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1 – 10 of 466A career at the professional, elite level in sports does not last forever. One way or another, the day comes when players have to hang up their boots and move on, but to what…
Abstract
Purpose
A career at the professional, elite level in sports does not last forever. One way or another, the day comes when players have to hang up their boots and move on, but to what? Some stay in the sport as managers or coaches, become broadcast announcers, or use their name recognition to pitch a product. However, for many their future opportunities lie in entrepreneurship. The purpose of this paper is to explore the concept of the entrepreneurial learning needs of professional rugby players preparing for a career transition and asks the following questions: What are the specific needs of professional athletes in relation to entrepreneurial learning?, and, what are the key elements of designing an entrepreneurship programme to meet these needs?
Design/methodology/approach
The author adopted an interpretivist philosophical standpoint for this research, with an inductive research approach to explore various components of a tailored entrepreneurship training programme called the “Certificate in Enterprise Potential” (CEP) using the process of emergent inquiry. This programme was designed specifically for professional rugby athletes in Ireland. In gathering the data for the case study, the author pursued established principles of data collection, and used multiple sources of evidence.
Findings
The findings provide evidence of the entrepreneurial learning needs of professional athletes in career transition and identifies the key elements to be considered when designing an entrepreneurship programme to meet these needs. The findings are presented under the headings context, objectives and outcomes, audience, content, pedagogy, assessment and evaluation.
Research limitations/implications
There are multiple implications from this study. For entrepreneurship educators, the various components of designing a tailored entrepreneurship programme for professional athletes are identified and outlined. For researchers, it opens the door for research with other sports people from different contexts. For professional athletes and professionals working with athletes, it provides evidence of a non-athletic and an entrepreneurial career transition model that builds on the player’s social identity, social networks and taps into an existing HEI entrepreneurship ecosystem. The research was confined to a single case study for a specific target audience and needs replication with other cohorts in order to reduce the chance of these findings being unique to one single case.
Originality/value
This paper focuses on the career transition and mid-career aspect of entrepreneurship education and in particular the career transition needs of the professional athletes. These findings provide a deeper understanding of mid-career entrepreneurship education, specifically in the contexts of professional athletes and HEI’s. Many athletes are forced to end their sporting careers early and with little hope of a meaningful or alternative long-term career options. This paper goes some way in addressing this concern.
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Olzhas Taniyev and Brian S. Gordon
The purpose of this paper exploratory study is to decipher sport consumer associations and sentiments connected to the brand image of retired athletes.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper exploratory study is to decipher sport consumer associations and sentiments connected to the brand image of retired athletes.
Design/methodology/approach
In total, 14 sport consumers, who demonstrated an in-depth knowledge of throwback branding tactics and expertise in athlete brand promotion, participated in in-depth semi-structured interviews.
Findings
The findings indicate there are three prevalent themes across the present data (i.e. epoch epitome, athlete-team connection and off-the-field persona).
Originality/value
While the proliferation of throwback merchandise and affinity for brands of retired athletes is evident, the internalization of associations related to retired athletes has escaped empirical investigation. Numerous questions concerning how specific facets of a retired athlete’s image (e.g. athletic skills or life off the field) activate nostalgic feelings, drive consumer loyalty and establish market permanence remain unanswered. The current study contributes to the understanding of the brand image of the retired athlete and the existing literature concerning athlete branding.
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Clara Lee Brown, Natalia Ward and Benjamin H. Nam
While conceived to examine key factors affecting post-retirement career advancement of retired elite athletes in South Korea, the purpose of this paper is to report how English…
Abstract
Purpose
While conceived to examine key factors affecting post-retirement career advancement of retired elite athletes in South Korea, the purpose of this paper is to report how English, as a de facto global lingua franca, functions as a powerful gatekeeper in the sports administration field.
Design/methodology/approach
Interpreted through the lens of Bourdieu’s linguistic capital and Gramsci’s hegemony of language, the present study draws on content analysis of semi-structured individual interviews, as well as focus group interviews, conducted with thirty former South Korean elite athletes.
Findings
Based on the data analysis, systematic bias toward athletes was uncovered, privileging English as the single determining factor for employment. Furthermore, the educational implications for adult learners of English as a Foreign or English an Additional Language reveal unrealistic expectations of top–down language policies.
