Endless
Contestation
Certainly, media has to play a role
The watchdog role that the media has traditionally played
o which can be seen in the Bonds/Game of Shadows case
Weighed against the ability to capitalize on athletes’
marketability (their salesworthiness) which can drive paper
purchase and viewership (on TV) and, hence, derivatively,
advertising sales
o which is a part of the Kameda and Nioka stories
The Causes of Endless
Contestation
The media has a major role to play for the simple reason that
conflict off the field may be even more compelling than
conflict on it.
It conforms to the 24-7 news cycle of cable television, talk
radio, and the Internet
The Effects of Endless
Contestation
The Effects of Endless
Contestation
• Missing, though, from my discussion this far is larger
attention to the reaction of fans
• Although, on this count, some evidence suggests that
the effect of scandals in any one sport are not fatal to
the sport.
• Paul Swangard, managing director of the University of
Oregon’s Warsaw Sports Marketing Center, has said,
for instance, that the Donaghy scandal does not much
influence the mainstream fan and, thus, the future
growth of a sports league like the NBA.
The Effects of Endless
Contestation
In a Los Angeles Times article, Swangard
said: “For the mainstream fan, the
integrity of the game is probably less
important than the entertainment value
. . . It’s a(n) issue that they are aware of,
but don’t care about. Similar to the
steroids controversy in baseball.”
The Effects of Endless
Contestation
• And the recently completed NBA Finals can serve as
some guide in this regard
• Amidst the talk of match-fixing, these finals, pitting the
two most storied NBA franchises playing in the finals
against one another for the first time in 24 years, led
to enormous TV ratings
– Far exceeding the previous year’s totals (between
50% [of households] and 60% [of viewers]
– The largest ratings for NBA Finals in 8 years
– And this, despite the fact that one of the officials
implicated in Donaghy’s allegations of 2002 match
fixing worked one of the 2008 Final games
The Effects of Endless
Contestation
• Of greater concern might be the cumulative effects
• The kind that have been theorized, for instance, by
Noelle-Neumann in her “spiral of silence” model
• Relative to sports scandals, or endless contestation,
what is developed among media-sport consumers
may be an understanding that, rather than the
privileged realm of play, sport is the zone of
struggle, of rules-breaking, of trying to exploit
neutral, presumably objectified systems for
personal benefit and aggrandizement.
Media Role/Media Effect
In all of these cases, we can see (to varying degrees)
the presence of media
– A committee chairman is also a board executive of
a major media empire
– The enhanced performance that drugs allows leads
to:
• endorsement contracts (in the case of Marion Jones)
• The flowering of third-party media exposure (in the case of
Jones and Roger Clemens)
– Intentional marketing of the athlete and sport by
broadcasters (in the case of Kameda), thereby
growing the sport and (with the sport) the athlete
– The circulation of societal-wide racial discourse via
the racist commentary of the media (the Imus
case)
Media Role/Media Effect?
But in asking about the “efficacy” of the media role, I
would point to this example:
• In 1992, MLB Player of the Year, Ken Caminiti, confessed
in Sports Illustrated that he used anabolic steroids
– He estimated that roughly fifty percent of the players
in the league were using them also.
• His story had a major impact on the media and its
attention to drugs in sports.
– The following chart shows U.S. media attention to
steroids in sports in 1992.
Media Role/Media Effect?
• Week 14 is when the Sports Illustrated article
was published about Caminiti.
• Prior to that, only ten pieces were published
in the mainstream media.
• In the following 14 weeks, over 250 articles
were published about steroids and sports.
Media Role/Media Effect?
• Source: http://www.steroid.com/steroids-insports.php (year: 2002)
Media Role/Media Effect?
• The SI Story had a kind of “monkey see, monkey
do” effect (in the media)
• However, it was more than a decade later than
any tangible influence -- in the form of substance
use policies in sports, Congressional hearings,
the Mitchell Report, and Grand Jury indictments - could actually be seen
• So, while there is a media role for and an positive
political/social outcome from endless
contestation, it exists on a decided temporal lag
Conclusion
The Devolution of Advanced
Society?
Conclusion
It is always good to remember the aphorism: “be
careful what one wishes for . . . Because it might
come true.”
In those inspired moments just prior to the tolling of
the submission deadline I dashed off the fateful
words: “the devolution of advanced . . .etcetera
and so forth.”
How stupid can a sole be?
because here I am now having to explain and
(more) defend those words
Conclusion
Well, clearly, we have yet to experience
the demise of modern civilization
because of endless contest
So, what could I possibly have been
thinking of, right?
Conclusion
My basic thesis is that:
Above all, when it comes to contemporary mediated sports, we are in the
midst of a framed reality of continuous contestation
o This imposes a rhetoric of divide -- of division on us
Second, as convenient as endless contest may be for the media, and as
compelling as it may be for the fan, the results in terms of stability for
the larger society may not be positive at all.
Conclusions
These cases clearly demonstrate that contestation exists in
advanced commercial sporting cultures like the U.S. and
Japan
Although the data is not longitudinal, I would venture that
contestation, as a rhetorical sporting form and as a mode of
discourse, is accelerating
o This is due, I would assert, because of economic and
political interests are engaged by questionable –
aggrandizing, self-centered, even illegal -- acts of athletes,
coaches, and governing authorities
o So, too, because of the intentional action of media
o For which “endless contest” is a favorable
communication tool
Conclusions
• Why this should precipitate a decline in these
advanced societies should not require too much
justification
• The notion that “everyone cheats” or “everyone is
out to get theirs” is bad enough
• But what it results in is one of two responses:
– “right, I’m going to get mine, as well” or else
– “we’d better intervene to make sure that doesn’t
happen”, or else:
– “we’d better knock this @%&# down a rung”
Conclusions
• “Hold on, let me get mine” as opposed to “Not so fast,
let me check your urine”
• The culture that advanced media sports has bred is
that the purity of fair play has been expunged.
• Mistrust attends every new athletic feat
– Thus heroism is now suspect
• A world lacking in heroes may not be completely bad
– But a world of perpetual suspicion, of endless
challenge of human achievement and motivation is.