Fair and Foul: Beyond the Myths and Paradoxes of Sport

Sport is a pervasive aspect of US society. Most children in the U.S. are involved in organized sport and it’s the subject of much conversation, media content, leisure activity, and discretionary spending. There is a growing number of broadcast networks, online news sites, social media accounts, and streaming platforms devoted to covering sports that fans consume with keen interest. But do we truly understand sport?

Fair and Foul explores our love of sport, just as it reveals sport’s darker side-the influence of big business, corruption, price gouging, political maneuvering, gender bias, media grandstanding, and more. Broken into two parts, Part I, ＂Sport is Fair, Sport is Foul,＂ discusses issues of social class, race, gender, and health as well as the opportunities and demands of youth sports. Part II, ＂Sports as a Microcosm of Society,＂ examines issues stemming from the media, college athletics, professional sports franchises, and whether it’s possible to bring about change for a better and brighter future.

Ideal for sparking classroom discussion, Fair and Foul is an excellent book for students of sports and society, American culture, and other courses.

New to the Seventh Edition:
- New Chapter 3, ＂Sports Includes, Sports Excludes,＂ discusses Title IX and how barriers to sport continue to persist despite an expansion of opportunities.
- New content on athlete activism tied to social and racial justice reflects the current state of politics in the U.S, especially anti-trans bills, which exclude trans athletes from participating in sports.
- Expansion of Chapter 4, ＂Sport is Healthy, Sport is Destructive,＂ includes new discussion of mental health issues faced by athletes to reflect current issues and conversations in sports as well as a key concern for this generation of athletes.
- New coverage of the role of social media and streaming platforms in sports coverage reflects changes in the media production and consumption of sports
- New content on the Name Image Likeness (NIL) Supreme Court ruling, recent university conference realignments, and the role of the media (e.g. ESPN and Fox Sports television contracts) explores the possible implications of these changes on the future of college athletics

D. Stanley Eitzen was professor emeritus of sociology at Colorado State University, where he taught for twenty-one years, most recently as John N. Stern Distinguished Professor. He was the author or coauthor of twenty-four books, including three on sport, as well as numerous scholarly articles and chapters in scholarly books. He was a former president of the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport and the recipient of that organization’s Distinguished Service Award. Among his other awards, he was selected to be a Sports Ethics Fellow by the Institute for International Sport.

Cheryl Cooky is a professor of American Studies and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Purdue University. Her research focuses in three areas: gendered media representations of sport; gender politics of sport and public policies; and how gender shapes sports experiences, cultural meanings, and organizational structures in sports. She is the co-author of Serving Equality: Feminism, Media and Women’s Sports (2022, Peter Lang Publishers) and No Slam Dunk: Gender, Sport and the Unevenness of Social Change (2018, Rutgers University Press).