Originality/value
Perspectives of athlete participants, an underrepresented group in educational research, within the South Korean globalization context shed critical light on the pervasive aspects of English hegemony and its unexamined dimensions.
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This chapter analyzes the campaign against race norming in the 2013 National Football League (NFL) concussion settlement that caregivers of retired players designed, and it…
Abstract
This chapter analyzes the campaign against race norming in the 2013 National Football League (NFL) concussion settlement that caregivers of retired players designed, and it considers how their collective action throws new light on activism in sport. While there is a substantial literature on how individual athletes engage in protest, less work has focused on how families – partners, children, siblings, and parents – of athletes organize as a group to answer back to anti-Black racism in professional sport. I argue that a group of spouses used their position as caregivers to shame the NFL, the presiding judge of the settlement, Class Counsel, and even the Department of Justice into acknowledging not only individual suffering from traumatic brain injury but also of the distribution of that suffering across households. Specifically, the wives group expanded definitions of risk and damage to include not only individual illness but also family and group suffering and demanded inclusion of gendered and racialized aspects of social care. Through their campaign, the group recast what is considered protest in the world of sport and who has the ability to access an activist subjectivity.
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To examine some of the complex relationships that exist between sports work and mental health and illness.
Abstract
Purpose
To examine some of the complex relationships that exist between sports work and mental health and illness.
Design/Method/Approach
This chapter draws upon prevalence data, athlete testimonies, and theoretical works to examine: (1) the prevalence of depression and suicide in professional sport and the wider society; (2) athlete experiences of depression and suicidal ideation, particularly among men; and (3) some of the key sociological ideas which might help to explain experiences of mental health and illness in professional sports work.
Findings
Although there are plentiful data on the societal prevalence of depression and suicide, increasing interest in the mental health of professional athletes (and other types of sports workers) has occurred largely in response to individual or clusters of often publicly known, sometimes high profile, cases rather than in response to systematic empirical grounded data. Athlete experiences of mental illness are shown to be related in complex ways to various constraints associated with their public and private lives, to the constraints of their interdependency networks, and to experiences of shame which can have a series of deleterious acute and chronic health costs.
Research Limitations/Implications
Since much of what is currently known about the links between sports work and mental health and illness is derived from largely psychological studies and media-led or autobiographical accounts, more sociological research is needed to better understand the costs of mental health of working in often very public and highly pressurized, medicalized, scientized, and performance-focused performance sport settings.
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Jae-Ahm Park, Jun-Mo Sung, Jae-Man Son, Kyunga Na and Suk-Kyu Kim
The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationships among an individual athlete’s brand equity, overall spectator satisfaction at sporting events and behavioral intentions.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationships among an individual athlete’s brand equity, overall spectator satisfaction at sporting events and behavioral intentions.
Design/methodology/approach
The convenience sampling method was used when approaching potential participants among spectators of the LG Whisen Rhythmic All Stars 2013, a sporting event in which celebrated sports players perform choreographed dance routines. A total of 350 surveys were completed in Go-Yang, South Korea. Of the surveys collected, 20 were discarded due to excessive missing values, resulting in 330 usable surveys.
Findings
Using structural equation modeling, this study found that the brand equity of an individual athlete positively and directly affects the overall sporting event satisfaction and behavioral intentions, including re-purchase and word-of-mouth intentions among event attendees, which are factors that are mediated indirectly by satisfaction.
Originality/value
This study shows that the brand equity of an individual athlete can increase the spectator satisfaction levels in a similar manner to the brand equity of a sports team or product.
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To examine the relationship that athletes establish with their bodies within sport and through their transitions out of sport, with a special focus on risk, injury and pain.
Abstract
Purpose
To examine the relationship that athletes establish with their bodies within sport and through their transitions out of sport, with a special focus on risk, injury and pain.
Approach
This chapter is an explanatory review of the literature focusing on the embodied and sensory experiences of athletes as they depart sport.
Findings
This chapter explores definitions and conceptualizations of the retirement process, highlights how the body is experienced during the sporting exit (as fragile and out of control) and makes connections between how bodily breakdown during sporting exits impacts an athlete’s sense of self and identity.
Implications
Through practical recommendations, this chapter highlights some of the ways in which psycho-education and an expanded focus on the body could be useful to athletes as they attempt to reconcile their new lives and bodies post-sport.
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