Post by New York Islanders GM on Jun 22, 2013 1:14:31 GMT -5
I recently wrote a paper for my class regarding this issue. The starting is a bit more of a journal review, but it picks up in the 3 page. Not sure if anyone is actually interested in reading this, but hey why not post it if you are someone might be since we are all involved in fantasy sport. Please don't steal my work if you need to turnitin.com, you'll fuck us both lol. Anyways, take a look if you're interested. Hopefully there isn't too many errors from taking it from word to here.
Sport has been one of the most celebrated activities in the history of mankind. It has the power to turn complete strangers into the best of friends, or the worst of enemies. Over the last decade, fantasy sports have taken North America by storm. Society tends to always want to live in a fantasy world where they are no longer bounded by constrictions, limitations, and sometimes gain the ability to defy the rules of physics themselves. Sport junkies are no different. Once the dream of playing in professional leagues fades away, most turn to executive roles. The most popular role is a fantasy team manager. These participants are unmistakably inclined to test out their sporting knowledge with their peer group and aim to receive bragging rights by the season’s end. Although the fantasy sporting world at first glance is all inclusive, authors Joris Drayer and Brendan Dwyer question the lack of participation by the Black community in all fantasy sports. Most do not see the issue behind it, they feel, ‘that is just the way things are.’ As a society, most feel that we have evolved past racism and segregation, although it is very much still alive today. This journal article does an outstanding job highlighting sociological sporting issues with reputable sources and organizes their thoughts and ideas vividly.
The International Journal of Sport Management is a worldwide known annual journal built very professionally. It was founded in January of 1999 as they released their first journal. They come out with four issues a year, most recently being the April 2013 issue. Although a mission statement is not presented in the print journal or online, the journal’s main focus is to publish multiple different sources of scholarly information with an elite editorial staff in order to strengthen the link between sport management theory and sport management practice. They carefully selected their editorial staff and authors. The editorial team is made up of 49 professors from a variety of universities across the globe. This ensures that the information provided in the articles is most accurate, up to date, and written for primarily for scholars. This journal is created to serve professionals in the sporting sector, recreation management and athletic administrations. With the peer-review system, scholars along with practitioners have a chance to donate their valuable information and thoughts to the articles regarding sport, recreation, and competitive athletics.
This journal continues to hold a strong relationship with other professional journals such as The Journal of Sport Management. Although they are competitors, the two aid each other and often quote each other’s work. They both have close ties with the North American Society for Sport Management, NASSM. NASSM is the utmost influential sport management organization in North America as they develop the curricular standard. All submissions must go through NASSM in order to become published. Authors must follow the guidelines of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (6th edition), 2009 (NASSM, 2013). This APA format gives a consistent clean professional look to all the articles in every volume and issue. All manuscripts must then be followed by an abstract of no more than 150 words. They are then judged primarily on the substantive content, but additional factors do influence their decisions. The manuscripts cannot be under review by a journal while being currently under review with another journal (NASSM, 2013). The review process then takes 12 weeks. If the manuscript is accepted, authors then must transfer copyright to Human Kinetics, Inc. (NASSM, 2013). All of these precautions were made in order to ensure the most professional product is established. Without these rules and regulations, the International Journal of Sport Management would not be as successful as it is today.
University journals hold an extraordinary standard of quality in regards to their content and the International Journal of Sport Management is no different. In the four journals I analysed, either 6 or 7 articles were presented in the table of contents. None of the articles had a special edition; they were all consistent with what they published. All the articles were not specifically related, although they all were in the sporting industry and had various connections. The authors were primarily focused on taking a controversial current event in sport and analysis both sides of the argument on the subject. This allows multiple articles to connect in the future and for future authors to use the information already provided. They all provide an extreme amount of sources to back up their work. Graphs, charts, and tables are all presented in every research article to help future promote the points being described. The journal takes professionalism extremely serious, as they aim to continue their endeavors as a scholarly source for researchers.
