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V This is to certify that the dissertation entitled A Comparison of High School Head Football Coaches’ Personal, American Cultural and Football Values presented by William Rudolph Hughes has been accepted towards fulfillment ' of the requirements for the PhD. degree in Kinesiology Major Professor’s Signature Ma.“ 5m atom Date} MSU is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer LIBRARY Michigan State University -.—.—.—-.—.-._ PLACE IN RETURN BOX to remove this checkout from your record. TO AVOID FINES return on or before date due. MAY BE RECALLED with earlier due date if requested. DAIEDUE DAIEDUE DAIEDUE 5’08 K:lProj/Aoc&Pres/CIRCIDateDue.indd A Comparison of High School Head Football Coaches’ Personal, American Cultural and Football Values. VOLUME I By William Rudolph Hughes A DISSERTATION Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Kinesiology 2010 Abstract A Comparison of High School Head Football Coaches’ Personal, American Cultural and Football Values: A qualitative-interview study. William Rudolilli Hughes, PhD Michigan State University, 2010 The purpose of this study was to understand the high school head football coaches personal, American cultural, and football value orientations in one northern Midwestern state. The study compared coaches’ value orientations across urban, suburban and rural geographic locations of the high schools in which the study participants coached, and across their ethnic/racial identities. Of the twenty-five (N=25) participant coaches, nineteen (n = 19) were White/Caucasian, and six (n = 6) were Black/African—American. No other ethnicity/racial group self-identified in the study. The study was conducted during the 2007-2008 academic year. This research is significant because sport is so important in American culture, and high school coaches impact more athletes than coaches at any other level (Anderson, 2005; Coakley, 2009). Coaches’ experiences, value orientations and social meanings are important to understand because they affect how head coaches, and assistants teach values to their players (Anderson, 2005). There is, also, a dearth of research on values, and coaches’ values in sport sociology (Cashion, 1998; Hecter, 1992; Hitlin & Pilivin, 2004; Hutcheon, 1972; Redekop, 1998; Spates, 1983). The qualitative-interview study was purposive in nature, only selecting high school head football coaches in the researched state. Participants consented to be interviewed and tape- recorded. Pseudonyms were self-chosen prior to the interview. The taped interviews were transcribed to aid in analysis. Data were triangulated, comparing qualitative-interview, scholarly literature review, and sport applicable social theories. Findings for coaches’ personal values presented the themes of: (1) hard work, (2) honesty and trust, (3) family, and (4) faith and other values. Coaches, also, selected the American cultural value themes of: (1) acknowledgement of diversity and inclusion within American society, (2) personal values as American cultural values, (3) hard work as a personal and cultural values; (4) personal responsibility as a social and cultural responsibility, and (5) acceptance and affirmation of American cultural values such as patriotism, nationalism and punctuality. Football value themes were depicted as (1) hard work, (2) respect for team mates, self, and the game, (3) character development, (4) commitment to a high standard of performance, and (5) physical and mental toughness, courage and handling adversity. Therefore, according to these coaches, hard work is their number one personal and football value, and is noted as an important American cultural value. The values are the foundation for the head coaches’ decision making process in relationships with assistant coaches and players. Coaches across all geographic areas (i.e., urban, suburban, rural) expressed a strong similarity in all values. An alarming ethnic/racial values viewpoint was voiced by some coaches who stated that they had “no basis for comparison” when questioned about ethnic/racial comparative values differences and/or similarities. These coaches had never played against, nor coached against, any other ethnic/racial peer group than their own and, therefore, held limited diversity experience. Further research is needed. William Rudolph Hughes COPYRIGHT 2010 Dedication To: GOD as remembered in the 23rd Psalm. To: GEORGE RUDOLPH & ELNORA HUGHES, WILLIAM & NETTIE BORUM, ESSIE MEADE HUGHES, AUDREY HUGHES, ROBERT & JESSIE MCFADDEN. To: HESTER MCFADDEN HUGHES, my adored & beloved wife, friend and God’s Blessing to me. To: KENDRA CHARON & KRISTINE CHAN TE HUGHES, my cherished daughters, who gave me reason and purpose to go on. To: The bravest men I have ever known — HOWARD LEONARD HUGHES, my brother; RUSS HAUGHEY, my friend. To: The ever supportive Graduate School and College of Education administrators, Drs. KAREN KLOMPARENS, YEVONNE R. SMITH, CASS BOOK, and DEB FELTZ. To: My most esteemed, supportive, and patient committee: Drs. YEVONNE R. SMITH, chair & advisor; MARTHA E. EWING, RICHARD N. MCNEIL, and CLIFFORD BROMAN. To: The Ministers and Members of St. Stephen’s Community Church, United Church of Christ, Lansing, Michigan. To: All those who prayed for me, known and unknown; where ever they may be. To: FAMILY, and fi'iends, who helped keep the dream alive: ROGER & RUTH SHIELDS, BRENDA THOMAS, BILL WILLIAMSON, BARBARA MCFADDEN & DESMOND HORSHAM-BRATHWAITE, Dr. GEORGE & CYNTHIA LARKIN, DAVID & “AUNT” PAT McCONNEL, GERALD & DEBORAH GRAY-YOUNG, LILLIAN WEAVER-BANKS, PAUL SINKLER, Rev. CHARLES & KAREN CORLEY, Dr. LINDA PATTERSON, Min. VALERIE MERRITT, Rev. SAMERAH SHAREEF, JEFFREY EVANS, EARL DAVIS, WENDY GILLESPIE, and JENNIFER WALLACE. To: The Kinesiology department chairpersons and curriculum coordinators who allowed me to teach: Drs. PAUL CARPENTER, DEB FELTZ, CRAIG HAYWOOD, BRENDA RIEMER, PAT Van VOLKINBURG, and JOANNE RODENHAUSER. To: Those who gave me a graduate education in coaching: TOM LANDRY, TONY DUNGY, MIKE DITKA & JOHN LEVRA, MARV LEVY & CHUCK DICKERSON. To: Those who gave me an opportunity to coach: STEW YAKER; KEVIN GILBRIDE; BOB NASSO & PETE SAVINO; KENNETH McBRYDE, FRANK MARINO & DAVE WILSON; WILLARD BAILEY; Dr. GENE CARPENTER; HANK SMALL & KEVIN HIGGINS; RICKY DIGGS; and RUSS HAUGHEY. To: All the young men I’ve had the honor, privilege and pleasure to coach at Brooklyn College, Southern Connecticut State University, Ramapo College, Norfolk State University, Millersville University, Lehigh University, Morgan State University and Concord High School. The memory of you kept me true to my word. To: BEN GLASCOE, LOU WILLIAMS, and BILL CHISHOLM & THE BROOKYLN GOLDEN KNIGHTS & BROOKLYN KINGS FOOTBALL TEAMS. To: NICK MUZILLO; FRANK BRANCA, JIM GRECO & SKIP MONGON, & THE PACE COLLEGE FOOTBALL TEAM. To: GEORGE MIMS & RUDOLH A. CAIN of Pace College and Empire State College (SUNY) who gave me the chance for a higher education. To: AL CARUSO, MICHAEL DESENA & ARNOLD PINSKEY & THE JAMES MADISON HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL TEAM You didn’t allow me to quit, and never quit on me. To: ALLAN GOFF, homeroom and English teacher, AND MY CLASSMATES in 7- 9SP at ROTHSCHILD JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL, J HS 294, BROOKLYN, NEW YORK, who first heard the beginnings of this dissertation in the spring of 1964. To: BOOKER T. WASHINGTON & W.E.B. DuBOIS To: EL MALIK SHABAZZ & MARTIN LUTHER KING, Jr. To: CORNEL WEST & MICHAEL ERIC DYSON To: CEREVANTES and “DON QUIXOTE.” To: STEVE SABOL, RUDYARD KIPLING and “IF.” To: LORRAINE HAN SBURY & NINA SIMONE To: DOUGLAS TURNER WARD To: EARTH, WIND & FIRE, GIL SCOTT-HERON, ROBERTA FLACK, LES McCANN, DIANN E REEVES & Pace College’s “Dirty Thirty ” & The fellas on Dean Street vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ........................................................................................... ii Dedication ........................................................................................ v List of Tables ................................................................................. xviii List of Figures .................................................................................. xix CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION ....................................................... 1 Statement of the problem ...................................................................... 1 Value orientations ..................................................................... 3 Socialization and Education within sport .......................................... 5 The Coach in the socialization process ............................................. 8 Purpose of the study ........................................................................... 13 Personal values of high school head football coaches studied .................. 14 American cultural, and football values studied ................................... 15 Achievement/W inning ...................................................... 1 5 Authority ...................................................................... 15 Competition .................................................................. l6 Conformity ................................................................... 16 Hard work .................................................................... 16 Masculinity ......................................................................................... 17 Success ........................................................................ 17 Research Questions ............................................................................ 17 Research Question 1: What are the demographic descriptions of the high school head football coaches studied as research participants? .......... 18 Research Question 2: What are the demographic descriptions of the high school football programs represented by the head football coaches studied? ........................................................ 18 Research Question 3: What are the personal values of high school head football coaches? ............................................................ 19 Research Question 4: What are the American cultural values of high school head football coaches? ................................................ 19 Research Question 5: What are the football values of high school head football coaches? ............................................. 20 Research Question 6: How are personal, cultural, and football values learned or transferred? ............................................. 20 Research Question 7: Are there similarities and/or differences in high school head football coaches’ values and social meanings across geographic locations of the high schools? ............... 20 vii Research Question 8: Are there similarities and/or differences in high school head football coaches’ values and social meanings across ethnic/racial identities? .................................... 20 Background of the study ...................................................................... 21 Personal experience as a high school head football coach ...................... 21 Review of scholarly literature ...................................................... 22 Review of sport applicable social theory .......................................... 22 Significance of the study ..................................................................... 23 Delimitations .................................................................................... 25 Limitations ...................................................................................... 26 Definition of Terms ........................................................................... 27 CHAPTER TWO: REVIEW OF LITERATURE .......................................... 42 Introduction ............................................................................ 42 Section A: Perspectives on the study of values ................................... 42 Values definitions ............................................................ 42 Values: What they are not! ................................................................ 45 Values: Why they are important! ....................................................... 46 Socialization into values ............................................................ 47 Socialization: What is it? ................................................................... 47 Socialization: How does it happen? ................................................... 48 In the socialization process, what is the historical role of American public education? ................................................... 51 High school sports .......................................................... 53 Socialization: Why is it important? .................................................... 54 The socialization of teachers and coaches ............................... 56 Summary of socialization ................................................... 64 Personal values ........................................................................ 69 Introduction .................................................................. 69 Personal core values ......................................................... 69 American Cultural values, and sport values ....................................... 70 Introduction .................................................................. 70 The beginnings of American cultural values ............................. 70 The Protestant ethic ......................................................... 71 Muscular Christianity ....................................................... 73 Muscular Christianity: European origins ................................. 74 Muscular Christianity: American dynamics .............................. 76 Taylorism and Fordism ...................................................... 