Research Paper for MBA

[tnicemgr]

I am in need of some help for research I am doing for a paper in my MBA-Sport Management area. I felt that a good place to get information was here at coacht.com. The place where players, parents, administrators, and media professionals hang out. We are covering "race and gender" in this section. I am in need of your ideas on the question below.

 

Why/How do you think the media affects our perception of an athlete's race & gender.

 

 

Please leave you comments here for me to review as I go on with this research. Also media professionals I would also welcome your side of the story. Thanks in advance for your help.

[rdk4257]

I am in need of some help for research I am doing for a paper in my MBA-Sport Management area. I felt that a good place to get information was here at coacht.com. The place where players, parents, administrators, and media professionals hang out. We are covering "race and gender" in this section. I am in need of your ideas on the question below.

 

Why/How do you think the media affects our perception of an athlete's race & gender.

Please leave you comments here for me to review as I go on with this research. Also media professionals I would also welcome your side of the story. Thanks in advance for your help.

 

 

 

I have worked full-time in a small-town daily newspaper's sports department, though I now have another full-time job and only occasionally cover games for the same newspaper.

 

In our coverage area, there are six public high schools and two private high schools. There are six Class A schools, a large AA school and a AAA school. There is also a community college, which fields basketball, baseball and softball teams.

 

My thoughts are probably colored by being on the production side of the sports section for so long, but I hope they will help.

 

Each school in the county is known for its one (or more) sports that it excels in. The composition of those teams are usually consistent as well.

 

At the larger schools, the bulk of their basketball teams and track teams are African-Americans, but so are a large portion of their student populations.

 

Football seems to be about half and half, while the majority of baseball, softball, soccer, volleyball, tennis, golf and bowling competitors are Caucasians.

 

At the smaller schools (both public and private), all of the teams are predominantly Caucasian (with a few exceptions), but so are their student populations.

 

Each of the smaller schools is known for success in a particular sport, often to the detriment (or at least reduced interest) of the others.

 

The smaller schools also tend to have success in either boys or girls sports, but rarely both at the same time. All the attention seems to be focused on the girls at some schools and on the boys at others. Some of the schools honestly struggle with success in both the boys and girls programs.

 

Individually I don't think the media has much affect on the perception of race and gender on our level at a small-town paper. These student-athletes are just people in the community who are under the spotlight in their sport.

 

On a larger scale though, I am sure that the media has stereotypes to some extent. There are times when they just need the person to plug into the story they already have mostly written. When those preconceived molds are broken, the story is even bigger (example, Danica Patrick winning; Tony Dungy and Lovie Smith in Super Bowl, etc.)

 

Hopefully, we can keep moving toward each individual and each story standing on its own.

[tnicemgr]

Thank you for your response, you gave me an idea about Danica Patrick. I had thought about the Lovie Smith, Tony Dungy issue already and plan to use his book "Quiet Strength" as one of my references. That is an awesome book by the way. Any additional comments are still welcome.