Following the quality that this journal expects, Drayer and Dwyer did not disappoint. This article is well organized and written, as expected from two respected university professors with their P.H.Ds in the field. They use complex language in order to maintain professionalism. They used just over fifty academic sources to ensure the material they are providing is legitimate. These sources consist of articles, other journals, studies, interviews, graphs, and research to give a wide variety of material. Some articles were found via the biggest sports media sites such as ESPN and Sports Illustrated. This way, they remain capable to get all of their points across with statistical proof behind their work. The use of subheadings allowed Drayer and Dwyer to organize their information into multiple sections. Using clear detailed graphs and tables, the journal is also visually appealing. Using visual data, the authors were able to clearly lay out their concept and allow the reader to make connections and links between course material, course theory, and real-life practice. The authors use four propositions in order to try and fix the issues that divide participants with different socioeconomic background, gender, and ethnicity.
R. Boyle and R. Haynes of New Media Sport believe that fantasy sport is blowing up and is the biggest segment of sport-related activity on the internet. Fantasy sports are a top choice of leisure time for most sports fan as they get to pretend they are involved in their dream role (Drayer & Dwyer, 2013). The intention is for the participant to manage a roster of a professional team, make transactions with other managers in the league, and compete weekly against your peers in a league-style format (Drayer & Dwyer, 2013). The winner is decided through the statistical performance of the athlete in the real-world. In some cases, there are prizes award to the top contestants varying depending on their ranking which could be a relatively large sum. Such a simple structure makes this industry an unappreciated multi-million dollar industry that investors always overlook. This industry is ready to explode with a dominant investor, but this said investor is yet to be seen.
Several researches have suggested that partakers are driven by the following motivational qualities: competition, diversion, social interaction, bragging-rights, entertainment, achievement, customizability, and arousal (Dwyer & Kim, 2011; Farquhar & Meeds, 2007; Spinda & Haridakis, 2008). The fantasy world behaviour is much more then singularly team-specific focus, but endures the potential to be more diverse and league-wide interaction. Knowing you can accomplish a relatively difficult task in the spot light of your peers provides an arousal for the participants. They are able to communicate with other managers and either maintain or form bonds throughout the friendly competition. The league operations allow a high level of customizability for each league conducted where the commissioner decides the rules. This makes every league have alterations, unless they mimic each other’s basic operations. In addition, each roster varies weekly from transaction to transaction with different managers holding rights over teams. Since their decisions will obviously differ from the managers of other leagues with the same franchise, the rosters tend to shuffle and offer a high degree of distinctiveness and entertainment every time you log on. All of these factors make fantasy sports appealing to most males who follow sport.
What makes this article so fascinating is the fact that the black community still participate in the viewing and following of professional sport and are top athletes themselves. Even with their participation, a culture barrier seems to be in place in the fantasy world. Looking at all the previously mentioned motives for fantasy sport, none of them seem to be extreme enough to repel other cultures and backgrounds. Looking at the leisure constraint model, intrapersonal constraints, inter personal constraints, structural constraints, leisure preferences, and interpersonal compatibility and coordination are all said to tie directly into the participation or nonparticipation of an individual (Drayer & Dwyer, 2013). So what makes the white communities’ constraints and leisure preferences so unique that we are the only culture to create a fantasy side of sport? In 2008, a black author for ESPN named Stephen Smith had this to say regarding the participation of the black community in fantasy sports.
I’m not surprised to learn that so few blacks are among the 30 million people who participate in fantasy sports. I’ve always thought that a lot of these guys (and 96% of them are guys) are nerds desperately in need of more sociable leisure-time activities. Leisure time for black folks historically consists of direct interactions, the kind of experience you get at a family barbecue or hanging out with friends. Sitting in front of a computer screen pretending to be Bill Parcells? Sounds like work to me (p. 18).
Looking more in depth in this source, I felt he was not a creditable source. Smith is extremely ignorant in the accomplishments of some and the past-times of others. Smith has a history of being extremely passionate about the NBA, but lacks respect for other sports and leagues in basketball. Actually finding the original article written, Smith goes on to say, “And the more I learn about the typical fantasy player, the more I think most minorities simply have better things to do.” (Smith, 2008).
This is coming from a professional ESPN broadcaster and writer that documents the NBA’s every move. He is stereotyping a lesser being, pretty ironic looking at his background’s history. Weren’t there large struggles trying to evolve the thinking of mankind to no longer look down on certain members of society? This quote coming from someone who experienced racism and stereotyping themselves is quite shocking. He shows a lack of understanding of how fantasy sports are turning into a social media site. Social media, something that all cultures partake in, allows people to connect and bond virtually whenever need be. It seems he is trying to lash out instead of resolve a problem. He also appears to be extremely content with his current ESPN sporting sector position that most people fantasize about doing. Is it really hard for somebody that luckily got into the sporting industry to see why the average Joe dreams about conducting trades? I personally believe there is much more to it than just ‘minorities have better things to do.’
