FORG 325 Sports Spring 2019 • MWF 10-10:50 • Classroom: Instructor: John Alcorn •
[email protected] • Seabury 110 Office hours: MWF 8:30-9:30 and 1:00-2:00; and by appointment An introduction to social science of sports. We will focus on motivations and behaviors in sports organizations and markets. We will compare and contrast collegiate and professional sports; individual and team sports; and sports contests among nation-states. Specific topics are: nature & nurture in athletic prowess, stakeholders (athletes, fans, owners, media, and sponsors), dysfunctions (bias, corruption, discrimination, doping, & violence), & governance (informal honor codes, and the human element in refereeing). An overarching question is: What are sports for? We will review answers from various disciplines in the liberal arts, and will try and develop our own. Students will conduct policy debates. Topics of debates will include: pay-for-play for collegiate athletes, performance-enhancing drugs, and subsidies for stadiums, and refereeing by technology. There will be guest visits by experts from the field, to be scheduled. We will have occasional discussions of ‘sports in the news’ (public controversies about our topics) in class and by forum posts at our course intranet (Moodle site). There will be workshops with educational technology specialists, to be scheduled. Enrollment is limited to 15 students. Course requirements: • Four papers or media projects. Papers should be 1,500 words each. Media projects may be blogs, podcasts, or videos. • Two presentations (in rotation) about the assigned materials. • A policy debate. • Class participation, consisting in regular attendance and discussion, and in attendance at supplementary public lectures, which are listed on the syllabus.