“Kissing Fever: Male affection in sports..where does it cross the line?”

“Kissing Fever: Male affection in sports..where does it cross the line?”
Posted by Lauren Jacobi

In class we talked a lot about and saw a film on the subject of the behaviors of men on sports teams whether it be professional, collegiate or even high school and little league, and how they interact with each other on and off the field. We also discussed how a lot of these behaviors are overtly sexual, or involve nudity and touching in ways that outside of the locker room or the playing field, would be considered incredibly inappropriate. Why are such behaviors as jumping all over each other naked, as Adam divulged to us that his teammates did to him his freshman year, or kissing each other, captains holding hands, slapping each other on the behind etc., looked at as part of the norm when it comes to male sports? And how far is too far? One great example of this was the Ozzie Guillen kiss last summer after the White Sox won the series. I remember being a quite taken back when I first saw this picture, journalist Keith Boykin calls it “The Kiss seen around the world” in his article below. Both of the included website links discuss this incident. The first one is a blog similar to ours in which people give their opinion on whether this kiss took it too far, or it is simply a normal sign of affection in a great celebratory moment. The second link is the “Kiss Seen around the World” article which also discusses other instances of affection in sports. Even the NFL, supposedly the epitome of macho manly men, has hopped on the kissing bandwagon. In the Steelers season opener Joey Porter and coach Bill Cowher shared a smooch (apparently it did not bring the same luck to their season as it did for the White Sox) and just last week we saw Bill Parcels go on a kissing spree, being called “The kissing bandit” by Jim Reinekein of Fox Sports. “He kissed Keith Davis on the sidelines. He kissed Keyshawn Johnson after the game. He appeared to have even given Terrell Owens a kiss. Suddenly, the man who was about tough love is all about expressing his emotions on the field.” What does everybody think of the apparent kissing phenomenon in sports and overall male affection in the world of sports?

http://towleroad.typepad.com/towleroad/2005/10/sox_manager_gui.html
http://www.keithboykin.com/arch/2005/10/28/the_kiss_seen_a

different types of advertising

We have all seen the typical sports advertising on television. There are the ads for gatorade, under armor, Nike, etc. We have all grown up with this type of advertising. But what about self promotion does the industry go too far when athletes promote their team while promoting themself? On ESPN.com there was an article about former NFL quaterback Heath Shuler. He is running for a U.S. House seat and decided to reach a broader audience he needed a different way to promote himself. He got his name put on the No. 23 car driven by Brad Keselowski (story) . Is this going way too far or is a great adveritising tactic? To spend a good amount of money to put a name somewhere has become a way of life for athletes but what about using it for politics? Would this type of advertising from a politician who is a former athlete be a success or failure? Why would they reach outside of their own former sport to advertise, in this case from the NFL to NASCAR.

Lauren O'Loughlin

Hollywood & Sports

Adam Castonguay asked me to post this:

What do you think has more influence over the other, Hollywood or Sports? In that do you think athletes want to be seen more in the hollywood spotlight or do the sports movies create a buzz that makes people want to be sport stars.

KDKA loses Pirates broadcast

This story relates to our discussion this week about radio. KDKA Radio has been carrying Pittsburgh Pirates baseball broadcasts since 1921. But the team has dropped the old-school AM station in favor of a Clear Channel affiliate, ending one of the longest running broadcast partnerships in sports. Here's the story from the Pgh Post Gazette.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06256/721380-63.stm

Fox Car Giveaway Story

Here's the story Mike referred to in his post.

http://www.charlotte.com/mld/charlotte/news/15448166.htm?source=rss&channel=charlotte_news

I first saw the story on the "Newsblues" listserv. Here's their version:

Fox Sports did a bad thing to a good man on national TV, and Charlotte Observer sports writer Scott Fowler did something about it.

During a meaningless pre-season game between the NFL's Carolina Panthers and the Miami Dolphins, the Fox announcers promised to give away a car to a deserving fan. Sideline reporter Tony Siragusa searched the stands and settled on rabid Panther fan Greg 'Catman' Good, who works as a youth counselor when he's not dressed in an electric blue wig and a black-and-blue cape.

Good needed a new car badly.

Siragusa told him he had won...then handed him a toy Porsche. "I thought I had won a real car," Good said, bewildered and upset.

That's when sports writer Fowler got involved. He wrote about it and demanded that Fox Sports do the right thing. Fox executives debated the bad joke and issued an apology.
"That's lame," wrote Fowler, who continued to blast Fox in his columns. He says he "was bombarded by close to 1,000 e-mails and phone calls in eight hours." Several attorneys offered their services.

Two weeks later, the network relented. Fox Sports Chairman and CEO David Hill called Fowler personally and promised to fly to Charlotte today from Los Angeles and give Good the keys to a new Ford F-150 pickup. He called the practical joke "an appalling piece of misjudgment."
"I take the reputation of Fox Sports very seriously," Hill said, "and I don't want it to be sullied. Once I heard about the Charlotte Observer story, I believed something needed to be done quickly and unilaterally." (two weeks later)

Heads will roll, we predict.

Big Blog of Balls

Big Blog of Balls
First of all, Stephanie Tanner had a nasty split-finger fastball. Second, Joey Gladstone should have been kept at least 500 feet away from all children, for everybody's safety. Anyways, the article that Prof. Burns sent about Fox's "bad joke" was pretty funny. If you didn't read it, it was about Fox promoting a free car giveaway during a preseason football game. So they ended up getting a guy all excited and asked him if he was ready for his car, only to give him a matchbox car. The guy thought it was just a sample of what his car looked like, but that was all he got. After a newspaper picked up the story, Fox admitted it's 'poor tasting joke' and gave the man a real car.
How did they think that giving away a mini-car instead of a real one would be acceptable. That's like telling one of those poor children (the one's on the commercials)from a third world country that they are getting adopted and coming to America, only to arrive at the Neverland Ranch with M.J.: it's just not right. They should spend more time on the game and less time trying to be funny. And how is Tony Siragusa allowed to talk? He played football but has nothing inciteful to say about the game. My 80-year old grandmother who thinks the Red Sox and the Patriots are the same team knows more than he does. Anyways, that's all I got. Go Pats.
12:59 PM