Drayer and Dwyer explore four theoretical proposals to explain the minimal participation of blacks. They include; intrapersonal constraints represent the primary barrier to participation in fantasy sports, lack of interest is influenced by perception of who is playing (intrapersonal) than lack of knowledge of the activity (structural), fantasy’s gambling connections are divisive, and fantasy’s world connotation is a restrictive reality (Drayer & Dwyer, 2013). The emergent themes in the current study seemed quite parallel with the leisure constraint model proposed by Crawford et al. (1991). After they conducted interviews, research, and studies, Drayer & Dwyer (2013) came to the conclusion that interpersonal constraints only repelled participants if they had previous experience playing fantasy sports. Three former players suggested that they would continue the sport if their friends were playing, while no similar response was recorded with others with no fantasy sport experience (Drayer & Dwyer, 2013). Structural constraints were slightly arising, but were not enough to induce participation alone, though Drayer and Dwyer felt more research was needed to support this claim. The data also strongly supported the idea that cultural constraints belong in the same category as intrapersonal constraints. Armstrong (2002a) suggested that most blacks are more inclined to select a sport or sporting game that “offers the most culturally distinct sport experience that is relevant to African American culture” (p.271). This insists that fantasy sport is somehow lacking in this area, which as Armstrong (2002a) suggest, is the primary barrier resulting in the lack of participation in the black community.
Fantasy sport is evolving into a multimillion dollar industry with little participation of minorities throughout all sports. Drayer and Dwyer wrote an impressive article that touched on a subject that most might not realize, although it is clearly in front of them. Sport is a mirror of society and even in the fantasy world; segregation is still an issue. The debate continues if whites are disallowing minorities to participate in a discreet way or if others truly do not want to be involved. As the fantasy world expands, many questions about it will continue to arise. As long as there are few positions and millions of viewers, fantasy sport will remain much alive. Sport junkies want an opportunity to show their skills and finally have some sort of experience operating a sporting team. Sport creates such a competition between friends and strangers, egos tend to get into the way in the playing, business, and even fantasy world.Whether or not any of these fantasy managers actually develop into a professional sport manager is still under question, but millions of dollars of investments say that some still want roll the dice.
Sport has been one of the most celebrated activities in the history of mankind. It has the power to turn complete strangers into the best of friends, or the worst of enemies. Over the last decade, fantasy sports have taken North America by storm. Society tends to always want to live in a fantasy world where they are no longer bounded by constrictions, limitations, and sometimes gain the ability to defy the rules of physics themselves. Sport junkies are no different. Once the dream of playing in professional leagues fades away, most turn to executive roles. The most popular role is a fantasy team manager. These participants are unmistakably inclined to test out their sporting knowledge with their peer group and aim to receive bragging rights by the season’s end. Although the fantasy sporting world at first glance is all inclusive, authors Joris Drayer and Brendan Dwyer question the lack of participation by the Black community in all fantasy sports. Most do not see the issue behind it, they feel, ‘that is just the way things are.’ As a society, most feel that we have evolved past racism and segregation, although it is very much still alive today. This journal article does an outstanding job highlighting sociological sporting issues with reputable sources and organizes their thoughts and ideas vividly.
The International Journal of Sport Management is a worldwide known annual journal built very professionally. It was founded in January of 1999 as they released their first journal. They come out with four issues a year, most recently being the April 2013 issue. Although a mission statement is not presented in the print journal or online, the journal’s main focus is to publish multiple different sources of scholarly information with an elite editorial staff in order to strengthen the link between sport management theory and sport management practice. They carefully selected their editorial staff and authors. The editorial team is made up of 49 professors from a variety of universities across the globe. This ensures that the information provided in the articles is most accurate, up to date, and written for primarily for scholars. This journal is created to serve professionals in the sporting sector, recreation management and athletic administrations. With the peer-review system, scholars along with practitioners have a chance to donate their valuable information and thoughts to the articles regarding sport, recreation, and competitive athletics.
