Immortality in Sports

Immortality in Sports
Author: Wib Leonard
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 158
Release: 2015-12-03
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1317257790

Sports have taken on tremendous importance in the world in which we live. Their social significance - economic, political, and personal - both nationally and internationally is unprecedented. What may not be so immediately obvious is the sociological nature of sports. Sport offers one of the most visible public arenas for understanding the role that 'immortality' plays in individual action, group dynamics, and with audiences and the media. Following a brief introduction to the sociology of sport, Leonard explores these dimensions of the sporting world through the idea of the 'post-self' - how individuals regard themselves and want to be remembered by the public. From the individual psyche to the global arena of sports, this book features vivid examples and quotations from star athletes, coaches, and the media, offering poignant insights into the sporting world and about individuals and society.

We are the Champions: The Politics of Sports and Popular Music

We are the Champions: The Politics of Sports and Popular Music
Author: Ken McLeod
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 297
Release: 2016-02-11
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1317000099

Sports and popular music are synergistic agents in the construction of identity and community. They are often interconnected through common cross-marketing tactics and through influence on each other's performative strategies and stylistic content. Typically only studied as separate entities, popular music and sport cultures mutually 'play' off each other in exchanges of style, ideologies and forms. Posing unique challenges to notions of mind - body dualities, nationalism, class, gender, and racial codes and sexual orientation, Dr Ken McLeod illuminates the paradoxical and often conflicting relationships associated with these modes of leisure and entertainment and demonstrates that they are not culturally or ideologically distinct but are interconnected modes of contemporary social practice. Examples include how music is used to enhance sporting events, such as anthems, chants/cheers, and intermission entertainment, music that is used as an active part of the athletic event, and music that has been written about or that is associated with sports. There are also connections in the use of music in sports movies, television and video games and important, though critically under-acknowledged, similarities regarding spectatorship, practice and performance. Despite the scope of such confluences, the extraordinary impact of the interrelationship of music and sports on popular culture has remained little recognized. McLeod ties together several influential threads of popular culture and fills a significant void in our understanding of the construction and communication of identity in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

In the Zone

In the Zone
Author: Michael Murphy
Publisher: Open Road Media
Total Pages: 346
Release: 2011-06-07
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 145321884X

DIVDIVMichael Murphy, bestselling author of Golf in the Kingdom, explains the power of athletics to transform the body, mind, and spirit/divDIV /divDIVAthletes and coaches often say they feel “in the zone” while participating in sports or other endeavors, and Esalen Institute cofounder Michael Murphy carefully documents this phenomenon in one of the most comprehensive works of its kind. Murphy and coauthor Rhea A. White categorize twenty types of extraordinary athletic feats, exalted states of consciousness, and altered perceptions that, they say, evoke the richness of a spiritual practice./divDIV /divDIVThis wide-ranging compendium includes insights from amateur, Olympic, and professional athletes, such as Michael Jordan, Mario Andretti, Jack Nicklaus, and Arnold Schwarzenegger./div /div

The Sports Immortals

The Sports Immortals
Author: Peter Williams
Publisher: Popular Press
Total Pages: 178
Release: 1994
Genre: Music
ISBN: 9780879726706

Explores the psychology of hero-worship in sports, covering the period from the late 19th century to the present. Offers an overview of the classic theorists, and demonstrates how the public creates heroes and villains in the same way the Greeks created archetypal deities. Topics include the archetypes of human myth, localized sports archetypes, origins of the baseball myth, the archetypes of baseball, and the sports press. Paper edition (unseen), $17.95. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Sporting Lives

Sporting Lives
Author: James W. Pipkin
Publisher: University of Missouri Press
Total Pages: 175
Release: 2008
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 082626641X

"Examines autobiographies by athletes such as Wilt Chamberlain, Babe Ruth, Martina Navratilova, and Dennis Rodman, and analyzes common themes and recurring patterns in the accounts of their lives and sporting experiences"--Provided by publisher.

Handbook of Death and Dying

Handbook of Death and Dying
Author: Clifton D. Bryant
Publisher: SAGE
Total Pages: 1146
Release: 2003
Genre: Death
ISBN: 0761925147

Review: "More than 100 scholars contributed to this carefully researched, well-organized, informative, and multi-disciplinary source on death studies. Volume 1, "The Presence of Death," examines the cultural, historical, and societal frameworks of death, such as the universal fear of death, spirituality and varioius religions, the legal definition of death, suicide, and capital punishment. Volume 2, "The Response to Death," covers such topics as rites and ceremonies, grief and bereavement, and legal matters after death."--"The Top 20 Reference Titles of the Year," American Libraries, May 2004.

Legends Never Die

Legends Never Die
Author: Richard Ian Kimball
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
Total Pages: 218
Release: 2017-04-28
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 0815654057

With every touchdown, home run, and three-pointer, star athletes represent an American dream that only an elite group blessed with natural talent can achieve. However, Kimball concentrates on what happens once these modern warriors meet their untimely demise. As athletes die, legends rise in their place. The premature deaths of celebrated players not only capture and immortalize their physical superiority, but also jolt their fans with an unanticipated intensity. These athletes escape the inevitability of aging and decline of skill, with only the prime of their youth left to be remembered. But early mortality alone does not transform athletes into immortals. The living ultimately gain the power to construct the legacies of their fallen heroes. In Legends Never Die, Kimball explores the public myths and representations that surround a wide range of athletes, from Lou Gehrig and Joe DiMaggio to Dale Earnhardt and Bonnie McCarroll. Kimball delves deeper than just the cultural significance of sports and its players; he examines how each athlete’s narrative is shaped by gender relations, religion, and politics in contemporary America. In looking at how Americans react to the tragic deaths of sports heroes, Kimball illuminates the important role sports play in US society and helps to explain why star athletes possess such cultural power.

The Anthropology of Sport

The Anthropology of Sport
Author: Niko Besnier
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2017-12-08
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0520963814

Few activities bring together physicality, emotions, politics, money, and morality as dramatically as sport. In Brazil’s stadiums or China’s parks, on Cuba’s baseball diamonds or Fiji’s rugby fields, human beings test their physical limits, invest emotional energy, bet money, perform witchcraft, and ingest substances. Sport is a microcosm of what life is about. The Anthropology of Sport explores how sport both shapes and is shaped by the social, cultural, political, and historical contexts in which we live. Core themes discussed in this book include the body, modernity, nationalism, the state, citizenship, transnationalism, globalization, and gender and sexuality.

Trojans 1972: an Immortal Team of Mortal Men

Trojans 1972: an Immortal Team of Mortal Men
Author: Bill Block
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
Total Pages: 396
Release: 2009-07-20
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 147716443X

Bill Blocks Trojans 1972: An Immortal Team of Mortal Men captures the story of 47- USC football players, beyond their glory days on campus and into their everyday lives as men. The 1972 Trojans are considered one of the greatest teams in the history of college football. They defeated Ohio State 42-17 in the 1973 Rose Bowl to complete an undefeated 12-0 season and were crowned national champions. Each chapter is a mini biography told through the eyes of each player. Each and every player from that 72 team whether as powerful as fullback Sam Bam Cunningham, as intellectually gifted as defensive back Marvin Cobb, or as massive as offensive lineman Pete Adams, eventually became one of us. A mortal. Youll fi nd humor; youll fi nd sorrow; and youll fi nd football. Most of all youll fi nd lessons about being mortal.