81 Masculine ideologies ........................................................ 85 Anti-feminine ideologies and Damage done to men .................... 89 Anti-feminine ideologies .......................................... 89 Damage done to men ............................................... 91 Contemporary American football values .......................................... 93 High school football values from the mid-twentieth century .......... 94 viii Achievement and Competition ................................. 94 Conduct, Character and Citizenship ........................... 95 Conformity and Respect for authority ......................... 96 Honesty, Hard work and Success; Commitment and Facing adversity .................................... 96 Masculinity, Courage and Military Experience ............... 97 The coaching fraternity; treatment of players; and construction of the teachable moment or environment ........................................... 99 Summary of Texas high school head football coaches’ football values ................................. 100 Professional football values from the mid-twentieth century ............... 101 Courage ...................................................................... 101 Commitment .............................................................. 101 Tolerance of pain ............................................................ 101 Theimportanceofvvinning... ...101 Institutionalized Aggression and Violence ................................................ 103 Deviant behavior and drug usage as an accepted pattern in football ......... 104 Summary of high school and professional football contemporary values ............................................................. 107 Football: History, coaching culture, and coaching organizational processes ........................................................................... 108 Introduction ............................................................... 108 Football history in American culture ............................................. 108 Football culture .............................................................................. 114 Introduction ........................................................................ 1 14 Football, ritual, and rites-of-passage .................................. 114 Football and manhood ........................................................ 118 Football coaching and organizational processes ............................ 120 The coaching process ......................................................... 120 Coaching organizational culture ......................................... 121 Coaching structure and design ............................................ 122 Coaching styles ................................................................... 123 Interrelationship of American cultural and sport values ............................. 125 Football coaches developing character in players ...................................... 134 Introduction .................................................................................... 1 34 Character education through coaching in sport ............................. 137 Moral character values and moral character .................................. 137 Social character values and social character .................................. 138 Formal character education ............................................................ 139 Informal character education .......................................................... 140 Summary of character development ............................................... 141 Summary of football culture, and football values .............................. 144 ix Section B: Social Theoretical Perspectives, and Applied Sociology of Sport ............................................................................................... 145 Introduction to Social Theory .......................................... 145 Structural F unctionalism Theory: Strengths, weaknesses, and summary ............................ 147 Strengths of Structural F unctionalism Theory ................... 147 Weaknesses of Structural Functionalism Theory ............... 153 Structural Functionalism Theory summary ........................ 155 Symbolic Interaction Theory: Strengths, weaknesses, and summary ........................................................... 157 Strengths of Symbolic Interaction Theory .......................... 157 Weaknesses of Symbolic Interaction Theory ...................... 160 Symbolic Interaction Theory summary ........................ 160 Critical Theory: Strengths, weaknesses, and summary ............................................................ 161 Strengths of Critical Theory ................................................. 161 Weaknesses ofCritical Theory163 Critical Theory summary ......................................... 164 Summary of Social theories ...................................... 166 Applied Sociology of Sport .................................................. 167 CHAPTER THREE: RESEARCH METHODS ......................................... 170 Introduction .......................................................................... 1 70 Study design: Rationale for Qualitative Methods ..................................................................... 170 Qualitative Research Design .............................................. 173 Purposive sampling .................................................................. 175 Rational for purposive sampling .......................................... 175 Other studies in support of purposive sampling ........................ 176 Summary of purposive sampling ......................................... 177 Participants ........................................................................... 178 Selection of participants ................................................... 178 Sample size — Qualitative ................................................ 178 Rationale for sample size selected ....................................... 179 Recruitment of subjects ................................................... 179 Informed consent ........................................................... 179 Description of qualitative instrument ............................................. 180 Qualitative interview reliability and validity .................................... 182 Member Checking ......................................................... 182 Disconfirming Evidence .................................................. 183 Triangulation ............................................................... 1 83 Thick Description .......................................................... 184 Credibility ................................................................... 184 Dependability ............................................................... l 85 Confirrnability ............................................................... 1 85 Transferability ................................................................................... 1 85 Data collection procedures ......................................................... 187 Qualitative interview collection procedures ............................ 187 Pseudonym choice ......................................................... 188 Qualitative Data analysis ........................................................... 188 Qualitative research analysis ...................................................... 188 CHAPTER FOUR: Demographic Characteristics and Descriptions of High School Head Football Coaches and Programs, Studied .......................................... 191 Research Question I: What are the demographic descriptions of the high school head football coaches studied as research participants ................ 191 Personal-Professional backgrounds of the coaches interviewed. ....192 Ages of the coaches interviewed ......................................... 193 Educational attainment levels of the researched states population and of high school head football coaches interviewed ............ 194 Educational attainments levels of the researched state’s population .......................................................... 194 High school head football coaches’ studied educational attainment levels in comparison to statewide educational attainment levels ................................................... 196 What are the cultural backgrounds of the high school head football coaches interviewed ............................................... 198 Ethnicity/Race of coaches interviewed .................................. 198 Geographic location of coaches interviewed ........................... 200 What are the football experiential backgrounds of the high school head football coaches interviewed ....................................... 200 Family coaching backgrounds ................................... 201 First and highest organized football participatory experience ................................................. 201 Head Coaching longevity. 2.01 Stability of the head football coaches mtervrewed ............ 202 Geographic comparison of stability of head football Coaches interviewed ..................................... 203 Head coaches’ service at several high schools ................ 206 Head Coaches’ success records ................................. 207 Head coaches’ lifetime championship season record. . . . .....207 Geographic comparison of coaches’ lifetime championship record ...................................................... 208 Ethnic/Racial comparison of interviewed coaches’ championship records.......................................210 xi Ethnic/Racial comparison of 2007 win-loss record of high school head football coaches ..................... 215 Comparison of 2007 high school win loss record by Geographic and ethnic/racial identities of the head football coaches interviewed ..................... 216 Research Question 11: What are the demographic descriptions of the high school football programs represented in the study? ............................................................. 218 High school competitive classes represented by coaches interviewed ....... 218 Football program size represented by coaches interviewed ................... 220 Varsity football team players represented by coaches interviewed ......................................................... 222 Junior varsity football team players represented by coaches interviewed .............................................. 222 Freshman football team players represented by coaches interviewed .............................................. 223 Program success .................................................................... 224 2007 High school football program championships .................. 225 Summary of football program success ................................. 226 Summary of the demographic characteristics and descriptions of the high school head football coaches and programs studied .................. 226 Personal-professional demographic descriptions ...................... 226 Cultural demographic descriptions ....................................... 227 Football demographic descriptions ....................................... 227 CHAPTER FIVE: QUALITATIVE RESULTS ......................................... 229 Personal-Social Meanings for Coaches’ Personal, American Cultural and Football Values ...................................................... 229 Introduction ........................................................................ 229 Research Question 3: What are the personal values of high school head football coaches? ................................................ 230 A. Introduction ............................................................ 230 Personal Value Theme: Hard work as physical activity and sport value, and beyond .......................................... 230 Personal Value Theme: Honesty & Trust ........................... 233 Personal Value Theme: Family as a strong personal value ........................................................................ 239 Personal Value Theme: Faith, family & loyalty ................. 239 B. How were the high school head football coaches socialized into their personal value orientations ...................... 241 Theme: Early socialization experiences within the family and with parental figures such as fathers, stepfathers and mothers .............................................................. 241 xii Theme: Socialization into religious beliefs .................... 243 Theme: Learning personal values from teachers, coaches, and significant others ............................................... 244 Theme: Character development through tough love and religion ............................................................... 244 Theme: Learning humanitarianism and respect for human dignity through sport ................................................ 246 Summary of coaches’ personal values ............................ 249 C. How are the decisions you make as a high school head football coach connected or related to your personal values? ...................................................................... 249 Theme: Personal values are the lens through which you look to make decisions .............................................. 250 Theme: Personal values mean I treat my players the way I treat my own kids, and the way I want to be treated ....................................................................... 251 D. Summary of high school head football coaches personal values orientations ............................................ 253 Research Question 4: What are the American cultural values of high school head football coaches? ........ 254 A. Introduction ........................................... 255 Theme: Acknowledgment of diversity and inclusion within American society .............................. 