Fair Play?

New Publication Now Available! While traditional sports scholarships focus on events, athletes, games, competitions, leagues and franchises, examining their main transformations across time, Fair Play? Issues and Trends in Big Time Sports emphasizes the developments that have shaped current concerns and controversies in the world of sports entertainment. Detailed analyses are presented on relevant topics such as sports gambling, brain injuries and the use of performance enhancing drugs in professional sports, as well as the relationship of global media and sports, and the consolidation of professional sports as the ultimate form of mass entertainment. The book also highlights the ways in which the sports world has echoed the predominant values and core principles embedded in the general social landscape. The ways in which people participate in sports, as players, managers, coaches or spectators, are congruent with the social conditions of the society in which they live. In professional sports prevalent ideologies have been and continue to be debated and contested that challenge the status quo and question relevant social issues such as the struggle against racial prejudice and gender inequity.