Thursday, October 30, 2014

Call for Papers: Sport and Values



41st Conference on Value Inquiry
Sport and Values
16 - 18 April 2015

Neumann University
Aston, Pennsylvania

**Call for Papers**

The Neumann University Institute for Sport, Spirituality and Character Development (http://isscd.org), in conjunction with the Neumann University Philosophy Department will host the 41st Conference on Value Inquiry: Sport and Values at Neumann University in Aston, Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia, 16-18 April 2015. 

Broad participation is sought.  We welcome papers that address various aspects of sport and values.  Most accepted papers will be primarily directed to a scholarly audience, yet the conference will have presentations that fall into the following three categories:
   (a) Papers primarily directed to a scholarly audience.
   (b) Interactive presentations primarily directed to an undergraduate student audience.
   (c) Graduate and undergraduate student presentations (e.g., paper, poster, or TED-style talk of no more than 15 minutes).

Please indicate the category (a, b, or c) for which the submission should be considered.  Papers and interactive presentations should be between 20-25 minutes long.  Submissions of papers (a), or detailed outline of presentation including learning outcomes for students (b), or abstracts of student presentations (c), must be received by January 15, 2015 for first consideration.  

Presentations may be practically or theoretically oriented.  Topics may be disciplinary, or interdisciplinary, ranging over issues between two or more fields of value inquiry.  Drew Hyland, Trinity College, author of Philosophy of Sport, and Fr. Patrick Kelly, SJ, Seattle University, author of Catholic Perspectives on Sports: From Medieval to Modern Times, will be among the keynote speakers.                                                                       

Please submit to:      
Professor John Mizzoni
Neumann University
One Neumann Drive
Aston, PA 19014-1298
(610) 361-5496 and (215) 407-4259

Thursday, October 23, 2014

The Sports Ethics Show: Animal Sports

Fellow Philosophy of Sport contributor Joan Forry and I talk about Animal Sports in the new episode of The Sports Ethics Podcast.
Are competitions involving non-human animals, like horse racing, dog agility, and so on, sports? If so, under what conditions are animal sports morally justifiable? We also discuss activities like bull-fighting, dog fighting, and cockfighting.
You can subscribe to The Sports Ethics Podcast in iTunes or get the RSS Feed. More information at The Sports Ethicist Blog

Friday, October 10, 2014

The Sports Ethics Podcast: The Value of Playoffs and Championships

A new episode of The Sports Ethics Podcast may interest many readers and contributors to this blog.
Baseball playoffs are in full swing with both American and National League Championship Series opening this weekend. For baseball fans, this is one of the most exciting parts of the baseball season. But are we getting something wrong? Is there something wrong with having playoffs decide champions? Are there better ways of determining champions and organizing sport competitions? Dr. Aaron Harper of West Liberty University discusses these questions and related issues with Shawn E. Klein.
You can subscribe to The Sports Ethics Podcast in iTunes or get the RSS Feed. More information at The Sports Ethicist Blog

Friday, October 3, 2014

Review: The Fantasy Sport Industry

I recently reviewed The Fantasy Sport Industry: Games within Games (Routledge Research in Sport, Culture and Society) by Andrew C. Billings and Brody J. Ruihley for the Nordic Sport Science Forum.
The central idea of Andrew Billings and Brody Ruihley’s book, The Fantasy Sport Industry¸ is that fantasy is a game-changer. It is a game-changer in the way sport is covered by and represented in the media. It is a game-changer for the fans and how they consume sport. Indeed, it is potentially a game-changer for the very sports on which these games are based.

Fantasy Sports have been around for several decades. They started small, the domain of, so the stereotype goes, geeky guys in their basements. But these games have expanded exponentially in the last twenty years. Something like thirty five million North Americans play fantasy sport in some manner: that’s more than the numbers of people who play golf, watch the American Idol finale, or own iPhones (Berry, 2; Billings and Ruihley, 5). Fantasy is now a regular and frequent feature of the broadcasts and news reports of sporting events. Networks such as ESPN have dedicated programs for fantasy. There is even a TV sit-com centered on the members of fantasy football league called, appropriately enough, The League (of which this reviewer confesses he is a big fan). Much of all this revolves around Fantasy Football, but there are fantasy leagues for all the major professional sports (indeed there are fantasy leagues for non-sporting activities as well: Fantasy Congress and Celebrity Fantasy to name two).

Given all this interest, it is no surprise that fantasy has become big business with billions of dollars in revenue. Billings and Ruihley set out to provide a much needed look at this growing industry. The first chapter provides the overall context. The authors discuss the philosophical question of just what makes something a fantasy sport and breaks down the basics of how fantasy games are played. They demonstrate the popularity and growth of fantasy and through this ask the main question of the book. Why do people play fantasy? This raises the important follow-up question: what effect does fantasy have on all the ways we normally consume and understand sport?
You can read the rest of the review: http://idrottsforum.org/klesha_billings-ruihley141003/