256 Theme: Personal values as American cultural values ........................................................... 260 Theme: Hard work as a personal and cultural value ............................................................. 262 Theme: Personal responsibility as social and cultural responsibility in American culture ........................................................... 263 Theme: Acceptance and affirmation of American cultural values such as patriotism, nationalism, and punctuality .............................................. 265 B. How were the high school head football coaches socialized into their American cultural value orientations? ................................ 266 Theme: Varied early family socialization experiences ................................................ 266 Theme: Young adult, and military shared perspectives of multi-cultural experiences .............................. 269 Theme: School experiences of social change ............ 272 Summary of high school head football coaches American cultural values orientations ................ 274 xiii C. What are the social meanings for [specific] American cultural values? ........................................................................................ 275 Cultural Value Theme: Achievement/W inning ...... 275 Cultural Value Theme: Intangible and tangible rewards of achievement/winning ................. 275 Cultural Value Theme: Process towards achievement/winning ................................... 277 Cultural Value Theme: Competition .................. 279 Cultural Value Theme: Conformity ................... 281 Cultural Value Theme: Hard work .................... 282 Cultural Value Theme: Honesty ....................... 284 Cultural Value Theme: Humarritarianism ............ 284 Cultural Value Theme: Masculinity ................... 285 Cultural Value Theme: Respect for authority ........ 288 Cultural Value Theme: Success ........................ 289 Cultural Value Theme: Tolerance/Inclusion ......... 290 D. How are the decisions you make as a high school head football coach connected or related to American cultural values? ......... 292 Theme: Socio-cultural perspectives ........................ 292 E. Summary of coaches’ American cultural values orientations .................................................................... 296 Research Question 5: What are the football values that high school head football coaches live by? .................... 296 A. Introduction ..................................................................... 296 Football Value Theme: Hard work ..................... 297 Football Value Theme: Respect for teammates, self, and the game as football values .................. 300 Football Value Theme: Character development: Coaches setting examples; players “doing the right thing.” ......................... 304 Football Value Theme: Commitment to a high standard of performance ....................... 307 Football Value Theme: Physical and mental toughness, courage and handling adversity mean more than talent ........................... 309 Summary of football values ...................................... 314 B. How were the high school head football coaches socialized into their football values’ orientations? .......................... 315 Theme: Father’s or step-father’s socialization ....... 316 Theme: Youth football socialization .................. 318 Theme: High school football socialization. . . . . . . .....319 Summary of coaches’ football socialization .......... 325 C. What are the social meanings of these football values? ......................................................... 325 Theme: Preparation for success in life ..................... 325 xiv D. How are football values used in decision making? ......... 327 Theme: Football values being the same as personal values ............................................. 328 Theme: Performance based decisions .................. 329 Theme: Providing the best experience for players ............................................ 331 E. Summary of Research Question 5: Coaches’ football values ...................................................... 332 F. Summary of high school head football coaches personal, American cultural, and football values ................ 334 Research Question 6: How do you teach, transmit or transfer your personal, cultural and football values? ......... 335 A. Introduction .................................................... 335 Theme: Coaches’ direct involvement through role modeling and creating teachable environments ............................ 336 Role modeling ............................................... 3 36 Creating teachable environments .................. 343 Theme: Parental involvement ........................... 348 Limited to no parental involvement occurring, or desired by head football coaches .............................................. 349 Single parent involvement missing, though desired by head coaches .................... 353 High parental involvement through football operations support, booster club membership, other activities, and as desired by most coaches ............ 358 Theme: Transfer of coaches’ values through administration and faculty involvement ............................. 365 Transference of coaches’ values through the direct and indirect involvement of supportive athletic directors, teaching staff and principals ................................... 366 Coaches’ as ambassadors for deserving football players; excluding less- than-supportive administrators and faculty from transferring their values ....................................... 372 Head coaches and assistant coaches’ shared vision and value modeling .......................................... 374 XV Assistant coaches carrying out head coaches’ offseason academic and conditioning agenda ...... 380 Theme: Team leaders, seniors and captains modeling and transferring the Head Coaches’ values ........................................................... 382 Team leaders .................................... 3 82 Seniors as team leaders .................... 385 Team captains as team leaders ......... 387 Theme: Coaches’ Positive perceptions of team captains ................................... 387 Summary of positive perceptions of team captains ........................ 391 Theme: Coaches’ less enthusiastic or negative perceptions of team captains ............. 392 Summary of less enthusiastic or negative perceptions of team captains ............ 383 Summary of values’ teaching and transference ........ 394 Research Question 7: Are there similarities or differences in high school head football coaches’ values across geographic locations of the high school? ....................... 397 A. Introduction ................................................... 397 Theme: Differences in coaches’ values based on socio- economic factors in the geographic area .................. 398 Theme: Similarities in coaches’ values due to the nature and intrinsic value of football .................. 405 Theme: Differences in coaches’ values based on their individual backgrounds ................................. 408 Summary of coaches’ values based on geographic similarities and/or differences ..................................................... 404 Research Question 8: Are there similarities and/or differences in high school head football coaches’ values across ethnic/racial identities? ................................. 412 A. Introduction ................................................... 412 Theme: No perceived connection, but similarities in coaches’ values due to ethnicity/race ........... 412 Theme: Some differences of coaches’ values across ethnic/racial lines .......................................... 418 Theme: High school head football coaches with no basis for ethnic/racial comparison of values ............................................................ 424 Summary of Ethnic/Racial differences and/or similarities... ... . .....425 xvi CHAPTER SD(: SUMMARY OF RESULTS, DISCUSSION, CONCLUSIONS & RECOMMENDATIONS .................................. 426 A. Introduction ................................................... 426 B. Summary of results: Topical summaries of research questions ...................................................... 427 Research Question 1: What are the demographic descriptions of the high school head football coaches studied as research participants? ............... 427 Research Question 2: What are the demographic descriptions of the high school football programs represented by the head football coaches studied .................................................... 428 Research Question 3: What are the personal values that high school head football coaches live by? ...... 429 Research Question 4: What are American cultural values of high school head football coaches? ......... 430 Research Question 5: What are the football values that high school head football coaches live by? ...... 430 Research Question 6: How do high school head football coaches teach, transmit or transfer your personal, cultural, and football values .......... 431 Research Question 7: Are there similarities and/or differences in high school head football coaches’ values across geographic locations of the high schools? ................................................................... 432 Research Question 8: Are there similarities and/or differences in high school head football coaches’ values across ethnic/racial identities? ...................... 432 C. Discussion of findings ....................................... 433 Social Theory perspectives........................................433 Critical Theory .......................................................... 433 Structural Functional Theory .................................... 435 Symbolic Interaction Theory .................................... 437 Applied sport sociology: Telling high school head football coaches what they need to know ............. 438 Perspectives on hard work .............................. 439 Perspectives on masculinity and aggression .......... 442 Masculinity ....................................... 442 Aggression ........................................ 442 Elements of quality team leadership, and the transfer of values ...................... 444 Elements of quality team leadership ......... 444 The transfer of values ........................... 445 Decision making and coaches’ values ................. 446 The dearth of multicultural awareness ................ 447 xvii Reflection as a way to improve the quality of the coaching profession ..................... 449 Summary of discussion ....................................... 451 D. Conclusions & Recommendations .......................... 452 1. Further research is needed ........................... 452 2. Social change is a desired outcome of this study ...................................... 455 3. Coaching education programs must be strengthened .................................. 456 APPENDICES Appendix A: IRB Approval Letter ....................................................... 460 Appendix B: MHSFCA Support Request Letter ....................................... 462 Appendix C: MHSF CA Response ........................................................ 464 Appendix D: Coaches’ Convention Announcement .................................... 466 Appendix E: Coaches’ Convention Handout ........................................... 468 Appendix F: Informed Consent 1. Convention handout, hand delivered and mailed form .................. 470 2. Emailed form .................................................................. 472 Appendix G: Interview Instrument ...................................................... 474 Appendix H: Football Administration 1. Practice Schedule .............................................................. 488 2. High School-Class A Football Staff Organizational Chart .............. 489 Appendix I: A list of personal values ...................................................... 491 xviii LIST OF TABLES Cha ter IV Table 4.1: The Ages of Coaches Interviewed ...................................................... 194 Table 4.2: State Educational Attainment Levels .................................................. 195 Table 4.3: Comparison of research state’s educational attaimnent levels, and the educational attainment levels of High School Head Football Coaches Interviewed ................................................................................... 197 Table 4.4: Ethnic/Racial Identities of Coaches Interviewed ................................ 199 Table 4.5: Geographic Location of High School Football Coaches Interviewed .................................................................... 200 Table 4.6: Longevity of the Head Football Coaches Interviewed ........................ 202 Table 4.7: Stability of the Head Football Coaches Interviewed .......................... 203 Table 4.8: Geographic comparison of Stability of the Head Coaches Interviewed .................................................................................. 205 Table 4.9: Coaches Service — Number of High Schools at which interview participants served as Head Football Coach ............................................ 206 Table 4.10: Geographic Comparison of Coaches’ Lifetime Championship Record ...................................................................................................... 209 Table 4.11: Ethnic/Racial and Geographic Comparison of Interviewed Coaches’ Championship Records ............................................................................ 212 Table 4.12: Ethnic/Racial Comparison of 2007 Win-Loss Record of High School Head Football Coaches ................................................ 215 Table 4.13: Ethnic/Racial Comparison of 2007 High School Head Football Coaches’ Records by Geographic Locations and Ethnic/Racial Identities ............................................................................. 