John W. Loy

Racial Segregation in American Sport

NUMEROUS journalists have commented on the social functions which sport fulfills for minority groups in American society. Boyle, for example, forcefully writes: Sport has often served minority groups as the first rung on the social ladder. As such, it has helped further their assimilation into American life. It would not be too far-fetched to say that it has done more in this regard than any other agency, including church and school (1963, p. 100). Recently, journalists have placed special emphasis on the many contributions sport has made for the Negro. As Olsen observes: Every morning the world of sport wakes up and congratulates itself on its contributions to race relations. The litany has been so often repeated that it is believed almost universally. It goes: &dquo;Look what sports has done for the Negro&dquo; (1968, p. 7). In view of the many journalistic accounts of the contributions of sport to the social success of minority groups, it is somewhat surprising that sociologists and physical educators have largely ignored the issue of mi-

Social Psychological Characteristics of Innovators

Sportsmen differentially adopting a technological innovation were assigned to one of four adopter categories. Multiple discriminant function analysis showed these categories to be empirically distinct in terms of selected socio-psychological characteristics and revealed that only one subject had been misclassified. The most discriminating variables in order of power were venturesomeness, professional status, imaginativeness, educational status, dominance, sociability, cosmopoliteness, and self-sufficiency. It is suggested that the findings lend some support to certain generalizations made by Hagen and Rogers and underscore the value of using an objective, multi-factor personality inventory in diffusion research.

Athletic Personnel in the Academic Marketplace A Study of the Interorganizational Mobility Patterns of College Coaches

The connection between organizational prestige and career contingencies is well documented with respect to the academic stratification system in American higher education. The purpose of this study was to ascertain whether the relationship between organizational prestige and career mobility of scholars obtains in the case of another group of individuals in the academic community. namely, college coaches. Findings showed a close relationship between organizational prestige and career contingencies of coaches and suggested that the interorganizational mobility patterns of collegiate athletic personnel are similar to those of collegiate academic personnel in various disciplines.

The Structure of Ludic Action

a social matrix or pre-established form of social reality. The socialization process conceived of in this fashion fails to emphasize the ongoing dialectic between the reified society and its constituent members. The perspective is too mechanistic and ignores the notion that individuals have a contribution to make to the construction of social reality. Nor does it allow for differences in the way a finite frame of social reality is perceived and the different meanings attached to these perceptions. As Lyman and Scott clearly point out in their pr olegomenon for a sociology of the absurd: in modern complex societies there are few if any

Replacement Processes in Sport Organizations: the Case of Professional Baseball

a sociological perspective is a relatively recent phenomenon. The belated attention given to sport organizaticns by sociologists is somewhat surprising as the structural characteristics of sport or ganizations make them especially suitable social systems for purposes of comparative organizational analysis (cf., Ball, 1975; Grusky, 1963a, 1963b). With respect to any given sport and organizational level (e.g., interscholastic, intercollegiate and ,professional teams) sport organizations typically have similar authority structures, are of the same size, possess equal technological resources, share common goals, and conform to mutual norms. Furthermore, the roles of each organizational position are explicitly prescribed and. positional interrelationships are replicated across all teams within an organizational-set. An additional characteristic of sport organizations which enhances their utilization in comparative investigation are their extensive records and statistics.

Geographical Mobility Patterns of College Coaches.

men living outside the community in which they were raised. The geographical mobility of American males is largely a function of labor mobility associated with career patterns. High labor mobility, in turn, appears to be especially characteristic of men in &dquo;professional occupations.&dquo; For example, studies of college and university faculties have consistently shown marked patterns of geographical mobility among Ph.D. recipients in various academic fields. Whether great geographic mobility is characteristic of all professional personnel in higher education, however, is an open empirical question. As one phase of a larger project investigating the career patterns of college athletic coaches, this paper focuses upon the geographic mobility patterns of head basketball and football coaches, tracing their migration from home community to place of undergraduate college and subsequent postcollege occupational mobility by

A Paradigm of Technological Change in the Sports Situation

It has been observed that &dquo;the spread of sport through the world and changes in its nature are major phenomena of the twentieth century&dquo; (Smithells, 1962); but little theoretical or empirical work has been done regarding these changes. Although sportsmen acknowledge the change which innovations have wrought in sport, practically no knowledge exists concerning the processes underlying the acceptance of such innovations. The purpose of this paper is to present by means of a paradigm a tentative and partial explanation of technological change2 in sport.

An Information Retrieval System for Sport Sociologists

THE EXPANSION of knowledge and its associated problem of information storage is awesome if not threatening. A dramatic illustration of the matter is Sender’s report that &dquo;...calculations of the number of different things stored in the world’s libraries yield estimates from 7.5 X 107 to 7. 7X 108. At 105 words per volume, five letters per word, and twelve bits per letter, the information capacity used for storage is between 4.6X104 and 4-6X10~ bits, and is increasing at about 2X 106 bits per minute&dquo; 1. Although sport sociologists are not collecting information as fast as the above rate, many are, nevertheless, accumulating new material at an exponential rate. Thus, they must cope with the problem of information retrieval. In general, the usual systems used by professors and students to categorize information have sufficient capacity, but they are often too large for easy, quick searching. Moreover, subject headings have frequently been created ex post facto in an ad Iroc manner and have likely become obsolete over the years. In short, a more adequate information retrieval system may be called for. The purpose of this paper is to describe a coordinate index system within a punched card framework which appears suitable for the information retrieval needs of sport sociologists. This system is based on a type of edge-notched punched card registered under the trademark of keysort card 2. It is argued that the system is very efficient, inexpensive, and requires relatively little maintenance once put into operation.