United States Sports Academy - "America's Sports University"

Ever since hits and home runs increased significantly after a leading aluminum bat manufacturer introduced the ABlack Magic@ bat in 1985, a controversy has raged in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) concerning the use of aluminum baseball bats. The first Abat summit@ with members of the NCAA Baseball Rules Committee and executives of aluminum-bat manufacturers was held in the summer of 1994. From this point on it was evident that the ability of manufacturers to manipulate the size and weight of baseball bats created an injury hazard and a player-development problem for collegiate-level baseball players. Although small steps have taken place to limit the hazardous equipment, a final solution would be found in a mandate by the NCAA for its member institutions to make a permanent and exclusive switch from aluminum bats to wooden bats. Specifically, this mandate should be directed to those programs at the Division I level where the baseball players are strong enough, fast enough, and skilled enough to injure one another by their use of aluminum bats.

The history of public relations is littered with confirmations and allegations of unethical behavior demonstrated by coaches and athletes. The latest firing of Indiana University's notorious Bobby Knight and the suspension of baseball's John Rocker are two recent cases that involved poor decision making on the part of Knight and Rocker. Professionals? One often wonders from what moral foundation do participants in the world of sport chose to make their decisions and subsequently act (1). Their ethical conduct was in question and steps were taken to remedy the situation.

I would like to break this winning formula down into "easy to chew" bite-sized chunks. In doing so, we will look at four smaller nuggets of truth. The first nugget is: "THE ROAD TO SUCCESS," the second is: "HARD WORK," the third: "DETERMINATION," and the fourth nugget worthy of a closer look is: "PERSONAL SACRIFICE." For our conclusion, I will ask, "Who will answer this call?"

By defining match days and football grounds as times and places in which fighting could be engaged in and aggressive forms of masculinity displayed, the media, especially the national tabloid press, played a part of some moment in stimulating and shaping the development of soccer hooliganism (p. 122).

Murphy et al., (1990), believe that the amount of publicity given to the superhooligan groups and their leaders increased the membership ranks with "hardcases and other socio-pathic nutters" (Murphy et al., 1990, p. 168), who were not previously involved with soccer hooliganism.