21 7 Table 4.14: School Competitive Class Represented by High School Head Football Coaches Interviewed ...................................................................... 219 Table 4.15: Football Team Size Represented by Coaches Interviewed ................... 221 xix Table 4.16: Total season outcomes of teams represented by coaches interviewed ................................................................................................... 224 Table 4.17: 2007 High School Football Program Championships ........................... 225 imam Table 5.1: Comparison of High School Head Football Coaches’ Personal, American Cultural and Football Values .......................................... 335 XX LIST OF FIGURES Cha ter III Figure 3.1: Research Design Model .......................................................... 172 Figure 3.2: Qualitative Research Design ................................................... 174 Figure 3.3: Triangulation of Data .............................................................. 189 xxi CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION This study’s focus is on understanding the personal, American cultural, and football value orientations and social meanings of high school head football coaches. Further, the study will compare the head football coaches’ value orientations based on urban, suburban and rural geographic locations of the high schools in which they coach; and the ethnic/racial identity of the coaches. The study was conducted during the 2007-2008 academic year. The football schedule was played during the fall of 2007; the survey and interviews were administered from January through June of 2008. Out of the research will come a better understanding of high school coaches’ value-orientations and social meanings. Statement of the Problem The problem of this study is to determine high school head football coaches’ personal, American cultural and football values, and social meanings related to these values (Edwards, 1973; Eitzen & Sage, 2003; Overrnan, 1997; Sabo & Panepinto, 1990). Problems inherent in value incongruence including: (1) Lack of consistency between personal values, American cultural values, and football values; (2) Coaches’ perceptions of the importance of personal, American cultural values and football values (Eitzen & Sage, 2003; Sabo & Panepinto, 1990); (3) Coaches’ interpretations of masculine and other social meanings in sport (Anderson, 2005; Boutilier & San Giovanni, 1983; Caporael, 1999; Sabo & Jansen, 1992; Scott, 2005); and (4) Coaches’ values and perceptions of overconformity to authority and negative deviant behavior among athletes (i.e., alcohol and drug use, sexual misconduct, and hazing (Coakley, 2007; Eitzen & Sage, 2003) were investigated. Coaching is more than just introducing and correcting proper phySical technique, revealing brilliant strategies, or directing a team or an individual toward a specific immediate competitive outcome (Boudreaux, 2007; Conroy, 2009; Josephson, 1999). Coaching, most particularly, at the youth and interscholastic levels is a process of youth socialization that includes education, communication, sharing important values, and building consensus among coaches’ and players’ regarding personal, American cultural and football values (Morrill, 1924; Sabock, 1991; Singer, 1972; Tutko & Richards, 1971). In the process of the transmission of values, coaches’ and players’ roles in American football involve interactions based on their implicit power relationships and understandings of the socio-cultural processes of those who participate in football. American cultural and football values of success and winning, and ideologies of aggression, violence and masculinity are constantly being taught both overtly and covertly as the coach emphasizes his own personal, cultural and football values. Interactions connected with these traditions and social meanings are based on the coaches’ own socialization into traditional cultural and football value orientations. Because high school head football coaches have power, the coaches’ role and value orientation’s affect the socialization process for young men participating in high school football. Clearly, coaches use reward- power by offering players social promotions, through more playing time, or public praise, and they use coercive-power in punishing athletes by allowing no playing time, and admonishing players when they fail to produce expected behaviors. Coaches establish their legitimacy in the eyes of their athletes primarily through their own longevity within the system, often as a successful player first and then by coaching and producing quality athletes (Anderson, 2005). This legitimacy, coupled with the title ‘coach,’ is then thought to make one an expert, as coaches are assumed to possess the experience and technical knowledge beneficial to advancing athletes. Finally, coaches sometimes gain the respect of their athletes through referent power because athletes desire to accomplish the same feats, times, or levels of play, or because they look to the coach as a mentor or parental figure (Anderson, 2005). Therefore, coaches’ experiences, personal, American cultural and football value orientations are important to understand. Coaches’ values are often transmitted to players, and affect how coaches’ coach and teach values to their players. Value orientations Value orientations are based on social constructions and weightings of what is perceived to be good, moral, important, worthy, right or wrong, and what is rewarded in society and sports. Values have been defined as: “the abstract general standard, socially and culturally prescribed criteria by which individuals evaluate decisions, persons, behaviors, acts, objects, and ideas as to their relative priority, effectiveness, morality, desirability, merit or correctness” (Eitzen & Sage 2003). Coaches’ values are the bases for making decisions in sports (Eitzen & Sage, 2003; Fallding, 1965; Spates, 1983). Ofien a coach’s personal values are related to what they have learned in their family, education, culture, sport, or society (Heathfield, 2008; Posner, 2008; Snow, Wales & Gardner, 2008). American cultural values -- those that have been learned by coaches when they were in their youth -- include achievement and success, wealth, activity and hard work, independence, competition, efficiency and practicality, slow and timely progress, material comfort, equality, fi'eedom, science and secular rationality, nationalism-patriotism, democracy, and the importance of individual personality (Coleman, 1941; Dubois, 1955; Snow, Wales & Gardner, 2008; Tocqueville, 1835; Williams, Jr., 1970). Cultural values also include values based on sub-cultural ethnicity/race, gender superiority/inferiority, sport affiliation, or geographic/regional themes (Grant, 1993; Myrdal, 1944; Rainwater & Yancy, 1967; Tocqueville, 1835). American football values, it is suggested, maybe viewed as an extension of American cultural and American sport values. American sport values include values of the culture such as success, competition, hard work/continued striving/delayed gratification, progress, materialism, external conformity/respect for authority, sacrifice (Cashion, 1998; Eitzen & Sage, 2003; Parsons & Shils, 1951b; Snyder, 1972; Williams, Jr. 1968), character, discipline, individual achievement through competition, physical fitness, mental fitness, religiosity, nationalism, high aspirations, unbridled competitiveness, emphasis upon winning (Edwards, 1973; Loy, McPherson & Kenyon, 1978), rationalization, the work ethic, goal directedness, moral asceticism, individualism, achieved status (Overrnan, 1997), and masculinity (Boutilier & SanGiovanni, 1983; Caporael, 1999; Sabo & Jansen, 1992; Scott, 2005). Football values as part of both the interscholastic and professional experience also include physical endurance and toughness, commitment, singleness of purpose, and disregard of pain and possible injury (Cashion, 1998; Kramer, 1976; Lombardi, 1973; Lombardi & Heinz, 1963). Many of these values may be shared by coaches across teams, and geographic and ethnic/racial lines. Many of the values may be transmitted from coaches to players. Therefore, this study investigates coaches’ value orientations. This researcher wonders what coaches’ personal American cultural and football values are and whether geographic location or ethnicity/race differentiate coaches’ values and social meanings. This study is an effort to understand which values coaches possess. Are coaches influenced more by the culture of the geographic region or the American football culture in which they coach? Are personal, cultural and football values impacted by the ethnic/racial subcultures? Which values are most shared or least shared among these diverse geographic and ethnic/racial coaching groups? Which values are most important to all high school football Head Coaches? Which are the least important American football values? Therefore, this researcher wonders whether high school football head coaches’ values are differentiated by personal, social and cultural constructions, or whether the culture of American football is so dominant that geographic and ethnic/racial diversity of coaches has become subordinate to the culture of football. Socialization and Education within sport Socialization is an interactive process of learning, formation of ideas, and social development which occurs as people interact with one another and become acquainted with the social world (Coakley, 2007; Graaff, 2001: Landis, 1980). The process may be both active and passive. All participating high school head football coaches were at one time high school students and high school football players. They were affected by the culturally driven educational process, and the culture of football. The public high school educational process, which might be considered active, and direct, as well as passive and sometimes indirect, is designed to: (1) educate; (2) socialize (Dewey, 1939; Holbrook, 1973); and (3) to serve as a ritualized rite-of-passage (Oriard, 1993; Van Gennep, 1960). In their discussion of the “hidden curriculum” within schools, J ewett and Bain (1985) consider “what is taught to students by the institutional regularities, routines and rituals of the teaching/learning process (i.e., coaching) or setting.” There may be both overt (planned curriculum) as well as covert (unplanned or hidden curriculum based on educational leaders, teachers and coaches’ social meanings, ideologies, and values) that are taught to students in classrooms, in the gymnasium, and on the athletic field. Active aspects include the tenants of Taylorism (Becker, 1991; Becker & Steele, 1995; Brohm, 1976; Kwoleck-Folland, 1994; Nelson, 1980; Scherrnerhorn, 1993; Stewart, 1989; Wrege & Greenwood, 1991) which promoted the principle of scientific management, and Fordism (Breedveld, 1996; Collier, 1987; Lacy, 1986; Meyer, 1981; Singer, 2003) which championed the practice of mass production and social control. The high school sport setting constitutes “lived culture,” a powerful mechanism for transmitting personal, American cultural and football values and beliefs to students and student-athletes. Pedagogical research has revealed that patterns of behavior in physical education classes and competitive athletics tend to emphasize orderliness and achievement, conformity, inequality, and a movement standard that is masculine, athletic, and competitive in nature (Jewett & Bain, 1985; Kollen, 1981, 1983). Competition, for example, is a learned behavior (Roberts, 1977a. This would suggest that the overt, as well as the hidden, curriculum in sport, physical activity and movement may also teach American cultural and sport values such as achievement, inequality, dominant gender constructions, and conformity (Jewett & Bain, 1985). Current coaches are the by-products of this overt A socialization through the overt and hidden curriculum. Sport in general, and football in particular, act as one of the social structures (Landis, 1980; Mills, 2000); and/or social engines (Pickett, 2000) through which the socialization learning process occurs for many boys and men. The process includes observations and interactions with coaches, teammates, family, friends, church members, social and sport organizations, and teachers in the school. Thus, the classroom, gymnasium, and playing fields can serve as sites for cultural value transmission, ideological struggle education, and socialization (Sparkes, 1989). Current coaches continue to be role models, educators and social actors for young boys and men participating in football. In learning the culture through the socialization and educational processes in schools most Americans have internalized values that predispose them to be interested in the outcome of competitive sport situations (Coakley, 2007; Graff, 2001; Landis, 1980). Competition is, after all, a fundamental reason for American sport, American business and many socially constructed environments (Eitzen & Sage, 2003). Through team sports, such as football, “social capital” is developed in the continuous rituals and repetitive interactions with teachers, coaches and teammates. Social capital refers to the features of social organizations such as networks, norms, and social trusts that facilitate coordination and cooperation for mutual benefits (Putnam, 1995). The sharing of values, beliefs and norms between adults and youth (e. g., coaches and players) takes place through a social process that can help build social capital among teammates, coaches and parents (Ganley, 2003; Matthews, 2001; Putnam, 1995; Robison & Flora, 2003).This development of social capital provides a way for youth to establish their social status, physical and social skills, and eventually to transition to interactive and responsible adults and social actors in the larger society. Thus, coaches’ values inform the socialization and social meanings