Sportsiology » total institution

Total Authority

admin — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 02:04:43 +0000

The aspect of the total institution is that is arguably least present in sports is the qualification that “all aspects of life are conducted in the same place under the same single authority.” Each sport has a commissioner, as well as a CBA and other rules governing the sport, and all of the players involved are expected to follow that authority. Depending on the sport, or (most often in the MLB) the team, there are rules which govern dress, action and sometimes even how conversations occur on and off the field, court or ice

Where sports escape the total institution label to some extent is that, in general, they are allowed to conduct aspects of their life outside of their sport. However, when contracts include morality clauses, players’ behavior when they are not at work becomes regulated by the same authority which governs their work.

Additionally, while football players have most of the week to be at home and live their lives as they please, basketball and especially baseball players, spend much more time on the road and often have college dorm like rules that structure their awake and sleeping times (NFL training camp is run similarly). Even in the case of football players, their lives off the court can often be scrutinized by their fans, the media and the league which has a similar effect as being constantly under that authority, as evidenced by the backlash around Roethlisberger’s night out during the super bowl week.

What do you think? Can we say that, despite the option to go home and live beyond the sight of their sport, professional athletes lives are still constantly monitored?

The Inmates and the Asylum

Sociology Sports Girl — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 03:13:00 +0000

Like others, I heard Dick Vitale last week refer to the inmates running the asylum. This was not the first time I had heard this and while it has most recently been directed at basketball and the string of free agents who have either explicitly or implicitly directed themselves towards particular teams, I have also heard it used to describe players in the NFL whose salaries have set the market and baseball players who have made contract demands on deadlines.

For me, this brings up a couple of issues. First, the phrasing of the “inmates running the asylum” takes me immediately to Erving Goffman’s book, Asylum. In his book of essays, he talks about mental hospitals and what it means to be in a “total institution” and “live an enclosed, formally administered round of life” with “like-situated individuals.” It brought me to think about whether the characteristics of Goffman’s total institution can be applied to the business of sport and the lives of the players.

Additionally, there are the race issues. In most American sport industries, the players—the workers—are minorities (usually, African American although baseball has the unique distinction of being more Latino than African American) and the owners are not. Given this power structure, to refer to the athletes as inmates and to be offended or disgusted that they are gaining some power and “running the asylum” connects too closely with the idea of a slave revolt.

My ideas around these two issues are forming slowly and I hope to express them here over my next few posts