![]() Each April 15-the anniversary of Robinson’s first game-every player wears his uniform number, 42. In 1947, trailblazer Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier with the Brooklyn Dodgers. This year, like every year, Major League Baseball will go all out to remind Americans that the sport was on the forefront of civil rights. Though they may be mission-aligned, contributors’ personal views or perspectives are not endorsed by AfroLA.īaseball’s Opening Day is March 30. Morris III calls “the diverse domain of the usable past.” These narratives indicate the importance of understanding genre evolution alongside individual biography, historical context, and shifting values within broader attempts at social transformation.AfroLA solicits and accepts contributions for publication from community members, professional writers and folks who just have a compelling story to share. Even as I recognize the limits of athletes’ ability to represent the diversity of interests, values, and politics of the broader LGBTQ movement, I argue that these narratives should become part of what Charles E. ![]() ![]() Of particular note are contemporary third-wave narratives which introduce the actively out, visible, gay male body becoming aware of his place in history as a rhetorical opportunity for social intervention. I chart this rhetorical genre in three waves, corresponding to the historical moment in which each narrative was published and the rhetorical tactics that each set of authors use to reconcile their identities as gay athletes and argue for the existence and suitability of gay men in professional sports. Recent announcements by Michael Sam, Jason Collins, Robbie Rogers, and others belong to a longer tradition that I label the gay male athlete coming out narrative. Consistent with CTM, we contend this previously-unutilized comparison uniquely disorganizes the common-sense view of big-time college sport, producing an effectively reorganized metaphor that challenges NCAA hegemony and provides a context for improved communication and social action within the institutional field of US college sport. Specific elements of big-time college sport analyzed include: (a) the degree to which profit athletes’ daily burdens and obligations exceed those of other university employees, (b) the geographic migration patterns of profit-athletes, (c) a paternalism that suffuses the Collegiate Model of Athletics, promoting intensive surveillance of players' conduct, both in the work context itself and during their ‘free time’, (d) in-kind compensation (grant-in-aid) that is akin to scrip, (e) limited athlete representation in college-sport governance, (f) college-sport participation health risks, and (g) moral and character-based justifications for the Collegiate Model. Drawing upon historic and contemporary legal, sociological and economic sources, we compare these athletes’ existence to that of oscillating migrant laborers in 19th and 20th Century US company towns. After summarizing previous “neo-plantation slavery” and “sex-worker” analogies, this paper analyzes – utilizing Contemporary Theory of Metaphor (CTM) – the complex relationship between these athletes and PWI athletic departments. Utilizing a company-town metaphor, this paper analyzes the working and living conditions of National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I men's basketball and Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) football players within athletic departments at Predominately White Institutions (PWIs).
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