process of their athletes in school, on the field and in the society. High school head football coaches, arguably, have always been seen as “gatekeepers” to masculinity and to the successful future world of manly football players. The Coach in the socialization process In the youth and high school athletic realm the coach serves as the gatekeeper for sports development and value transmission. The athletic coach represents the seriousness with which Americans undertake competitive sports activities. The values of the Protestant work ethic are often instilled in athletes by many American coaches (Baltzell, 1965; Loy, 1968; Miyakawa, 1964; Perry, 1944; Riesman, 1950; Overrnan, 1997; Weber, 195 8). Many outstanding coaches, as mentors and role models, typically emphasize hard work, sacrifice, and discipline to achieve mastery of self and events in pursuit of victory. It must be remembered that coaches, as youth participants and high school players, were themselves socialized into the sport (Anderson, 2005). Their progress toward coaching took on the forms of personal evolution, attitudinal change and experiential growth, and familiarity with the social structures of playing sports, teaching and coaching (Anderson, 2005; Hall, 1968; Kerr, VonGlinow, & Schriesheim, 1977; Messner, 1987; Stephens, 1967). Before current coaches could affect change in the lives of student athletes, their own lives, personal, American cultural, and football values were instilled by former teachers and coaches. Transference of American cultural value orientations by the coach can lead to the positive beliefs in hard work, achievement and societal conformity (Overrnan, 1997). A negative interpretation of the same coaches’ value orientations, it is suggested, might lead to on-and-off the field deviant behaviors such as in-game fighting, cafeteria brawls, sexual misconduct, alcohol and drug use, and hazing (Coakley, 2007; Eitzen & Sage, 2003). Thus, coaches may contribute to both positive and negative values transmission. High school head football coaches’ personal, American cultural and football values are transmitted by way of the active and passive socialization processes. Research suggests that teachers’ and coaches’ expectations are transmitted through subtle, covert or overt forms of communication. This means that what is said, as well as how it is said, may convey implicit and explicit values learned in the physical activity, athletic and sport setting (Dubois, 1986; Jewett & Bain, 1985; Martinek, 1983). Various forms of communication may also influence student and athlete performance (Martinek, 1981; Smith, Smoll, Hunt, Curtis & Coppel, 1979). Outcomes are affected due to the dynamics of the message, the setting, the style, the status of the leader, and how value systems are transmitted. Studies have demonstrated that not only can coaches’ values be effectively communicated to participants, but also that they can influence participant perceptions of the sport experience. These findings are particularly relevant to program planning and coaching education in youth and interscholastic athletic programs (Dubois, 1986; Gould, 1987). The coach’s role in American sport has been institutionalized on the playgrounds, in youth sports, and in the schools (Sadler, 1973; Sage, 1974a). Salaried coaches have become a fixture, not only in professional sports, but also in public schools during the second half of the nineteenth (19m) century (Betts, 1984a; Mrozek, 1983). Historically, as the coaching role was formalized at the youth, scholastic, college, and higher levels, athletic teams began to mimic industry in their organizational structure and behavior. Football coaching staffs began to exhibit a “role culture,” as each individual had a distinct position to coach with its’ own set of responsibilities (Price, 2004). The football operation functions as a “machine bureaucracy” in which the coaching staff functions with a high level of . standardization, specialization and a centralized hierarchy of authority: position coach (i.e., offensive line, receivers, running backs and quarterback; defensive line, outside linebackers, inside linebackers, and defensive backs); coordinator (i.e., offensive coordinator, defensive coordinator, and special teams coordinator), all reporting to the head coach (Duane, 1996; Mintzberg, 1993). Football coaching provides a blend of authoritarian/command style and, to a lesser extent, democratic/cooperative styles. Free discussion may or may not be invited. Staff input may be solicited; but the head coach typically makes all final and operational decisions and expects them to be implemented in full, without hesitation, 10 thus demonstrating the autocratic and hierarchical role played by the head coach (Martens, 2004b; Olson, Breitenbach, Hirsh & Saunders, 1990). In this bureaucratic structure is found the method by which the head coach delegates his instructions, expectations and values to the assistant coaches and players. The head coach is seen as the “authority,” as the assistant coaches deliver the daily messages, values and plans the players must do to achieve the competitive goal of “winning.” Drills and plays are focused on strategies that are slightly changed to meet each weekly scheduled opponent. But there are some social and cultural football values focused on coach-directed constants: The offense must be ready to creatively attack; the defense must be ready to violently defend. Linemen must relish repeated sumo-like collisions; linebackers must enjoy inflicting pain on anyone carrying the ball. Running backs and receivers must attempt to avoid contact, expect to be hit, yet not drop the ball. Defensive backs can neither be outrun nor tricked by deceptive offensive maneuvers. Quarterbacks are protected; yet gain public stature, mythical notoriety, and “macho” reputations when they continue to perform at a high level of efficiency even after being hit hard, again and again. Individualism is often lost in the cooperative arrangement and conformity that is orchestrated as the coach attempts to achieve a common goal directed team behavior. The coach may happily offer his endearrnents and blessings to team members who consistently operate based on the coaches’ own personal, American cultural, and football orientations of winning/success, competitiveness, hard work, masculinity, sacrificing, conforming, and pain inflicting, yet ignoring other behaviors and value orientations. And the players usually revel in his paternal authority, as they are being 11 socialized to adhere to the head coaches’ personal, American cultural and football values. The athletic or sports competition — the game — provides a public test, acted out in an arena where the outcome is visibly apparent to everyone in attendance. Van Gennep (1960) called the exercise of cultural and social tradition a “rites-of- passage,” evidenced in the past as “warrior” or “manhood ceremonies,” in the present as marriage, graduation and “making the team.” Fathers sharing sports talk with their sons and other men; sharing of men’s emotional responses and judgments, and the initiation of the boy into a “man language” and into male traditions are part of the rite-of—passage socialization dynamic that takes place through football participation and male shared spectatorship (Whitson, 1990). In providing a public setting for this ritual of achieved success, spectator athletic activities extends the moral connotations beyond the level of the participants to the larger community. A collective feeling of moral justification extends to team fans following a victory. When a team wins a championship, an entire city, state, or nation vicariously celebrates their elevation to the realm of the “elect.” In this sense, winning in athletics in general, football in particular, reaffirms coaches’ personal, American cultural and sport values, and the cultural religious values of the Protestant work ethic ideology in which the worthy are rewarded (Overrnan, 1997). Coming of age value transmittal ceremonies occur in some form in all societies and in sport. In American society a football team, involved in a football game, is one of the most popular cultural and athletic male rituals, transmitting and reaffirming social phenomena, personal and cultural values. Therefore, the culture of football and 12 football coaches provide a societal context for the transmission of personal, American cultural, and football values. Purpose of the study The purpose of this study is to understand high school head football coaches’ personal, American cultural and football value orientations, and to determine if different categories of high school head coaches will hold different or similar values. High school head football coaches were chosen because of the assumption that they are the dominant leaders who influence their assistant coaches and players’ attitudes, values and behaviors in sport. Head coaches’ values, at the collegiate and professional levels are focused on competitiveness, success and winning game outcomes as a commodified, rewarded behavior (Coakley, 2007). One wonders to what extent high school head football coaches will hold these same values as well as other personal, American cultural and football values. Thus, social meanings related to the coaches’ personal, cultural and football values will be investigated. Edwards (1973), Eitzen and Sage (2003) and Overman (1997) have discussed the importance of coaches’ shared personal, American cultural and athletic values that are strengthened, transferred or taught to their players. Out of this research will come a better understanding of high school head football coaches’ personal, American cultural and football values congruence; and how, and what values and social meanings are transmitted to players. The study will determine what are the coaches’ values and if there are differences between coaches’ values in different geographic areas around the state, and between coaches’ ethnic/racial sub-cultural groups. 13 Personal values at high school head football coaches studied The personal values of high school head football coaches define their intimate relations and perceptions of desirable qualities, standards and principles. Personal values guide coaches’ choices of attitudes and behaviors. They guide decisions by allowing for an individual’s choice to be compared to others’ choice of associated values in both their private, public, or social life. Personal values may include acceptance or tolerance (of others), high achievement, qualities of beauty, bravery, commitment, acceptance of diversity or inclusion, standards for excellence, family, fun, generosity, harmony, health, honesty or trust, humanitarianism, leadership, love, prestige, respect ( of others, and for authority), spirituality, wealth, etc.. (Dodd & Sundheim, 2008; Heathfield, 2008; Minor, 2008; Snow, Wales & Gardner, 2008). High school head football coaches must understand, acknowledge and balance their personal values with their American cultural and football values in their daily interactions with principals, athletic directors, faculty, assistant coaches and their team members. At times they must also make valued decisions in their interactions with parents. It is conceivable that coaches may be presented with conflicts in their decision-making, based on which values have priority. Often there is an integration of coaches’ personal values, American cultural values, football values as well as community values, administrative values, faculty values, and/or parental values. Which values are selected to be right or wrong depend on coaches roles and who is in power in different contexts. Is the decision temporal, situational and relative to the outcome needed? Does the coach stick to a set of personal, 14 cultural, or football value orientations as a permanent point of reference? Might there sometimes be a blending of personal, American cultural and football values? Might there be a marriage of one value set to another, with a rejection of a third. For example, could personal and football values be the same, with American cultural values being rejected or pushed to a secondary consideration? Is it possible for high school head football coaches to reject any one value set in its’ entirety, or is there a lack of awareness of values to some degree, and how they guide coaches’ decisions? An investigation of high school head football coaches’ personal values followed by American cultural and football values begins this investigation of coaches’ value orientations. American cultural and tootball values detm: ed Eitzen and Sage (2003), Reber and Reber (2001), Sabo and Panepinto (1990), and Williams, Jr. (1970) defined the seven core American cultural values and social meanings, and football values to be included in the present study as described below: 1. Achievement/W inning. Achievement, the attaining of a goal, is paired with winning. The notion of overcoming obstacles or tackling those things which are known to be difficult is the applicable definition of achievement (Reber & Reber, 2001). Winning. To be successful or victorious in a contest or conflict; to acquire or secure as a result of a contest, conflict, bet or other endeavor; gaining, resulting in or relating to victory in a contest of competition (Lindberg, 2002). 