Browsing by Subject "sports"

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A Longitudinal Analysis of Discourse Surrounding Racial Disparity in Formula 1 Motor Racing
(2023-05) Ladak, Aly Muhammad
The Hamilton Commission, established by world-famous Formula 1 driver Lewis Hamilton in 2020, released a shocking report in July 2021 diving deeper into the massive Black underrepresentation present in the Formula 1 workforce. This paper seeks to employ a longitudinal discourse analysis to unearth whether the research group’s efforts had any sort of effect on public discourse regarding said underrepresentation. In the past, shifts in public discourse have been indicative of future change in Formula 1; thus, discovering a positive or negative shift in discourse could potentially serve useful in predicting change regarding workforce racial disparities at the pinnacle of motorsport. After touching upon the Hamilton Commission’s findings and recommendations, this paper delves into an explanation of critical discourse analysis (CDA): the specific research method utilized in this exploration. Then, two types of CDA (keyword analysis & sentiment analysis) are performed on various news outlet and public forum datasets within the context of Formula 1. These analytical methods are conducted through novel data-scraping and data-visualizing software programs written for this project; the programmed code utilizes free-to-use, powerful Python algorithms, dabbling in the field of computational sociology, artificial intelligence, and machine learning. Finally, multiple data visualizations are presented, yielding various eye-opening conclusions.
American Hercules: The Creation of Babe Ruth as an American Icon
(2018-05) Leister, David
Like no other athlete before or since, Babe Ruth’s popularity has endured long after his playing days ended. His name has entered the popular lexicon, where “Ruthian” is a synonym for a superhuman feat, and other greats are referred to as the “Babe Ruth” of their field. Ruth’s name has even been attached to modern players, such as Shohei Ohtani, the Angels rookie known as the “Japanese Babe Ruth”. Ruth’s on field records and off-field antics have entered the realm of legend, and as a result, Ruth is often looked at as a sort of folk-hero. This thesis explains why Ruth is seen this way, and what forces led to the creation of the mythic figure surrounding the man. Ruth was a truly revolutionary baseball player, with a style that transformed the way the game was played, watched, and even designed. Ruth also benefited from playing in the right place at the right time. Ruth’s first seasons in New York coincided with the dawn of the Roaring Twenties and the Jazz Age, where rising incomes and more leisure time allowed Americans to consume more media, including baseball. Print advertising was on the upswing as well, with a new invention, radio, providing nation-wide broadcasts of baseball games. Ruth had the good judgement to hire an agent, named Christy Walsh who helped propel him into a nation-wide figure. Walsh used ghostwriting and print advertising to circulate Ruth’s name and face across the country. By the end of the 1920s, Ruth was advertising for almost every product imaginable, appearing regularly in the by-lines of the country’s newspapers, and even appeared in a couple of movies. By the end of his career, Ruth’s popularity moved beyond baseball and into folklore. His influence even extended beyond his lifetime where the most successful and popular athletes modeled their public relations and advertising careers off of his and Christy Walsh’s strategies.
AMS :: ATX February 2012 Blog Archive
(2012-02) Department of American Studies
AMS :: ATX is a blog dedicated to representing the many activities and interests of the department of American Studies at The University of Texas at Austin. Together with the department’s Twitter feed, this blog exists to serve the AMS and Austin communities by acting as a hub for up-to-date information on events and opportunities at UT and beyond. This archive includes the following blog posts: Faculty Research: Dr. Randy Lewis on Unplugging at Flow (February 1, 2012); Grad Research: Bombs and Belvederes (February 8, 2012); Undergrad Research: A Trip to the Archives in NYC (February 15, 2012); Undergrad Research: A Trip to the Archives in NYC, Part 2 (February 16, 2012); 5 Takes on Women and Bicycles (February 23, 2012); Explore American Studies at Explore UT! (February 29, 2012).
The Beautiful (Computer) Game: How Data Science Will Revolutionize the World's Most Popular Sport
(2021-12) Takvorian, Aristotelis
Data science is taking over sports, and soccer is no different. While having lagged behind other sports in the data revolution, soccer is beginning to put an emphasis on making data-driven decisions. This thesis addresses the ways in which professional soccer teams can begin to make use of advancing data acquisition technology to aid teams in preparation/strategy, in-game decisions, and scouting. First, the thesis provides an overview of how data science has been used in other sports. Next, the thesis investigates what professional soccer is currently doing and why they have lagged behind, followed by various proposals of data science models and techniques that could begin to be used in the game. Lastly, the thesis provides an example model of its own, used to predict player value based on personal performance statistics from the 2020-2021 season.
