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JSAS Releases First Podcast As Part Of Footprint Initiative
MURFREESBORO, Tenn. - As part of a goal to distribute its research contents to new audiences through aggressive media relations initiatives, the Journal of Sport Administration & Supervision today released its first podcast, which featured an award-winning academic researcher and a nationally recognized sports journalist and author.
Dr. Stephen W. Dittmore, an assistant professor at the University of Arkansas, and Mr. Dan Wetzel, a national sports columnist for Yahoo! Sports, joined JSAS staffers Dr. Colby B. Jubenville, Dr. Benjamin D. Goss, and Dr. J. Michael Martinez to discuss recent works by Dittmore and Wetzel on college football's Bowl Championship Series (BCS).
Dittmore's article "The Influence of the Bowl Championship Series on Competitive Balance in College Football," co-authored with Dr. Craig M. Crow of West Liberty University, was selected for JSAS's second Editor's Choice Award this spring and examined whether the BCS system has influenced competitive balance in the six founding BCS conferences, both from the perspectives of within-season (is conference competition balanced within an individual season?) and between-season (do conference standings remain virtually the same from season to season?).
Wetzel's upcoming book Death to the BCS: The Definitive Case Against the Bowl Championship Series, co-authored with Josh Peter and Jeff Passan, will be released October 14 and contains findings from exhaustive journalistic investigative reporting on the BCS that included interviews with power players in college athletics, as well as research into federal tax records, Congressional testimony, and private contracts.
The podcast was JSAS's first step in creating its media relations initiative, called Footprint, which JSAS Publisher Colby Jubenville stated was designed to take the findings of JSAS authors to broader audiences beyond academia.
"One of the reasons we founded JSAS was to make sure that our authors' research wouldn't gather dust on a library bookshelf or be unaccessed in cyberspace," he said.
"To that end, we're successfully utilizing available technologies like TalkShoe podcast-recording to put together an experience with the research for our readers well beyond the typical digging-for-data that goes on far too often."
According to Jubenville, combating this phenomenon was a driving motive behind his and Goss' founding of JSAS in 2007.
"Ben and I know how much effort goes into quality research and how frustrating it can be to have your work sit idle, particularly when it can be helpful to someone who can't or won't access it for whatever reason, so we decided to do something about it," Jubenville said.
Goss added that, in addition to its online open access format, its emphasis on phenomenology, and the development of social responsibility in sport organizations, the Footprint media relations efforts were a distinctive hallmark of JSAS's efforts to develop Scholarly Sport Practitioners by ensuring that JSAS was a conduit of applicable research funneled to sport managers in a practical format.
"Footprint is another example of how we're attempting to break the mold of what an academic journal is and reshape it into something of practical use," Goss said.
"This podcast is part of that reinvention, intended to find creative ways to take JSAS research to new audiences."
The JSAS editorial staff hosted the hour-long podcast, in which considerable overlap between the scholarly research and the investigative reporting was found.
Access the podcast here.
The academic paper of Dittmore and Crow's study can be found here, while the management whitepaper summary can be found here.
Preorder Wetzel's book at amazon.com here.
"The Influence of the Bowl Championship Series on Competitive Balance in College Football"
Stephen W. Dittmore
University of Arkansas
Craig M. Crow
West Liberty University
ABSTRACT
Competitive balance in sport has been identified as a predictor of demand for sporting events, and leagues. Conferences frequently seek to maximize outcome uncertainty as a means of increasing demand. While competitive balance was not initially a goal of the Bowl Championship Series (BCS), competitive balance in American college football has generally been regarded as improved since the implementation of the BCS. The present study confirms empirically that within-season competitive balance inside all six founding BCS conferences has improved since its creation. However, only three of the six conferences exhibited improved between-season competitive balance, meaning frequent turnover of championship teams was not observed in all conferences. Potential implications for these findings and their impact on college football are discussed.
Access the full academic research paper here (free): http://j.mp/96Kelt
Access management whitepaper summary here (free): http://j.mp/9Uj1sh
Death to the BCS: The Definitive Case Against the Bowl Championship Series
Dan Wetzel, Josh Peter, Jeff Passan
Every college sport picks its champion by a postseason tournament, except for one: Division I-A football. Instead of a tournament, fans are subjected to the Bowl Championship Series, an arcane mix of polling and mathematical rankings that results in just two teams playing for the championship. It is, without a doubt, the most hated institution in all of sports. A recent Sports Illustrated poll found that more than 90 percent of sports fans oppose the BCS, yet this system has remained in place for more than a decade. Built upon top-notch investigative reporting, Death to the BCS at last reveals the truth about this monstrous entity and offers a simple solution for fixing it.
Death to the BCS includes findings from interviews with power players, as well as research into federal tax records, Congressional testimony, and private contracts. The first book to lay out the unseemly inner workings of the BCS in full detail, Death to the BCS is a rousing manifesto for bringing fairness back to one of our most beloved sports.
Read more/pre-order here.
The Journal of Sport Administration & Supervision is a publication of the Center for Sport Policy & Research (CSPR) at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, Tenn.
For more information about JSAS, visit: http://www.jsasonline.org
Follow on Twitter:
- JSAS: @jsasonline
- CSPR: @sportpolicy
- Dr. Stephen W. Dittmore: @stevedittmore
- Mr. Dan Wetzel: @danwetzel
- Dr. Colby B. Jubenville: @drjubenville
- Dr. Benjamin D. Goss: @sportarchy
- Dr. J. Michael Martinez: @phdmike
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SPRINGFIELD, Mo.-- JSAS co-founder and editor-in-chief Benjamin D. Goss was named to the Springfield (Mo.) Business Journal's 2011 40 Under 40 class at an awards ceremony held May 19.