2. Authority. Positions of leadership and power based on rational-legal, traditional or charismatic behaviors (Scott & Marshall, 2005). The 15 system, the rules, and the structure of power are not challenged. Coach- athlete relationships are structured along authoritarian lines with the coach at the top of the hierarchal relationship. The question of “respect for authority” seldom approached. . Competition. Any performance situatiOn structured in such away that success depends on performing better than others (VandenBos, 2007). Competition emphasizes survival of the fittest and working against an opponent. This may motivate individuals and groups to be discontent with both being second best and the status quo. To compete and win is to avoid the tie! . Conformity. The pressures on individuals to meet and match the expectations of the group, society, organizations, or leader (Asch, 1952). The acceptance of cultural goals and the legitimate or approved means of achieving them (Merton, 1957). To avoid disorder and lawlessness, society has socialized individuals into acceptable beliefs and practices, some shared standards of achievement and behaviors. Coaches, generally, demand that their athletes conform to standards of behavior, in hairstyles, manner of dress, and/or speech patterns. . Hard work. This is based on the Protestant work ethic, including extreme physical effort, continued striving, delayed gratification and refusal to quit; studying and strenuous effort in sport or exercise; not necessarily tied to employment (Scott & Marshall, 2005). 16 6. Masculinity. Concepts and social meanings of what it is to “be a man” in society including emotional stoicism, toughness and endurance in bad times, tolerance of pain, and public exhibitions of physical prowess (Messner, 1989; Pickett, 2000). 7. Success. The accomplishment of an aim or purpose (Lindberg, 2002). A practical application of the above values and social meanings might include: socially approved affiliation with those who are “successful” or those who are “winners” only; acceptance of “hard work” as a valued means to achieve a positive outcome, or as a positive outcome itself; avoidance of “quitting” the team; a direction toward “conformity” as a team/societal sharing of identities and basis for solidarity; deference to/respect for “authority,” the unquestioned abiding to the directions of whomsoever is in charge; and continued “playing-in-pain” to prove manhood. Coaches’ personal, American cultural and football values will be assessed in the present research study. Research Questions The research questions to be answered will be presented in the following eight categories: (1) High school head football coaches’ personal-professional backgrounds/characteristics; (2) The demographic descriptions of the high school football programs represented; (3) High school head football coaches’ personal values; (4) High school head football coaches’ American cultural values; (5) High school head football coaches’ football values; (6) Transfer of values and social meanings from coach to player; (7) Similarities and differences in values and social 17 meanings across geographic locations; and (8) Similarities and differences in values and social meanings across ethnic/racial identities. ]. RESEARCH QUESTIONS High school head coaches’ characteristics RQl: What are the demographic descriptions of the high school head football coaches studied as research participants? RQ. 1a. What are the personal-professional backgrounds of the high school head football coaches studied as research participants? (i.e., professional background, age, and education). RQ 1b. What are the cultural backgrounds of the high school head football coaches surveyed and interviewed? (i.e., ethnic/racial background, and (2) geographic location of the represented high schools. RQ 1c. What are the football experiential backgrounds of the high school head football coaches surveyed and interviewed? (i.e., family- coaching background, first and highest organized football participatory experience, development leadership experiences, coaching longevity as a head coach, head coaching stability at the same school, coaching service — the number of schools having been a head coach at; coaches’ success records. 18 2. 3. Demographic descriptions and characteristics of high schools represented in the study. RQ 2: What are the demographic descriptions of the high school football programs represented by the head football coaches studied? RQ 2a: High school competitive class represented by coaches surveyed and interviewed. RQ 2b: Football program size represented by coaches surveyed and interviewed. RQ 20: 2007 Program Success High school head cogehes’ personal values. RQ 3a: What are the personal values of high school head football coaches? RQ 3b: How are high school head football coaches socialized into their personal vales? RQ 3c: How do they rank these values? RQ 3d: How are personal values used in decision making? RQ 3e: What are the coaches’ social meanings for their personal values? High school head coaches’ American culturgl__\_ra_l_t_r_e§. RQ 4a: What are the American cultural values of high school head football coaches? RQ 4b: How are high school head football coaches socialized into American cultural values? RQ 4c: How do they rank these values? 19 RQ 4d: How are American cultural values used in decision making? RQ 4e: What are coaches’ social meanings for American cultural values? 5. High school head coaches’ football values. RQ 5a: What are the football values of high school head football coaches? RQ 5b: How are high school head football coaches socialized into football values? 5bi: What was the earliest level of organized football participation? 5bii: What other family members coached football? 5biii:What was the highest level of organized football participation? RQ So: How do they rank these values? RQ 5d: How are football values used in decision making? RQ 5e: What are the social meanings of the football values? 6. Transfer of values and social meanings from coach to player. RQ 6: How are personal, cultural and football values learned or transferred? 7. Similarities or differences in values and social meanings across geographic locations. RQ 7: Are there similarities and/or differences in high school head football coaches’ values and social meanings across geographic location of the high school? 20 8. Similarities or differences in values and social meanings across ethnic/racial identities. RQ 8: Are there similarities and/or differences in high school head football coaches’ values and social meanings across ethnic/racial identities? Background of the study The background of the study begins with the researcher’s personal experience as a high school head football coach, a review of scholarly literature in the sociology of sport, and a review of sport applicable social theory. Personal experience as a high school head football coach This researcher has had the personal experience of coaching football at a suburban Baltimore, Maryland high school where the assumed cultural and football “values” of hard work, commitment, dedication, and “teamwork/teamness” were not perceived as being held by the community as it related to the football team, the school administration or the players. The players just wanted to play without program structure or design. The parents just wanted their children to play, regardless of program structure or design. The administration was comfortable with the program solely operating in a “custodial” fashion without reinforcement of the ethos of hard work, dedication, and commitment being tied to success, achievement, or winning. Practice attendance was not looked upon as a prerequisite to playing in a game. High academic standards were not accepted as necessary. Profanity, as expressed by the parents to this coach, was expected and accepted as an appropriate coaching motivator of the student—athletes. Lack of profanity meant “You are not 21 getting in their (the players’) face.” “You are not really coaching.” “You don’t care!” Due largely to an attempt to correct this situation (atypical in the 35+ years of football playing and coaching experience of this researcher), after much community agitation and a game-time/sideline physical attack by some chemically inspired players upon the head coach, and the subsequent “firing” of the head coach (and reinstatement of the attacking players on the team by the principal) this researcher decided to study the personal, American cultural and football value orientations of coaches in high school football. Review of scholarly literature There is a scarcity of research on American cultural values in general (Hecter, 1992; Hitlin & Piliavin, 2004; Spates, 1983) and the field of coach-player comparative cultural and football values orientations, in particular. Efforts have been directed predominantly toward the psychosocial areas of personal values, education values in competitive activity, aggression and moral reasoning, motivation and intelligence. Previous research has ignored the social meaning, sociocultural and socio-historical issues sport values in the study of coaching. The present study will continue to explore the largely previously under-researched areas of the personal, American cultural values, football values, and value orientations of high school head football coaches, based on school geographic location, ethnicity/race of the head coaches, and the win-loss record of the team. Review of sport applicable social theory In considering the value orientations of high school head football coaches, one must situate the values in the context of sociology, culture and the social theories 22 applicable to the game of football. Therefore, several sociological theories will be used to examine coaches’ values. Structural functionalism (Burrell & Morgan, 1979; Coakley, 2001; Davis, 1959; Durkheim, 1938; Parsons, 1951a) examines how the values of achievement/winning, success, competition, conformity, hard work, respect for authority and masculinity (Sabo & Panepinto, 1990; Van Gennep, 1960) work within the historical and institutionalized bureaucracy of high school football. Symbolic interactionism (Barnes, 2002; Charon, 1998; Erikson, 1968;Landis, 1980; Mead, 1964) questions how the identities of athletes and coaches, and their masculinities, are constructed. This theory posits how value orientations give perspective to how someone envisions, conceptualizes and develops the identity of “coach.” Critical theory ( Abel, 2004; Anderson, 1978; Bolter, 1983; Coakley, 2001, 2007) allows for an examination of value orientations across geographic locations of coaches or the ethnic/racial identities which they claim. Symbolic Interaction theory focuses on the role of identity and social meanings in constructing one’s reality. Additionally, through critical theory application, one can question if any of the value meanings have changed over time over time or between identities? These theories will be used to help discuss the coaches value orientations and meanings. Significance of the study This research is significant because sport is so important in American culture and high school coaches impact more skilled athletes than coaches at any other level (Coakley, 2009). Football coaches’ value orientations provide a pivotal social construction for the socialization of young men through sport. Yet, too often theoretical sport science portrays athletes and the athletic experience without 23 listening to the voices of the coaches. For example, Redekop (1988) annotated the sports sociology works represented in eighty-two scholarly journals. He found that there was not one title of surveyed coaches and their values (Cashion, 1998, p.35). Cashion (1998) completed a socio-historical study of high school head football coaches in Texas, and presented their biographical backgrounds and coaching philosophies through multiple and in-depth interviews. No other studies in the sociology of sport literature could be found that specifically studied coaches’ personal, American cultural and football values empirically. Findings may be used to better understand the coaches’ perspectives, experiences, decision making and socialization process in sports, and to determine how head football coaches’ get values transmitted to their players. It would be interesting to understand whether their values are similar or different across geographic, and ethnic/racial categorical lines. Specifically, we may better understand the values held by head coaches involved in the athletic, social, and cultural world of American high school football. Such understanding may enhance high school coaching, education programs, team practices and social meanings inherent in sporting experiences. Understanding coaches’ values will add to our understanding of theoretical and applied sport sociology (Yiannakis, 1993). Because of the dearth of research on values in the sociology of sport (Cashion, 1998; Hecter, 1992; Hitlin & Piliavin, 2004; Spates, 1983) related to coaches’ personal, cultural and football values, in particular, Hutcheon (1972) specifically states that there has been a pronounced tendency in sociology to under- emphasize the study of values due to conceptual “compartmentalization!” Are values 24 personal, philosophical, psycho-social, socio-cultural, institutional, theoretical or a combination of many of these areas? This lack of consensus on how to approach the scholarly study of values in general and personal, cultural and football values, specifically, has not been given sufficient attention and research efforts. Previous research on values has ignored the sociocultural, socialization and socio-historical issues related to personal, cultural and sport values and their intersections within the sport and football coaching tradition and interactive process. Some efforts have been directed predominantly toward the psycho-social areas of the personal values of visually impaired and normal sighted wrestlers (Barnett, Merriman, Quentin & Lupo, 1993); education values in competitive activity (Zukowska, 1987); aggression and moral reasoning (Bredemeier & Shields, 1984a, 1985, 1986a; Rinne, 1968); motivation (Sabock, 1991; Tutko & Richards, 1971); and intelligence (Singer, 1972). Yet, few studies have researched values from a socio- cultural perspective. Therefore, the present study will investigate high school head coaches’ personal, American cultural and football values from a socio-cultural perspective. Delimitations The study was delimited to: 1. A purposive sample of public high school football team head coaches in a Midwestern state. The study will not include public school assistant coaches, or head football coaches or assistant coaches from private or parochial secondary educational institutions. 