This journal continues to hold a strong relationship with other professional journals such as The Journal of Sport Management. Although they are competitors, the two aid each other and often quote each other’s work. They both have close ties with the North American Society for Sport Management, NASSM. NASSM is the utmost influential sport management organization in North America as they develop the curricular standard. All submissions must go through NASSM in order to become published. Authors must follow the guidelines of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (6th edition), 2009 (NASSM, 2013). This APA format gives a consistent clean professional look to all the articles in every volume and issue. All manuscripts must then be followed by an abstract of no more than 150 words. They are then judged primarily on the substantive content, but additional factors do influence their decisions. The manuscripts cannot be under review by a journal while being currently under review with another journal (NASSM, 2013). The review process then takes 12 weeks. If the manuscript is accepted, authors then must transfer copyright to Human Kinetics, Inc. (NASSM, 2013). All of these precautions were made in order to ensure the most professional product is established. Without these rules and regulations, the International Journal of Sport Management would not be as successful as it is today.
University journals hold an extraordinary standard of quality in regards to their content and the International Journal of Sport Management is no different. In the four journals I analysed, either 6 or 7 articles were presented in the table of contents. None of the articles had a special edition; they were all consistent with what they published. All the articles were not specifically related, although they all were in the sporting industry and had various connections. The authors were primarily focused on taking a controversial current event in sport and analysis both sides of the argument on the subject. This allows multiple articles to connect in the future and for future authors to use the information already provided. They all provide an extreme amount of sources to back up their work. Graphs, charts, and tables are all presented in every research article to help future promote the points being described. The journal takes professionalism extremely serious, as they aim to continue their endeavors as a scholarly source for researchers.
Following the quality that this journal expects, Drayer and Dwyer did not disappoint. This article is well organized and written, as expected from two respected university professors with their P.H.Ds in the field. They use complex language in order to maintain professionalism. They used just over fifty academic sources to ensure the material they are providing is legitimate. These sources consist of articles, other journals, studies, interviews, graphs, and research to give a wide variety of material. Some articles were found via the biggest sports media sites such as ESPN and Sports Illustrated. This way, they remain capable to get all of their points across with statistical proof behind their work. The use of subheadings allowed Drayer and Dwyer to organize their information into multiple sections. Using clear detailed graphs and tables, the journal is also visually appealing. Using visual data, the authors were able to clearly lay out their concept and allow the reader to make connections and links between course material, course theory, and real-life practice. The authors use four propositions in order to try and fix the issues that divide participants with different socioeconomic background, gender, and ethnicity.
R. Boyle and R. Haynes of New Media Sport believe that fantasy sport is blowing up and is the biggest segment of sport-related activity on the internet. Fantasy sports are a top choice of leisure time for most sports fan as they get to pretend they are involved in their dream role (Drayer & Dwyer, 2013). The intention is for the participant to manage a roster of a professional team, make transactions with other managers in the league, and compete weekly against your peers in a league-style format (Drayer & Dwyer, 2013). The winner is decided through the statistical performance of the athlete in the real-world. In some cases, there are prizes award to the top contestants varying depending on their ranking which could be a relatively large sum. Such a simple structure makes this industry an unappreciated multi-million dollar industry that investors always overlook. This industry is ready to explode with a dominant investor, but this said investor is yet to be seen.
Several researches have suggested that partakers are driven by the following motivational qualities: competition, diversion, social interaction, bragging-rights, entertainment, achievement, customizability, and arousal (Dwyer & Kim, 2011; Farquhar & Meeds, 2007; Spinda & Haridakis, 2008). The fantasy world behaviour is much more then singularly team-specific focus, but endures the potential to be more diverse and league-wide interaction. Knowing you can accomplish a relatively difficult task in the spot light of your peers provides an arousal for the participants. They are able to communicate with other managers and either maintain or form bonds throughout the friendly competition. The league operations allow a high level of customizability for each league conducted where the commissioner decides the rules. This makes every league have alterations, unless they mimic each other’s basic operations. In addition, each roster varies weekly from transaction to transaction with different managers holding rights over teams. Since their decisions will obviously differ from the managers of other leagues with the same franchise, the rosters tend to shuffle and offer a high degree of distinctiveness and entertainment every time you log on. All of these factors make fantasy sports appealing to most males who follow sport.
