Conclusion

When it was time to take Sport and Gender I had a lot of opinions and thoughts of what the class was going to be about and what was going to be discussed. The title of the class doesn't do justice to all the different topics and discussions brought up in our weekly class discussions and blackboard posts. I believe I learned a lot from the various articles assigned in class and the thoughts of students through topics such as, race, gender, sexuality, and disabilities. The articles were very insightful which keeps you interested and make you want to go deeper into the topic than just the article itself. That's where I think the blogs the groups kept was so beneficial. It meant that weekly a student takes what he or she has read and heard on a topic and give their own twist or added bonus to the subject which was useful. I think the best part of the blogs was the connection between classmates. The comments are important because of the idea of starting a good debate or good comments to use in class to go further into that debate which gets the whole class involved.

The end of the year presentations are something I see as another important characteristic of this class because it doesn't take much to just post a blog and these presentations allow the groups to go in depth on a topic they used for a blog post during the course of the year. Overall, I will take a lot away from this class from the standpoint of looking at a given controversial topic and not just form an opinion from the onset. This class has demonstrated to me that you need to read and research on topics such as, race, gender and sexuality and make sure you form an opinion on facts rather than personal opinion. This will go far into any sport career path I choose because I'll be working with many kinds of different people and they might have gone through issues on topics we have discussed in class so it's important to respect individuals for who they are and not like them because of their gender, race or sexuality.

Captain of NYU’s Volleyball team comes out

When researching the coming out of gay and lesbian athletes in today’s society I discovered one interesting news article printed one day ago. Jay Hayes, the captain of NYU’s volleyball team, directed and starred in an “It Gets Better” video in which the athletic department was featured in. The athletic department decided to stand by Hayes and help him make a video that informs the public that gay slurs are all too common during games, in locker rooms and practices and that there needs to be a change.

The video depicts the support of NYU’s athletic department and their athletes. NYU is showing that they are open to athletes of the LGBT community and shows coaches who are out as well as athletes and their allies. The school wanted to show that athletics can be a safe environment for potential athletes and they will not tolerate any hatred or bigotry from society. Hayes wanted to make the video after coming out to his teammates. Friends and family back home knew Hayes was gay, but he kept his teammates in the dark because he knew athletics was portrayed as “straight environment” and he feared he would be shunned. When he came out to his team it didn’t change the dynamic of the team, it made them closer. The video, at first, was to feature just Hayes, but he was uncomfortable being the only one in the video. With the help of the whole athletic department at NYU, Hayes made the video to show that it is okay to be gay in athletics. NYU’s athletic department became the second major university to make an It Gets Better video; the only other university is Northwestern.

NYU and Northwestern have made great strides in showing support of the LGBT community and many believe these are the first steps that need to be taken for gays to be accepted in athletics. Many believe if more colleges and universities show their support of their own LGBT athletes and coaches, then we will have a major professional athlete come out sooner rather than later. Mark Cuban has been quoted saying that he believes there will be an openly gay NBA player within the next 3 to 5 years. There have also been numerous male soccer players in Europe and Canada that have come out. One is Sweden’s own Anton Hysen and there are talks of him joining an MLS team in the future. This would make him one of the only gay male athletes playing in the US for a professional team. I believe that if more colleges, universities, leagues and players showed support of gay athletes then a professional athlete will come forward before retirement and announce they are gay. My question is how long will this take? Many say three to five years, while others think it will never happen. I believe someone will come out in three to five years and we will have the face and someone to address this issue head on, but it is just a matter of finding someone who can handle the scrutiny. 

NYU Volleyball Captain Comes Out

Mark Cuban Comments

Soccer Players Coming Out

Media Coverage

When it comes to media coverage of sporting events, men's games are the dominate focus on all major networks year around. Women's collegiate sports are covered on television way more than any of the women's professional sports which only included the WNBA for the most part. In the article by Kian (2008), it examined media coverage for a few of the larger newspapers and online sports publications. The study focused on men's and women's college basketball and the results were very one-sided. "More than three-quarters (76.4%) of the articles focused on men’s basketball, whereas 23% pertained to women’s basketball. A total of three articles, or less than 1% of the overall population of articles, focused on both men and women. A little more than half (51%) of the articles were published in the two newspapers, whereas 49% were posted on the two Internet sites" (p.227), this shows that a very high percentage is focused more on men's college basketball than women's but this shouldn't come to any surprise for people. 

When studies are done with results comparing men's verse women's sports coverage I always develop a scenario in my head in which women's sports would be close to even with men's sports concerning both television and print media. It's hard to find that perfect situation when an even number of college basketball games are being televised for both men and women. College sports is the only place where females will get an even amount of media coverage and the sports would go down to women's basketball and softball. So, what event if any will have such an effect on the media where there will be more regular season women's game on TV? Will a network like ESPN ever spend an equal amount of highlights on women's sports as they do men?