Courses
ETHN 3104
Intro to Sports Governance - Spring 2017
Overview and Purpose of the Course
The goal of this course is to introduce students to issues of governance in the world of sport. Governance refers to “the making and implementation of rules, and the exercise of power, within a given domain of activity.” (1 Keohane, R. O. 2006. Global governance and democratic accountability. In R. E. Goodwin & P. Pettit (Eds.), Contemporary political philosophy: An anthology (pp. 697–709). Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.) Sports governance thus refers to the implementation of rules and the exercise of power as related to the governing of sports. Under the subject of sports governance, we find issues ranging from the rules prohibiting the taking of performance enhancing drugs in the Olympics to the compensation of scholarship athletes at American universities. And we will encounter much, much more.
But sports governance is more than just about sports. As Jens Sejer Andersen has noted, “Sport is an expression of civilization.” Our class will engage issues of sport that touch upon (and sometimes more than that) culture, politics, history, science, ethics and more. We will encounter sex, gender, race, power, religion, crime, corruption, idealism and even ask fundamental questions about the purpose of the modern American university.
Through readings, class discussions and guest speakers and panels, we will get to read a wide range of scholarly and popular literature, view several films and meet experts to critically engage important issues that arise in the governance of sport.
In this year’s course case studies that we will engage include the role of technological augmentation in sport, policies delineating participation eligibility in the Olympics according to gender, equity in journalism related to sports reporting, and the ever- present issues associated with doping in sport. The student should emerge from this class with a better appreciation of various tools of critical thinking and analysis, along with greater substantive knowledge of various interesting and important cases in the governance of sport.
At the University of Colorado Boulder we recently established a new Center for Sports Governance within CU Athletics. As part of that new initiative we are proposing to create a new undergraduate certificate in sports governance. This class is intended to make up the core of that certificate. If you are interested in the proposed certificate, please let me know. It is an exciting new initiative and you guys are present at the start (see background).
Course guests this term
Mark Johnson, Travis Tygart, Kara Goucher, Casey Malone, Mike Macintyre, Tad Boyle, Ceal Barry, Phil Distefano and Rick George.