What makes this article so fascinating is the fact that the black community still participate in the viewing and following of professional sport and are top athletes themselves. Even with their participation, a culture barrier seems to be in place in the fantasy world. Looking at all the previously mentioned motives for fantasy sport, none of them seem to be extreme enough to repel other cultures and backgrounds. Looking at the leisure constraint model, intrapersonal constraints, inter personal constraints, structural constraints, leisure preferences, and interpersonal compatibility and coordination are all said to tie directly into the participation or nonparticipation of an individual (Drayer & Dwyer, 2013). So what makes the white communities’ constraints and leisure preferences so unique that we are the only culture to create a fantasy side of sport? In 2008, a black author for ESPN named Stephen Smith had this to say regarding the participation of the black community in fantasy sports.
I’m not surprised to learn that so few blacks are among the 30 million people who participate in fantasy sports. I’ve always thought that a lot of these guys (and 96% of them are guys) are nerds desperately in need of more sociable leisure-time activities. Leisure time for black folks historically consists of direct interactions, the kind of experience you get at a family barbecue or hanging out with friends. Sitting in front of a computer screen pretending to be Bill Parcells? Sounds like work to me (p. 18).
Looking more in depth in this source, I felt he was not a creditable source. Smith is extremely ignorant in the accomplishments of some and the past-times of others. Smith has a history of being extremely passionate about the NBA, but lacks respect for other sports and leagues in basketball. Actually finding the original article written, Smith goes on to say, “And the more I learn about the typical fantasy player, the more I think most minorities simply have better things to do.” (Smith, 2008).
This is coming from a professional ESPN broadcaster and writer that documents the NBA’s every move. He is stereotyping a lesser being, pretty ironic looking at his background’s history. Weren’t there large struggles trying to evolve the thinking of mankind to no longer look down on certain members of society? This quote coming from someone who experienced racism and stereotyping themselves is quite shocking. He shows a lack of understanding of how fantasy sports are turning into a social media site. Social media, something that all cultures partake in, allows people to connect and bond virtually whenever need be. It seems he is trying to lash out instead of resolve a problem. He also appears to be extremely content with his current ESPN sporting sector position that most people fantasize about doing. Is it really hard for somebody that luckily got into the sporting industry to see why the average Joe dreams about conducting trades? I personally believe there is much more to it than just ‘minorities have better things to do.’
Drayer and Dwyer explore four theoretical proposals to explain the minimal participation of blacks. They include; intrapersonal constraints represent the primary barrier to participation in fantasy sports, lack of interest is influenced by perception of who is playing (intrapersonal) than lack of knowledge of the activity (structural), fantasy’s gambling connections are divisive, and fantasy’s world connotation is a restrictive reality (Drayer & Dwyer, 2013). The emergent themes in the current study seemed quite parallel with the leisure constraint model proposed by Crawford et al. (1991). After they conducted interviews, research, and studies, Drayer & Dwyer (2013) came to the conclusion that interpersonal constraints only repelled participants if they had previous experience playing fantasy sports. Three former players suggested that they would continue the sport if their friends were playing, while no similar response was recorded with others with no fantasy sport experience (Drayer & Dwyer, 2013). Structural constraints were slightly arising, but were not enough to induce participation alone, though Drayer and Dwyer felt more research was needed to support this claim. The data also strongly supported the idea that cultural constraints belong in the same category as intrapersonal constraints. Armstrong (2002a) suggested that most blacks are more inclined to select a sport or sporting game that “offers the most culturally distinct sport experience that is relevant to African American culture” (p.271). This insists that fantasy sport is somehow lacking in this area, which as Armstrong (2002a) suggest, is the primary barrier resulting in the lack of participation in the black community.
Fantasy sport is evolving into a multimillion dollar industry with little participation of minorities throughout all sports. Drayer and Dwyer wrote an impressive article that touched on a subject that most might not realize, although it is clearly in front of them. Sport is a mirror of society and even in the fantasy world; segregation is still an issue. The debate continues if whites are disallowing minorities to participate in a discreet way or if others truly do not want to be involved. As the fantasy world expands, many questions about it will continue to arise. As long as there are few positions and millions of viewers, fantasy sport will remain much alive. Sport junkies want an opportunity to show their skills and finally have some sort of experience operating a sporting team. Sport creates such a competition between friends and strangers, egos tend to get into the way in the playing, business, and even fantasy world.Whether or not any of these fantasy managers actually develop into a professional sport manager is still under question, but millions of dollars of investments say that some still want roll the dice.