7 ALCOHOL ADVERTISING IN COLLEGIATE SPORTS

BOX 6.7 ALCOHOL ADVERTISING IN COLLEGIATE SPORTS

As colleges and universities becoming increasingly concerned about alcohol abuse among students, especially binge drinking and the role of alcohol in crimes like rape and domestic violence, the lucrative advertising contracts between breweries and university athletic departments are drawing closer scrutiny. Although most schools do not sell alcohol in their athletic facilities, and many prohibit fans from bringing alcohol into the games, those same fans often see lots of beer advertising inside the stadium or coliseum. The income from such advertising is not trivial. For example, the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities signed a 3-year contract for $150,000 with Miller Brewing Company in 1994, giving the brewery the right to install advertising signs in university athletic arenas and to use the university mascot, the Golden Gopher, in its advertising. When that contract expired in 1997, a similar offer of $225,000 was rejected by the university on ethical grounds (Naughton, 1998).

Although only a few major universities (e.g., Brigham Young, Baylor, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill) refuse all alcohol ads in sports arenas and on radio broadcasts of games, increasing numbers, like Minnesota, are clamping down. However, private facilities, like post- season bowl arenas, are a harder sell. The Big Ten and Pacific Ten conferences failed to persuade the city of Pasadena to ban beer sales at the 1998 Rose Bowl game; officials remembered that 30,000 beers were sold at the 1997 Rose Bowl game (Naughton, 1998)! What is your school’s policy on alcohol advertising and college sports?

Competitiveness and Cooperation. Obviously, one of the major psychological components of sports is competition and the achievement of victory. Part of the perceived reality of TV sports also involves this desire to win, a drive which is learned early through the media. This strong competitive drive can easily overshadow the learning of teamwork and cooperation. The natural socialization process of child development often involves an identification and support for certain sports teams and individuals. Who this will be is often, although not necessarily, determined by geographical considerations. We most often root for the local team, the team of our school, or the team our family has supported, perhaps for

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have supporters who have never been near Wrigley Field, and Roman Catholics throughout North America cheer for the University of Notre Dame’s football team.

Competition may come in the form of nation versus nation in international competition. The U.S. hockey team’s upset victory over the Soviet Union in the 1980 Winter Olympics was especially savored in a nation angry and frustrated by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan a few weeks before. The World Cup, with one team per nation, becomes a national competition, during which the business life of certain soccer-happy countries in Western Europe and South America takes a de facto holiday. When the Toronto Blue Jays made the baseball World Series in 1992, all Canada celebrated, in spite of the fact that there were no Canadians on the team. The first-time entry of independent former Soviet and Yugoslav nations like Lithuania, Estonia, Croatia, and Slovenia into the 1992 Olympics was a time of intense national pride. Such sports nationalism can occasionally degenerate into antisocial extremes. Colombian soccer star Andrés Escobar was assassinated upon returning home from World Cup play in 1994, apparently by a fan angry and ashamed of his weaker-than-expected performance on the field.

The reward in sports is generally for winning, with very few kudos, endorsements, or dollars for coming in second, much less third or tenth. In carrying so many more sports into so many lives, television has certainly, at least indirectly, encouraged competitiveness. With the star mindset that focuses on individuals, television lavishes attention and acclaim on the winner, whereas it often virtually ignores everyone else. This helps to construct a reality for viewers that coming in first is what is important. Athletes are not interviewed after the game for doing their best or being good sports. Sports metaphors carry over into our speech and thinking in many other areas of life, such as relationships. A fellow goes on a date and scores, gets to first base, or strikes out. A woman complains that men see women as conquests or trophies. Parents feel like losers if their child is not accepted to a prestigious college.

Often the star mentality of television and the entertainment business in general affects the presentation of sports in the media, Individual plays of the superstars are exalted and glorified by the sportscasters more than, for example, shows of fine teamwork. Coverage tends to focus on the outstanding athlete, much as coverage of religion tends to focus on the pope or stories about government focus on the president. This extolling of the individual may subtly undermine the importance of teamwork and cooperation for the viewer, especially the young viewer.

A very different, and subtler, way that competitiveness can manifest itself in the sports viewer is in the accumulation and exhibiting of copious, seemingly endless, sports trivia and statistics. Sportscasters encourage this

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through their endless recitation of such information during radio and TV broadcasts, in part probably to fill the time when there is no play or commercial to air. The computer has made it even easier to amass and retrieve these figures. Such statistics have become part of the reality of media sports. Even young children seemingly unable to remember much in school may recite voluminous facts about RBIs, passes completed, and shooting percentages.

Sports Violence. Although the appeal of violent sports goes back to ancient times (Guttman, 1998), recent concern is expressed over the way that media, especially television, tend to heavily focus on, perhaps even glorify, the occasional brawl or fight on the field. In a sense, this is an auxiliary competition to the primary one being played. Although no sportscaster celebrates or even condones serious tragedies like player or fan deaths, the camera and media attention immediately shift routinely to any fight that breaks out either in the stands or on the field. When results of that game are reported later on the evening news, it is more likely to be the brawl, not the play of the game, that is chosen as the sound bite of the evening. Even if fighting is clearly condemned by the sportscaster, the heavy coverage given to the fight conveys a subtle agenda-setting message of its own. The perceived reality to the viewer, especially a young one, may be that the winner of the brawl is to be admired as much as the winner of the game itself, because temper tantrums, rudeness, and racket-hurling are more photogenic and lively than self-control and playing by the rules (Tavris, 1988).