Financial Report of the Intercollegiate Athletic Council, 1931-1934
(University of Texas at Austin, 1935-03-01) University of Texas at Austin
Fumbling the Ball in Higher Education
(2019-12-02) Barker, Anandi
Madness in the NCAA
(2018-03-30) Marshall, Jeffrey
Miracles in March: A breakdown of the peripheral effects created by Cinderella teams in Men’s Division I College Basketball
(2023-05) Schweizer, William Anton
The NCAA men’s college basketball tournament, also known as March Madness, is a collegiate sporting event that occurs for three weeks every March and April and is used to determine the men’s college basketball champion in the United States. Throughout the three weeks, teams who unexpectedly make deep runs into the tournament, arise and are dubbed Cinderella teams by the public. Through the unexpected nature of these runs, curiosity from outsiders of these schools arises and generates buzz around the school’s name and image. This buzz can be used in positive ways to leverage the schools and their basketball program’s shareholders into a healthier position financially and socially. The paths to these healthier positions created through Cinderella runs can come through changes in admissions and academic standings of the schools, financials, conference affiliation, media exposure, career paths of team personnel, and name-image-likeness rules among many other effects. Through these, a potential for recklessness and poor decisions by school executives is spotted in the false belief that sports and their effects are inherently good for all involved. As this is not true, these executives need to monitor how changes to their institutions are implemented after Cinderella runs whether that’s in regards to the allocation of funding or the overall image of the school among other things. Effects through these runs are something that is constantly evolving and have the potential to create additional impacts in the coming years in the NCAA men’s and women’s basketball tournaments through the NCAA Transformation Committee’s recommended changes.
More Than Medals
(2018-02-25) Romanow, Nick
Onside: A Reconsideration of Soccer's Cultural Future in the United States
(2020-05) Dockery, Samuel Reed
Throughout the course of the 20th century, professional sports have evolved to become a predominant aspect of many societies’ popular cultures. Though sports and related physical activities had existed long before 1900, the advent of industrial economies, specifically growing middle classes and ever-improving methods of communication in countries worldwide, have allowed sports to be played and followed by more people than ever before. As a result, certain games have captured the hearts and minds of so many people in such a way that a culture of following the particular sport has begun to be emphasized over the act of actually doing or performing the sport. One needs to look no further than the hours of football talk shows scheduled weekly on ESPN or the myriad of analytical articles published online and in newspapers daily for evidence of how following and talking about sports has taken on cultural priority over actually playing the sport. Defined as “hegemonic sports cultures” by University of Michigan sociologists Andrei Markovits and Steven Hellerman, these sports are the ones who dominate “a country’s emotional attachments rather than merely representing its callisthenic activities.” Soccer is the world’s game. This phrase, though oft-repeated to the point of becoming cliché, holds true in the sporting cultures of nearly every country around the globe, with one glaring exception: The United States of America. Indeed, where most countries’ cultural “sport spaces” are dominated by two sports, the United States is proud of its “Big Four”: American football, basketball, baseball, and ice hockey, represented professionally by the NFL, NBA, MLB, and NHL, respectively. Each of these four leagues is regarded as the highest level of competition for its sport in the world, and all four are among the top six sports leagues by revenue worldwide. How is it, then, that soccer has failed to establish the roots of a hegemonic sports culture in America, a country with such vast sociopolitical influence over the rest of the world for much of the 20th century and one that also takes great cultural pride in athletic accomplishment? The previously mentioned Markovits and Hellerman provide some theories in their 2001 work Offside: Soccer & American Exceptionalism, where they argue that in the period from 1870 – 1930, a critical 60-year juncture of sports investment in the West and a time of heightened nativism in America, soccer was essentially crowded-out by the rise of non-European sports: baseball and football, and then basketball and ice hockey later on. At the time of their writing, Markovits and Hellerman were not very optimistic about the future of soccer in the United States. Using related sociological works about sport, quantitative data from FIFA, and other sources that comment on the evolution of American culture into the 21st century, I plan on painting an updated, optimistic picture of soccer’s future in the United States, where I one day believe that it will establish itself as a hegemonic sports culture akin to the Big Four.
