Sports Culture Rules the School Landscape

THE DISTINCTIVE PLACE OF INTERSCHOLASTIC ATHLETICS IN GENERATING SCHOOL AND COMMUNITY SPIRIT AS WELL AS SOME DISUNIFYING ELEMENTS

As sociologist James Coleman noted, when a visitor walks into an American high school, often the first thing that catches the eye is the glass trophy case in the front lobby. The various trophies, plaques, ribbons, game balls and jerseys symbolize victory in athletic contests, rarely scholastic achievement. Indeed, foreign tourists might think they are entering an athletic club, not an educational institution.

A visitor might pick up the school yearbook, a chronicle of school culture. The yearbook tells the story of the school year’s activities, customs and traditions. Contemporary school yearbooks reflect a nominal emphasis on academics with few pages devoted to academic achievers, such as honor roll students or AP scholars. A substantial number of pages — often a third or more, according to one study — feature extracurricular activities, most notably interscholastic sports.

Outside the high school, the visitor might notice the electronic signboard on the school lawn, a product of community fund raising. The signboard likely features notices of the next varsity football game and the wrestling tournament. Of less interest to the community are announcements about the spring musical, the band concert or the upcoming PTSA meeting.

Varsity sports are a prominent element of community and high school culture. Although most residents without children in schools aren’t likely to attend school debates or science fairs, they may be interested in and attend interscholastic athletics events.

Promoting Spirit

School administrators, staff, students, parents and community members promote school spirit, which in my view as an academic researcher has three dimensions: (1) student commitment to school activities, (2) loyalty to and quest for social harmony, and (3) pride in one’s school, including the relishing of traditions. School spirit brings students together, mitigating the effects of diverse curricular tracks and large school enrollments.

School spirit thrives in co-curricular and extracurricular activities such as homecoming. This annual fall event, which welcomes back alumni, often includes a home football game and the crowning of the homecoming king, typically an athlete, and the queen, who is less likely to be an athlete.

Pep rallies, another activity intended to promote school spirit, disproportionately focus on athletics. Classes are dismissed and members of the community may be invited to participate. Although the school band and the cheerleading squad often are featured, athletes (traditionally male athletes) customarily are the center of focus.

When school spirit leads to engagement, students are less likely to drop out and more likely to graduate, according to John R. Gerdy, in his 2014 book Ball or Bands: Football vs. Music as an Educational and Community Investment. Do varsity sports generate school spirit? Do they enhance the value of a high school education? Do small schools and trade schools that don’t sponsor interscholastic sports lack school spirit?

Jock Culture

While interscholastic athletics can generate loyalty and school spirit, they also can create an us-versus-them mentality. The glorification of athletes may generate a feeling of discord among students. Schools may include a student counterculture that demonstrates contempt for athletics, akin to what sociologists identify as a “jock-versus-nerd” culture.

In popular culture, male athletes are designated as “jocks.” While the label may convey prestige in some sectors of adolescent culture, it can carry derogatory connotations, as in the derivative “dumb jock.” Jocks are identified with bullying, being cocky and egotistical, as well as simple-minded, according to research by Kathleen E. Miller and colleagues published in 2005 in the Sociology of Sport Journal. The label seems to be attached particularly to male football players.

When jocks are accorded unchallenged privilege in schools, they enforce the social code and dominate public space, encapsulated by the expression “jocks rule.” A former student describes football players in their letter jackets striding through a crowd of students, pushing others out of the way. This climate of bullying by jocks has the potential to escalate.

Lorraine Adams and Dale Russakoff, writing for The Washington Post in June 1999, describe such conditions at Columbine High School in Jefferson County, Colo., in the late 1990s, where athletes misbehaved with impunity. Football players routinely shoved other students into lockers. H. G. Bissinger, author of Friday Night Lights, reported that high school football players he followed in Texas walked out of classes without consequence, roaming the halls or even leaving campus.

Athletes’ sense of self-importance often is reinforced by their schools. Schools award varsity letters to athletes to display on their jackets or sweaters. Special patches indicate the wearers are members of district or state champion teams.

Players’ names are announced over the public address system as they take the court or field. Football players enter the field by dramatically breaking through banners amidst plumes of smoke. 

When high school athletes are signed by major university teams, the schools hold signing ceremonies with TV cameras running. Some schools dismiss classes for the ceremony. How many high schools hold such ceremonies for top scholars who’ve garnered prestigious academic scholarships?

Jock identity can lead to disrespect for established norms and such problem behaviors as excessive drinking and sexual risk taking, in addition to bullying, according to research by Kathleen Miller, an associate professor of sociology at D’Youville College, published in 2007 in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence.

Reframing Purpose

The educational rationale for interscholastic sports is built on the pyramid model. Students develop fitness and learn basic sports skills in their physical education classes, forming the base of the pyramid. The opportunity to apply those learned skills in actual competition is facilitated by an intramural sports program where they can compete with fellow students at their school.

Based on this model, the thinking goes, a few students are so talented that they would benefit from competing against highly skilled athletes from other schools.

Of course, this isn’t how interscholastic athletics actually developed in American schools. High schools adopted the collegiate model. School teams were formed in those sports that were popular in the local community. Like colleges, secondary schools entered what is, in effect, the sports entertainment business, a uniquely American phenomenon.

School administrators need to structure an environment where the positive attributes of athletic participation supplant the negative aspects of jock culture. Striking a better balance between sports and academics conveys to students a sense of what school is about and where they should invest their efforts.

Amanda Ripley, in her 2013 article on the harmful side of scholastic sports for The Atlantic, describes the suspension of interscholastic sports at a Texas high school for budgetary reasons with the principal holding weekly sports-free pep rallies at the school. During that period, classes competed against each other in drumming contests and team-building exercises in the gymnasium. Ripley quotes the principal as saying, “The first 12 weeks of school were the most peaceful beginning weeks I’ve ever witnessed at a high school. It was calm. There was a level of energy devoted to planning and lessons, to after-school tutoring. I saw such a difference.”

School leaders can steer the focus toward the educational and physical benefits of athletics and stem the excesses of jock culture. More widely, educators can clarify values, with schools not only honoring accomplished athletes but also accomplished members of the debate team, science fair competitions and musicians, as well as those attaining the honor roll.

The primary goal in interscholastic athletics shouldn’t be winning the most championships but encouraging maximum participation by students, creating a program that promotes health and fitness along with the social and psychological benefits of sports participation. n

Steven Overman, a retired professor of health and physical education at Jackson State University in Jackson, Miss., is the author of Sports Crazy: How Sports Are Sabotaging American Schools, from which this article is adapted.