Reaction Paper #3: Politics and Sport

150 points

Due: Monday 11/9

This semester we’ve spent time considering how sport and politics function together and we’ve explored moments in sport history when individuals have used sport as a site of political resistance. For this paper, you have the chance to focus on two moments of sport political resistance and connect it to Chapter 8 and the Dave Zirin documentary “Not Just a Game.”

The guiding question for this paper is: How does the sport realm function as a place of political resistance?

In order to provide specificity, below is an outline for how to put the paper together:

Introduction: Include a standard introduction to a paper with a clear thesis. Something like, “In this paper I will analyze the sport realm as a place of political resistance by analyzing two examples of athlete protest and considering how (or if) things have changed over the past decade.”

Example 1: Find a moment of athlete protest before 2002. Explain the traditional who, what, why, when, how, and why. What was the result of the protest? Was the player who protested fired or suspended from the team? Did the player get what he/she wanted (a coach fired, a change in the program, attention to a social issue)?

Transition sentence into the next section of the paper

Example 2: Find a second moment of athlete protest within the past decade (ideally you’ll focus on the past year). Explain the traditional who, what, why, when, how, and why. What was the result of the protest? Was the player who protested fired or suspended from the team? Did the player get what he/she wanted (a coach fired, a change in the program, attention to a social issue)?

Transition sentence into the next section of the paper

Analysis: Address the following questions.

Based off of your reading of Chapter 8, the Dave Zirin documentary, what we’ve discussed in class, and your examples, do you see a difference between protest prior to 2002 and current protests? In other words, was there a difference in how the person(s) in your first example were treated compared to the person(s) in your second example? How?

Is sport a practical place to conduct protest?

Can athletes achieve a level of resistance different than people in other realms?

Is the risk for athletes to protest still too high for you to view it as a practical protest space? You could consider risk in terms of college athletes v/s professional athletes.

In this section you can consider how hard it is to be successful protesting as an athlete or you can take the stance that athletes have a lot of power, and therefore, a good chance at enacting change. This should be several paragraphs to round your paper out. You must connect your observations to research, the textbook, the documentary, etc.

Grading is based on the following:

3-4 page maximum

Double-spaced, Times New Roman, 12 pt. font.

3 academic sources required

Grammatically correct, limited proofreading errors

Makes a clear connection to Chapter 8 and the documentary

Reasoned argument based on research rather than relying on opinion

Follow the outline as described above

Works cited and in-text citations that follow either APA or MLA citation style