On the court and on the field they are the world?s winners, exhibiting a natural grace and prowess their adoring fans can only dream about. Yet so often, off the field our sports heroes lose their perspective, their balance, and ultimately their place. In a work as timely as the latest fracas on the basketball court or the most recent drug-induced scandal in the dugout, Stanley H. Teitelbaum looks into the circumstances behind many star athletes? precipitous fall from grace. ø In his psychotherapy practice, Teitelbaum has worked extensively with professional athletes and sports agents?work he draws on here for insight into the psyche of sports figures and the off-the-field challenges they face. Considering both historical and current cases, he shows how, in many instances, the very factors that elevate athletes to superstardom contribute to their downfall. An evenhanded and honest look at athletes who have faltered, Teitelbaum?s work helps us see past our sports stars? exalted images into what those images?and their frailty?say about our society and ourselves.

Sports have taken on tremendous importance in the world in which we live. Their social significance - economic, political, and personal - both nationally and internationally is unprecedented. What may not be so immediately obvious is the sociological nature of sports. Sport offers one of the most visible public arenas for understanding the role that 'immortality' plays in individual action, group dynamics, and with audiences and the media. Following a brief introduction to the sociology of sport, Leonard explores these dimensions of the sporting world through the idea of the 'post-self' - how individuals regard themselves and want to be remembered by the public. From the individual psyche to the global arena of sports, this book features vivid examples and quotations from star athletes, coaches, and the media, offering poignant insights into the sporting world and about individuals and society.

Do marketers need to adopt a stricter moral clause to police athlete behavior? To what degree do sports scandals reflect culture at large? How can athletes lead in combating homophobia? The informative edition tackles these questions and debates surrounding athletes as role models. Readers are offered a diverse set of perspectives on the topic through a variety of essays and articles.

Elite level sport lends itself to a highly competitive environment that encourages players to seek a competitive advantage in order to win. Since competition is an inherent condition that is also considered desirable in this setting, it may at first glance seem as if cooperation does not have any room in elite level sports. Sustainable cooperation can be mutually advantageous for players, but it only has a chance of coming into fruition if it is also in line with individual players’ self-interests. In order for morality and self-interests to align with one another, investment in the conditions is required. Alicia Bockel analyzes ways that players can invest in the conditions of sustainable cooperation for a mutual advantage despite a highly competitive sports environment.

This timely book is the first to critically examine the doctrine of vicarious liability in the context of the sports industry. Drawing on theoretical, empirical and interdisciplinary research, the book focuses on the close connection test at stage two of vicarious liability, highlighting how vicarious liability could be used to hold sports employers strictly liable for a wide range of on-the-field and off-the-field harms committed by their athletes. It considers the extent to which vicarious liability might be applied to clubs and sporting organisations for personal injuries and racial abuse suffered by participants during competition, and examines whether employers in the sports industry ought to be held vicariously liable for the sexual assault of young athletes and women away from the field. This book is important reading for any student, researcher or practitioner interested in sports law, tort law, private law theory, socio-legal studies, jurisprudence, gender studies and sports ethics.

The essays in this book arise from the premise that Tiger Woods is not simply a phenomenal player but is also an Everyman who has displayed all-too-human foibles and weaknesses. The first half of the collection focuses on Tiger's superman game and how he has affected, and been affected by, the golfing world. Works on the sport that examine this supreme golfer cannot capture the full significance of the Tiger Woods phenomenon, however. Unlike many other talented athletes, Woods has transcended his sport, becoming a cultural icon. In the second half of the book, scholars examine everyman Tiger, illustrating how his life reflects significant and often contentious issues within American culture and the world.

What sports fans read, watch, and listen to at home often isn’t the real story coming out of the locker room or the front office. George Castle should know: he’s covered baseball in Chicago for decades and witnessed the widening gulf between the media and the teams they’re supposed to cover—and the resulting widespread misinformation about the inner workings of the game. In this book, Castle chronicles from the inside the decline of baseball reporting and shows in clear and practical terms how ill-served today’s sports followers are by those they trust for the straight story. Charting the path of a veteran sports reporter’s career, Baseball and the Media traces the changes in baseball coverage from the days of the old-time players and scribes to the no-holds-barred (and no facts checked) sports-talk radio of our time. Along the way, Castle introduces readers to the politics of baseball media (does sports journalism actually have its red and blue states?), documents the transformation of athletes from role models to sports-media celebrities, including emblematic characters such as LaTroy Hawkins and Carl Everett, and illuminates the profound changes in the way sports in general—and baseball in particular—are conveyed to its avid consumers, who are the losers in the end.