25 Limitations The limitations to the study include: 1. This study, using a purposive sample, is limited to high school head football coaches’ experiences as sport participants in the Midwest. This research has investigated social perspectives and the viewpoints of those head high school football coaches involved in high school football. The findings may have some generalizability to other high school football coaches within the Midwest, but may not be generalized to all football coaches everywhere. 2. There was no equal representation of participants based on ethnic/racial backgrounds among the geographic areas (i.e., urban, suburban and rural) due to unequal residential representation of ethnic/racial groups across the state studied. 3. The researcher makes the assumption that coaching is a social process of education, involving power relationships, communication, mentoring, value transmission and the building of understanding between the coach and the student-athlete within Midwestern high school football team structures (Morrill, 1924; Sabock, 1991; Singer, 1972; Snyder, 1972; Tutko & Richards, 1971). 26 4. All high school head football coaches in the state did not participate in the study. Selected head coaches voluntarily completed the demographic survey, and the interview. It is assumed that, they honestly and correctly gave experiential and meaningful responses. Definition of Terms The following terms are defined for the study. 1. Achievement is the attaining of a goal. Entailing the notion of overcoming obstacles or tacking those things which are known to be difficult (Reber & Reber, 2001 ). Achievement is one value that can be a personal, cultural and/or football value. A player who was a first stringer, substitute or a practice participant, may have achieved within the framework of the team status structure. 2. Adversity is a condition marked by misfortune, conflict, calamity, or distress; an adverse or unfortunate event or circumstance; a state of hardship or affliction (Random House, 2009; Houghton Mifflin, 2006). 3. American cultural values is a set of operational prescribed value orientation criteria particular to the dominant society among the American people, or their social institutions (Coakley, 2001)). American cultural values include a value system which is an enduring organization of beliefs concerning preferable modes of conduct and social ideology (Brown, 1976). American cultural values are the criterion for a structural—functional positive evaluation (Zukowska, 1987). These values are the abstract general standard, culturally prescribed criteria by which 27 groups of individuals in the American society evaluate persons, behaviors or acts, objects and ideas as to their relative morality, desirability, merit or correctness. 4. Authority is based on status, power, and position in social organizations to make decisions, and control resources. Max Weber (195 8) identified three pure types of “legitimate domination,” otherwise termed types of authority. These types are: rational-legal (legitimacy claimed from a general agreed upon set of rules and procedures); traditional (legitimacy based on continuity over time); and charismatic (legitimacy based on the extraordinary personal qualities of the leader) (Scott & Marshall, 2005). Head coaches are the legitimate leaders of their high school team. Social psychologists frequently refer to five basic categorical types of authority or power (French & Raven, 1959). These categories are described as: 1) Legitimate, defined as power given by one’s elected power or appointed status; 2) Coercive, defined as power because of one’s ability to take something away; (3) Reward, defrned as power derived from the ability to give something desired; 4) Expert, defined as power accorded individuals who have undergone formal training; 5) Referent, defined as power given because of the respect the coach might have as an inspiration or mentor. It is important to understand that few other occupations/professions offer individuals the ability to associate all five types of power (Jones, Armour & Potrac, 2005). High school head football coaches — with status secured by all definition of power, authority, and legitimate domination -- have the ability and agency to make decisions and to control their players, and assistant coaches. 28 5. Camaraderie is the mutual trust and friendship among people who spend a lot of time together (Zimmer, 2007). High school head football coaches, assistant coaches, and their players spend a lot of time together, and develop camaraderie among themselves. 6. Character is defined as the set of qualities that make somebody distinctive, interesting or attractive, and/or [having a] good reputation, and integrity (Encarta, 2007) 7. Commitment is defined as an agreement or pledge to do something in the future; the state or instance of being obligated or emotionally impelled; devotion or dedication to a cause, person, or relationship (Encarta, 2007; Merriam-Webster, 2008) 8. Competition is any performance situation structured in such a way that success depends on performing better than others (VandenBos, 2007). High school head football coaches are in competition against other coaches. They also wish their team to excel in competition against other teams. 9. Conformity includes behaviors based on the pressures on individuals to meet and match the expectation of the group, society, organization, or leader (Asch, 1952). One conforms to society with the acceptance of cultural goals and the legitimate or approved means of achieving them (Merton, 1957). External conformity would define the outward manifestations of socially approved behavior. Conformity may be valued as a personal or social characteristic, in the culture when expressed between people in the society, and by some high school head football coaches as an element of team unity. 29 10. Courage is mental or moral strength to venture, persevere and withstand danger, fear, or difficulty (Morse, 2009). 11. Critical Theory is one of several social theories used in sport sociology. It is an offshoot of Marxist conflict theory by which research study may be conducted from multiple perspectives (i.e., the whole being considered to be the sum of its’ parts) . One concept may be studied from several viewpoints; social, legal, historical, economic, political, gender, or ethnicity/race viewpoints (Coakley, 2001). 12. Culture/American culture involves the ways of life people create in dominant American society; coming into existence and changing as people come to terms with and sometimes struggle over how to do things, how to relate to one another, and how to make sense of the things and events that make up shared, social experiences (Coakley, 2001; Fairchild, 1955; Landis, 1980). It is often described as, “The way we do things around here” (Bower, 1966; Hofstede, 1994; Trice & Beyer, 1984). In addition to American culture, there is also football culture. Barrett (1999) from an Afro-centric viewpoint sees culture as a vehicle that standardizes the values of a community, mediating the experiences of individuals. It provides in advance some basic categories, a positive pattern in which ideas, rituals, the arts and sports values are tidily ordered. 13. Cultural values are a set of operational prescribed criteria particular to a peculiar group of people, or their social institutions (Coakley, 2001). Cultural values determine the importance of social customs and traditions, such as sports, education or marriage. High school sports, culturally, maybe played predominantly by a specific gender, while religious holy days such a Yum Kippur; and social 30 celebrations, such as “The Super Bowl,” may be cultural rituals during certain seasons. 14. Designed-collisions take place in football practices and games. These collisions are inherent to the game, and specifically designed for the execution of techniques necessary for the game. In football, groups of players only practice the skill of collisions; their sole purpose is to violently run into an opposing player. The action is a mutual dynamic of opposing teams. This contrasts with ‘anticipated contact’ in which physical contact between players is a by-product of the game, a consequence of certain actions within the game; and sometimes penalized for, if considered flagrant or unnecessary, such as in basketball. Football remains the only sport where mutual, head-on, designed collisions are practiced, and specialized as a skill. 15. Ethos is the distinctive spirit of a culture. The character, sentiment or disposition of a community or people, which actuates manners and customs; the characteristic tone of an institution or social organization (Picket, 2000; Sage, 1998). The ethos of American football has traditionally been one of masculinity, including mental and physical toughness, the relishing of physical contact and violent collisions, the acceptance of physical risk and ignoring of the threat of injury, the tolerance of pain; the camaraderie of teammates and respect for the competition. 16. Football is a specific socially and culturally constructed combative and contact-oriented team game, within the American culture. The game is played on a rectangular field, measuring 100 x 53-2/3 yards, having goalposts at each end. It is played between two teams of eleven (11) participants each, in which the ball is in the 31 possession of one side at a time, with the object being to get the ball over the goal line by running, passing or kicking over the goal posts. The American game is not to be confused with it’s antecedents, soccer or rugby (Morris, 2000). “Traditional” American football — the focus of this study — is usually exclusively male dominated; not to be confused with the potentially coed “powder puff,” “two-hand-touch,” or “flag” versions. 17. Football values are a subset of American cultural and sport values, specific and particular, yet generalized, to those engaged in organized American football, at the youth, interscholastic, intercollegiate, semi-professional, and professional levels. Specific football values include: masculinity/manhood, physicality and action, physical presence, ignoring danger, willing infliction of pain upon others; aversion to the threat of pain; reckless disregard for the possibility of physical injury; playing with “reckless abandon” and total disregard for the body; camaraderie and fraternity with teammates. 18. F ordism is the socio-historical term used to describe the mass management of specific human movement, labor, standardized production; and the institution of gendered roles in modem industrial working and middle class American society. This concept is based on the early 20th century auto manufacturing and social control principles originated by Henry Ford (Breedveld, 1996; Collier, 1987; Lacey, 1986; Meyer, 1981; Singer, 2003). 19. Geographic locations, in this study, are the physical and social setting of the high schools in urban (population of 50,000+), suburban (population of 2,501 — 32 49, 999) or rural (population of 1 — 2,500) municipal locations as designated by the United States Census Bureau (2000). 20. Hard work, as a value, is defined as the supply of physical, mental and emotional effort to produce; including schoolwork, studying and strenuous effort in sport or exercise; not necessarily tied to employment (Scott & Marshall, 2005). In personal life hard work has self-described rewards. In the larger culture and social settings, hard work may have larger cultural and social rewards, including material gain. In football, hard work may be seen as a process that leads to other intrinsic rewards or outcomes, such as winning. 21. Honesty, as a value is the quality of being truthful; free of deceit and untruthfulness; sincere; morally correct of virtuous (Zimmer, 2007). Honesty, or being honest, means that others can count on your word as a fair and reasonable representation of a common reality, from which some future actions or expectations can be based on. A high school head football coach expects that he, and teammates, can trust the honest report of a player about academic expectation in a certain academic course; field conditions during practice; or the evaluation of an opponent’s ability during a game. 22. Humanitarianism, as a value, is concerned with or seeking to promote human welfare by a group or person (Zimmer, 2007). A high school head football coach, who maybe feeding, clothing, or housing less fortunate players, is a display of humanitarianism. 23. Identity is the sense of who we are. Identity forms, and constantly changes, as we interpret the connections between our lives and the social world. It is 33 the basis of self-direction, social and self-control in our lives (Coakley, 2007; Erickson, 1968). Many high school head football coaches developed their football identity first as players, possibly as team captains at some level, and then through associations with coaches as mentors, and then as peers. 24. Ideology/Ideologies is/are webs of ideas and beliefs that people use to give social meanings in the world and to make sense of their experiences. Ideologies are important aspects of culture because they embody the principles, perspectives, and viewpoints that underlie our feelings, thoughts and actions (Coakley, 2007). An ideology is an organization of cultural beliefs, and attitudes — religious, political, or philosophical in nature — that is more or less institutionalized or shared with others, deriving from external authority (Brown, 1976). Gender is a cultural ideology. The exclusion of women from football is an example of an ideology that embodies and underlies the principles, perspectives, religions, political and philosophical beliefs of the historically American male hegemonic power structure. 