Player Autonomy in Sport: Impact of Coach’s Passion
(2020) Ho, Bryan; Castelli, Darla
While motivation is a critical factor in all sports, at the highest level of performance it is what makes the difference between success and failure. Motivation can be either intrinsic or extrinsic, but intrinsic motivation is often more potent of the two. Self-Determination Theory (SDT) posits that human motivation is linked to inherent psychological needs. When SDT is applied to movement, it is suggested that regularity of physical activity participation is influenced by intrinsic motivation and perceived autonomy. In sports, coaches play a unique role in an athlete's performance and are directly responsible for the social environment and perceived autonomy for athletes. The type of passion a coach exhibits influences their coaching style and impacts an athlete's perception of autonomy. As a result, there is debate as to which types of passion have the most influence on coaching styles and in turn, an athlete’s perceived autonomy. The purpose of this thesis is to examine the affects of coach's passion, a strong inclination or emotion toward something, on a player's perceived autonomy, and whether obsessive passion is more detrimental than no passion at all. Using a systematic literature review, and the PRISMA guidelines, this study analyzed 23 peer-reviewed journal articles, from 1985 to present, relating to SDT, the dualistic model of passion, and intrinsic motivation. The findings suggest that harmonious passion leads to the greatest autonomy and intrinsic motivation, and it can overcome the negative effects of obsessive passion. These results provide insight as to how coaches should optimize their coaching techniques to train their athletes to maximize performance. Implications suggest that coaches learn to recognize when they are exhibiting obsessive behaviors and actively attempt to reduce it by engaging in more harmonious actions.
Shooting for Success: an Analysis of Predictive Basketball Analytics
(2023-05) Geelhoed, Devin
Basketball has changed greatly over recent years, thanks to the data-driven revolution in the way the game is played. Models to predict player and team performance are increasingly popular for team personnel to focus on what they are most successful at, for analysts to break down where advantages and disadvantages are had for different players or teams, and for viewers to create their own opinions on the players or teams they want to succeed or fail and inform betting decisions. This thesis seeks to define where current predictive analytics are lacking with a multimodal examination of three ways we analyze the game: equation-based prediction, machine learning prediction, and human prediction. The thesis focuses on each of these three methods of forecasting in turn, noting their strengths and weaknesses. Additionally, with equation-based prediction, the thesis provides an example model of Expected Points to project the outcome of a certain shot from a certain player. Lastly, the thesis focuses on future developments in predictive analytics and the ways they are shaping the basketball viewing experience.
Sports movies to get you through quarantine
(ORANGE Magazine, 2020-05-02) Garcia, Evelyn
The Eyes Have It: Behind the Scenes of UT’s “The Eyes of Texas” Controversy
(2021-05) Levin, Joseph
In the summer of 2020, a group of Texas Longhorn student athletes, led by the football team, released a letter calling for the university to implement several changes to make the school more welcoming and diverse. Among the requests was a call for the university to retire its alma mater, “The Eyes of Texas” due to its origins in minstrelsy. That request came to dominate the Longhorns football season, quickly becoming national news and leading every press conference. But what actually happened in the locker room around these deep conversations of race, belonging, and tradition had never before been reported. The investigative journalism piece that follows aims to tell the story of how the 2020 Longhorn football team navigated the controversy. It is based on interviews with dozens of coaches, athletic department officials, university administrators, and current and former Longhorns and was originally published in the May 2021 issue of Texas Monthly magazine.
Three Women You Didn’t Know Paved the Way: Gender Equality Through Sports in Ultraconservative Countries
(2019-11-19) -, Francesca
What Starts Here Changes Attendance: A Look into the Factors Affecting Student Attendance at Sporting Events at the University of Texas at Austin
(2018-05) Moore, Kristen
Decreased student attendance at sporting events has become a problem for schools across the country, including for the University of Texas at Austin (UT). There are a variety of factors affecting this issue, such as teams’ win-loss records, but not all factors are controllable by athletic departments. In order to solve the problem and increase attendance, this thesis identifies what factors are the most influential at UT in students’ decisions not to attend games and minimize the effects of the factors that the UT athletic department has control over. This issue is important for the athletic department to focus on because increased student attendance at sporting events provides benefits to the University as a whole and its students such as additional revenue, improved win-loss records of teams, and positive psychological and health changes in students. This thesis uses prior research to develop a list of factors that affect students’ decisions to attend games for the three traditional revenue sports: football, men’s basketball, and baseball. This list of factors was then incorporated into a survey of current UT students that collected background information such as age, gender, level of interest in sports, and whether or not students grew up UT sports fans. The survey also collected the average number of games students attended for each sport each season and a ranking of the top five factors that were the most influential in their decisions not to attend games for each sport. Analyzing the survey results and building on prior research, this thesis suggests that the most influential factors and main areas of recommendation include transportation, the social aspect of sporting events, food and beverages, engaging students at younger ages before they enter college, and targeting women.