Sports Crazy: How Sports Are Sabotaging American Schools exposes the excesses of middle and high school sports and the detrimental effects our sports obsession has on American education. Institutions are increasingly emulating college and professional sports models and losing sight of a host of educational and health goals. Steven J. Overman describes how this agenda is driven largely by partisan fans and parents of athletes who exert an inordinate influence on school priorities, and he explains how and why school administrators shockingly and consistently capitulate to these demands. The author underscores the incongruity of public schools involved in an entertainment business and the effects this diversion has on academic integrity, learning, life experience, and overall educational outcomes. Overman examines out-of-control school sports within the context of a school’s educational mission and curriculum, with telling reference to impacts on physical education. He explores as well the outsized place of interscholastic sports beyond the classroom and scrutinizes the distorted relationship between intramural or recreational sports and elitist, varsity athletics. Overman’s chapter on tackle football explains many reasons why this sport should be eliminated from the school extracurriculum and replaced by flag or touch football. Overman presents a brief history of interscholastic sports, and he compares and contrasts the American experience of school-sponsored sport to the European model of community-based clubs. Which approach better serves students? Overman recommends reforms in the context of a radical proposal to phase out interscholastic sports in favor of an intramural or club model. This approach would alleviate such problems as elitism and gender bias and reign in hypercompetitiveness while freeing schools to educate students rather than provide public entertainment.

A leading psychologist explores the phenomenon of athletes across the sports world who engage in high-risk behavior that often destroys lives, bodies, and reputations. From sex and drugs to violence, gambling, and wholesale conspiracies, scandals are everywhere in sports. Each of these problems is its own issue, and every case is separate, but taken as a whole this criminal pathology is indicative of a widespread problem with athletes and responsibility. In this wide-ranging and deep-seeking investigation, psychologist Stanley H. Teitelbaum asks why elite athletes take enormous risks with their lives and careers. Teitelbaum analyzes and diagnoses this culturally resonant set of problems with an honest, critical eye, looking at everything from baseball's steroid abusers to gambling scandals in the NBA to the steady stream of athletes arrested for domestic violence to the murder trials of O.J. Simpson and wrestler Chris Benoit. A concluding chapter holds sports commissioners and others to task for hiding behind a façade of ignorance and duplicitous naïveté in attempting to cover up or defuse brewing scandals.

A seventh-generation Californian, Scott Tinley led the quintessential Golden State dream. As he grew from beach rat to lifeguard to a recreational administration major, it seemed only natural to him that he would try to parlay the athletic skills gleaned from this idyllic lifestyle into a profession as one of the best triathletes in the world. For twenty years, his skill, tenacity, and devil-may-care attitude guided him along the path. But when age took hold of his legs, and no amount of training would help, his athletic gold rush went bust. Cracks in his psyche began to show, as if beneath it all—like much of California itself—his athletic life had been built on a fault. Always introspective and inquiring, Tinley threw himself headlong into athlete retirement and the larger issues of life transition and change. His new journey, driven by his quest for personal growth and healing, was filled with pain, false starts, and heartrending intimacies. It led him to hundreds of other retired professional athletes who would openly discuss their own triumphs and tragedies. With much discipline, Tinley completed one of the most thorough athlete research projects ever attempted, and befriended such superstars as Bill Walton, Eric Heiden, Greg LeMond, Jerry Sherk, Steve Scott, and Rick Sutcliffe. Along the way he uncovered secrets about himself and the process of change, turmoil, and final acceptance, all shared openly and eloquently in Racing the Sunset. This book will do for athletes of every level what Passages did for an entire generation. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Sports Publishing imprint, is proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in sports—books about baseball, pro football, college football, pro and college basketball, hockey, or soccer, we have a book about your sport or your team. In addition to books on popular team sports, we also publish books for a wide variety of athletes and sports enthusiasts, including books on running, cycling, horseback riding, swimming, tennis, martial arts, golf, camping, hiking, aviation, boating, and so much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to publishing books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked by other publishers and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.