Sociological Madness in March

Culture and Socialization within Organizations

Besides Loyola University's motto "Created By Culture" there are many ways that the NCAA basketball tournament can be connected to sociology.

Loyola really did try to create a culture that affected the basketball success.  They implemented norms and language that reinforced and reshaped the values of the program.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/college/ct-spt-loyola-basketball-porter-moser-haugh-20180216-story.html

“It’s amazing the way he has gotten us all to believe in his vision for us,’’ Custer said. “The big thing this year is the buy-in to his style of play. We’re selfless.’’  This was the cultural impact Moser hoped for when he came up with the idea for the wall shortly after arriving at Loyola in 2011.

Shared Meaning, Cultural Production and Institutions
http://college.usatoday.com/2012/03/17/symptoms-of-march-madness-spreading/

Rick Eckstein, a sociology professor at Villanova University, contends that a lot of March Madness might just be hype: “There is a lot of cultural pressure to ‘act out’ during certain key sporting spectacles. Usually this means buying certain products (often food) and treating the sporting event as another commodity to be consumed in excess....He says that this cultural pressure is derived from sources as diverse as the media, the workplace, religious institutions and schools. “Keep in mind, though, that for all of this attention paid to March Madness, a lot of people simply don’t care about it at all,” Eckstein says. “However, the barrage of cultural images exaggerates the overall social appeal of this sports spectacle.”

Race and Shared Meaning
https://theundefeated.com/features/why-are-so-many-ncaa-basketball-walk-ons-white/
With so much black identity and manhood tied up in the game, it goes against the cultural grain for players to seek out a low-status position....Our whole athletic socialization is different,” said Moore, the University of Texas professor. “It’s more central to our sense of self-worth. That comes from our family, teachers, pastors at the church: ‘You’re a basketball player.’ And so for me at 18 or 21 to say I’m going into coaching, what I’m saying is my basketball career is over. And it ain’t supposed to be over....Walking on has this stereotype that it’s something embarrassing or looked down upon."

Social Institution of College and Shared Meaning
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-03-13/march-madness-more-students-apply-to-schools-that-break-brackets
Interesting study of how a cinderella story affects a college.  Breakdown with data and graphs.

https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/03/the-march-madness-application-bump/519846/
Secondary source with a number of links to primary data about the positive effects of winning an upset.  "...schools that beat performance expectations during March Madness receive a bump not only in public awareness, but also in the number of applications they receive."

Racism, Institutions and Shared Meaning  
'Crafty' Vs. 'Sneaky': How Racial Bias In Sports Broadcasting Hurts Everyone

These differences in word choice might seem small, but they can have big consequences.

Here is the story from public radio about a study of basketball announcers:  

Here is an excerpt of the story which features sociologist Rashawn Ray:

two sociologists recently published a study that looked at a decade's worth of March Madness broadcasts, and they found that sometimes racial bias sounds like this:

"That’s a tough matchup for JJ Redick on the glass. Redick not known as a rebounder. Tasmin Mitchell much stronger, bigger and more athletic."

"I mean, of course, we can highlight some of these bigger comments that most people would consider to be racist," says Dr. Rashawn Ray, who teaches sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park. "But instead, what we were highlighting, in many ways, is implicit bias and the subtle ways that race actually operates, when it comes to talking about some of these historical stereotypes, about what it means to be Black and physically superior and, at the same time, intellectually inferior, and, on the other hand, what it means to be lighter-skinned or white."

Same Action, Different Description

Dr. Ray and his co-author Dr. Steven Foy, of the University of Texas, Rio Grande Valley, transcribed 52 men’s college basketball broadcasts, including 11 championship games. They were looking at the ways broadcasters talk about players of different skin tones, and whether racial bias was at play.

Listen here starting at 31 minutes.

The original research article from U of Chicago is called Skin in the Game: Colorism and the Subtle Operation of Stereotypes in Men’s College Basketball and is published in the American Journal of Sociology 2019.

Gender, Sexism, Cultural Production and Institutions
https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2012/03/21/gender-and-espns-coverage-of-march-madness/
Interesting discussion of cultural production; how the hype around men's basketball creates a self-fulfilling prophecy.  "...by making the men’s tournament resources more engaging and informative, it reinforces the sense that the women’s tournament is a side event, not worth the same level of attention as the men’s. As she points out, ESPN probably devoted less time and energy to the women’s tournament website because they assume fewer people will sign up and use it. But by creating less engaging resources, they provide less incentive for fans to bother signing up, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy."

Gender, Sexism and Racism in the Women's Tournament