Do people really enjoy watching sports violence? In a study of response to sports aggression, Bryant (1989) found that avid sports fans do enjoy watching rough and even violent sporting events, especially under certain conditions. Inherently more violent people enjoy sports violence more. The more one dislikes the victim of the violence, the more that violence is enjoyed. Bryant reported a study where highly prejudiced Whites greatly enjoyed seeing a race car crash where a Black driver was killed. Violence that is morally sanctioned, that is, presented as acceptable or even necessary, is enjoyed more and seen as more acceptable than violence presented as unfair or out of line (Beentjes, van Oordt, & van der Voort, 2002). Such moral sanctioning may come from several sources, including the rules and customs of the game, the tone of the commentary of the sportscaster or sportswriter, and even the reactions of other fans. The more of these conditions that are present, the more the viewer enjoys the violence. Overall, however, the higher the level of violence in a game, the greater the fan enjoyment, especially for men (Bryant, Zillmann, & Raney, 1998).

There is also some evidence of negative behavioral effects from watching aggressive sports. Fans leaving a college football game (J.H.Goldstein &

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Arms, 1971) or wrestling or hockey events (Arms, Russell, & Sandilands, 1979) scored higher in hostility and aggressiveness than control fans who had watched a swimming meet. It did not matter if one’s team won or lost or if the aggression was stylized (wrestling) or spontaneous (hockey). Although these studies have not been replicated with fans who are television spectators, the results are provocative and suggest that the presence of aggressiveness may be more important than merely the element of competition.

Sometimes sports competition has had some extreme and tragic consequences. In 1969, Honduras and El Salvador fought the so-called soccer war, precipitated by a particularly bitter soccer game. In 1985, 39 people in Brussels died, and 450 were injured, in a deadly brawl among fans watching a championship soccer game between Liverpool, England and an Italian team. Such incidents have caused fans to be screened with metal detectors, nations to exchange information on the most violent fans, and heavily armed soldiers to stand guard in the stadium between the seating areas for fans of the opposing teams. These security measures have come to

be part of the reality of sport, although those watching on TV need not be so inconvenienced.

Emotional Benefits. Although there are clear benefits from participating in sports, those benefits are somewhat less clear when it comes to consuming sports through media. Obviously, physical health and fitness are not enhanced by watching ball games on TV and may even be hindered if watching takes up time that the viewers would otherwise spend exercising. Emotionally, the picture is a little less clear. The tension reduction or emotional release called catharsis may result from physical exercise where we release stress through muscular and aerobic exercise. Some psychologists in the psychodynamic tradition dating back to Sigmund Freud argue that catharsis may also be achieved through substitute activities. Although research has not supported the value of a cathartic release of aggressive feeling through watching sports, there is still widespread belief among the general public that such a process exists (Tavris, 1988).

There clearly is often a lot of emotion felt while consuming media sports. Zillmann, Bryant, and Sapolsky (1979) proposed a disposition theory of sportsfanship to describe such feelings. The enjoyment we experience emotionally from witnessing the success or victory of a competing individual or team increases with the degree of positive sentiments and decreases with the degree of negative sentiments we feel toward that party. The reverse is true for what we experience when we witness a failure or defeat. The more we care about a team’s success, the more emotional satisfaction we feel when they do well and the worse we feel when they do badly. Thus, it is hard

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to become emotionally involved, or sometimes stay interested at all, in watching a game between two teams that we know or care little about.

Still, feelings about the competitors are not the only determinants of emotional response to sports. As with any drama, the degree of perceived conflict is crucial. A game that is close in score and hard-fought in character evokes more emotional reaction, regardless of team loyalty, than one where the final victor is never in doubt or one where the participants appear not to

be trying very hard. As with other kinds of drama, unpredictability and suspense are important (Zillmann, 1980, 1991c). A close basketball game settled at the final buzzer carries the viewer along emotionally throughout its course. A game whose outcome is known is less likely to be of interest to watch in its entirety. How many ball games are ever rerun on television? How many people watch a videotaped ball game of which they already know the final score? However, a few people may actually prefer the predictable to the uncertain; see Box 6.8.

Gender Roles and Bias. Throughout the history of media sports, male sports have received much more coverage than female sports, with estimates indicating that as much as 95% of sports coverage is of male sports (Coakley, 1986; Fink, 1998). Also, attendance at men’s events is higher than at women’s events. The nature of the relationship between coverage and fan interest is complex, however. Does the heavier media coverage of male sports merely reflect the reality of greater fan interest in men’s sports, for whatever reason, or is the greater media coverage a cause of greater fan interest in men’s sports?

BOX 6.8