25. Inclusion is the action or state of including or being included within a group or structure (Zimmer, 2007). Inclusion is part of the history of the American “melting pot” immigrant ideology, and the eventual opening up of American sports to women and diverse cultural groups. 26. Machismo (“Macho ”) is the strong or exaggerated sense of masculinity stressing attributes such as physical courage, virility, dominion over women, strength, toughness, and aggressiveness (Morris, 2000). It is an exaggerated sense of masculine pride (Berger, 1990). Being a football player, and the on-field and off- 34 field behaviors associate with the role, can be seen as an example of “machismo” or being “macho.” 27. Masculinity is the state or quality of being masculine; the properties characteristic of the male sex; the trait of behaving in ways considered typical of men. Traditional masculinity suggests that men are expected to be stoic, non- emotional, never shed tears; neither avoiding confrontation nor challenge (Messner, 1987; Pickett, 2000). American football has traditionally been tied to the development of masculinity, and masculine characteristics, in male youth , adolescents, and adults. 28. Personal values are core values, desirable qualities, standards or principles, which are a person’s driving force and influences their actions and reactions. Personal values are implicitly related to choice; they guide decisions by allowing for an individual’s choices to be compared to each choice’s associated values. Besides bravery and generosity, other common personal values are acceptance, beauty, commitment, diversity, excellence, family, fun, harmony, health, honesty, humanitarianism, leadership, love, prestige, respect, service, spirituality, trust, wealth, and others (Dodd & Sundheim, 2008; Heathfield, 2008; Minor, 2008; Snow, Wales & Gardner, 2008)). 29. Program status is the competitive success of the team in the most recent completed season (i.e., how many games won; how many games lost?). For the purpose of this study winning is measured at .501; losing at or below .500. 30. Respect is a value related to a feeling of deep admiration for someone or something elicited by their abilities, qualities or achievements (Zimmer, 2007). 35 Respect can be held for a competitor; for a game which continually elicits specific attitudes, behaviors, expectations and identities from the participants; or for someone in a position of authority (i.e., a coach). 31. Rites-of-passage are the ritualized ceremonies accompanying an individual’s “life crisis” — times of adjustment and change - containing three stages: separation, transition, and inclusion (Fiske, 1976; Oriard, 1993; Van Gennep, 1960). High school football separates youth from their parents during pre-season and after- school practice, the players go through physical, mental, attitudinal and identity transition during that separation; then are included back into the regular society with inclusive celebrations and ceremonies during games. 32. Ritual is an organized cultural action. Ritual is “rule” governed by activity of a symbolic character that draws the attention of its participants to objects, thoughts and feelings that they hold to be of special personal, social or cultural, significance. Rituals enable the community to enmesh itself in its’ own identity. Ritual is not restricted to religious ceremonies (Fiske, 1976; Sabo & Panepinto, 1990). A “Homecoming” football game is a ritual. The end-of-year college football “Bowl” game is a ritual. The “Superbowl” has become ritual. 33. Socialization is an interactive process of learning, formation of social meanings ideas, and social development, which occurs as we interact with one another and become acquainted with the social world (Coakley, 2001; Graff, 2001; Landis, 1980). Socialization into the world of football may begin at the youth level, continues through the various stages of high school participation, and may continue at the high levels of college and professional sport, leaving the participant with a 36 viewpoint of life based upon the prolonged interactions within the social world of football. 34. Social capital refers to valued features of social organization such as networks, norms and social trust that facilitate coordination and cooperation for mutual benefit (Putnam, 1995). The sharing of values, beliefs and norms between adults and youth, between coaches and players, between coaches and coaches are examples of social capital (Ganley, 2003; Matthews, 2001; Putnam, 1995; Robison & Flora, 2003). 35. Social engine is the term used to describe an agent, instrument, or means of accomplishment. It is any social structure used to affect a purpose; an engine of change (Picket, 2000). The game of football, when used to develop social or cultural values in youth, operates as a social engine. 36. Social location is an element of external social categorization and control. Each individual or group in society is - because of his or her location within the hierarchy of wealth, occupation, education, religion, ethnic and racial heritage, and family background - ranked by others and by herself or himself. Placement in this complex hierarchy exerts pressures, subtle and blatant, on people to behave in prescribed ways (Eitzen & Sage, 2003). Geographic location (i.e., urban, suburban, rural), ethnicity/race (i.e., European American/white, African American/Black, etc.), and program status (i.e., winning or losing) are social locations for the purpose of this study. 37. Social meaning is the result of reciprocal relations and the reflective processes of interacting human beings, either as individuals or groups (Fairchild, 37 1955). Social meanings may be derived from persons, family, community, culture or groups’ lived experiences. Coaches may have similar or different social meanings based upon their authoritative positions, different geographic localities in which they coach; their ethnic/racial background and related cultural experiences. 38. Social structure refers to the complex, organized, systematic networks of ways people relate to each other in society. The important elements of social structure appear to be norms, status, groups, and institutions (Landis, 1980; Mills, 2000). The social structure of sport refers to the manner in which the game is organized with governing bodies and rules, is physically structured and played, and the manner in which athletes are promoted, divided and rewarded (Anderson, 2005). Head coaches relate to each other as equals within the framework of formal and informal professional standards, expectations, and professional association memberships. The social network dynamic moves from that of peer association between coaches, to subordinate-insubordinate coaches, pupil-teacher, and mentor- initiate in the coach-player relationship. The complexity of social structures influences the culture of football. 39. Social theory is well organized and researched generalizations concerning social phenomena that are sufficiently established scientifically to serve as a reliable basis for sociological interpretation (Coakley, 2001; Graff, 2001; Landis, 1980). In this study critical theory, structural functionalism, and symbolic interaction will be used to examine the personal, American cultural and football values of high school head football coaches. 38 40. Sport is a highly competitive, physically challenging, institutionalized game of distinctive enduring patterns of culture and social structure combined into a single complex; the elements of which include values, norms, sanctions, knowledge, skills, rules, rituals, and social positions (Loy, 1969). Football can be defined as a sport. 41. Sportsmanship/Sportspersonship is a social meaning representing the fair conduct of one participating in a sport, as pertaining to respect for rules, one’s opponent, and graciousness in winning or losing a contest (Morse, 2009). 42. Structural Functional (S-F) Theory is based on the assumption that society is an organized system of interrelated parts held together by shared values and social processes that minimize differences and promote consensus among people (Coakley, 2001; Landis, 1980). Structural Functional Theory provides a framework and model for studying relationships among social structures. The traditional roles, rules, practices, expectations and values of the game of football often minimizes differences and promotes consensus among participants and fans, encourages similarities and consensus among the general population, and invites positive analysis comparisons. 43. Success is a value related to the accomplishment of an aim or purpose (Lindberg, 2002). For a player to simply make the team, or complete the season, can be viewed as success. 44. Symbolic Interaction Theory focuses on issues related to social meanings, social identities, social relationships, and cultural meanings. It is based on the idea that human beings, as they interact with one another, give meanings to themselves, 39 others, and the world around them, and use those meanings as a basis for making decisions and taking action in their everyday lives (Coakley, 2007). Coaches’ values are based on the results of symbolic interaction processes developed as they give meanings to themselves, and others, as they moved through their playing and coaching careers. 45. T aylorism is the scientific management of specific and human micro- movement (Becker, 1991; Becker & Steele, 1995; Brohm, 1976; Kwoleck-Folland, 1994; Nelson, 1980; Schermerhom, 1993; Stewart, 1989; Wrege & Greenwood, 1991). Because of Tayloristic practices American factory labor became a time- measured process, with worker’s movements and production being evaluated for minute-by-minute, step-by-step efficiency. Athletics, particularly football, borrowed this ideology, and practice became a segmented parts-by-parts activity, measured by repetitions of a specific movement within a given time-period. 46. Tolerance [of others] is an attitude and value of liberal acceptance of the behaviors, beliefs and values of others. Tolerance positively embodies the vigorous defense of others values, recognition of the worth of pluralism, and the free expression of all (Reber & Reber, 2001). Coaches, particularly those with a team of multi-ethnic or multi-cultural backgrounds are encouraged to maintain attitudes of tolerance for all of their players. 47. Toughness is being strong enough to withstand adverse conditions; being able to endure hardship or pain; to be confident and determined (Zimmer, 2007). Toughness is a value or quality desired of players within the game of football. 40 48. Values are the criterion for a positive evaluation (Zukowska, 1987). Values are the abstract general standard, culturally prescribed criteria by which individuals evaluate persons, behaviors or acts, objects and ideas as to their relative morality, desirability, merit or correctness. Values are the bases for making decisions (Brown, 1976; Eitzen & Sage, 2003; Figler & Whitaker, 1995). The concept of “values” is an element of judgment or discrimination, so that having a value often means not merely desiring something, but also thinking of it or holding it in some way as desirable (Edel, 1964). In this study personal values, American cultural values, and football values are examined including specific values such as achievement/winning, competition, conformity, hard work, masculinity, respect for authority and success. 49. Value System is an enduring organization of beliefs concerning preferable modes of conduct (Brown, 1976). The value system in football is based upon American cultural values, the Protestant work ethic, Muscular Christianity, concepts of masculinity, and American ideologies about achievement, success and winning. 50. Win/ Winning is to be successfirl or victorious in a contest or conflict; to acquire or secure as a result of a contest, conflict, bet, or other endeavor; gaining, resulting in, or relating to victory in a contest or competition (Lindberg, 2002). To outscore an opponent in a football game is to win. CHAPTER TWO: REVIEW OF LITERATURE INTRODUCTION The present study focus is a comparison of head high school football coaches’ personal, American cultural, and football values. This review of literature will be presented in two main sections: (A) Perspectives on the study of values; and (B) Social Theoretical Perspectives, and Applied Sociological Theory on sport. Section A: Perspectives on the study of values will be subdivided into sections discussing: (1) values definitions, (2) socialization into values; (3) personal values; (4) American cultural and sport values; (5) contemporary American football values; (6) football: history, coaching culture, coaching organizational processes; (7) interrelationship of personal, cultural and sport values and the building of American identity; and (8) football coaches’ developing character in players. Section B: Social Theoretical perspectives will discuss (1) the importance of social theory, and (2) the social theories used in this study; (a.) Structural F unctionalism; (b.) Symbolic Interaction; and (c.) Critical Theory. The applications of each theory to the dissertation focus will be discussed in each section. Applied Sport Sociology will also be considered. Section A. Perspectives on the study at values Values definitions Willams, Jr. (1970) points to many “operational definitions” of value: value as overt choice or preference, as attention or emphasis, as statement or assertion, as implicit premise, as a referent of social sanctions. Among these many definitions, Kluckhohn (1951) declared: “A value is a conception, explicit or implicit, distinctive 42 of an individual or characteristic of a group, of the desirable, which influences the selection from, and choice of, available modes, means, and ends of action.” Northrop, (1953) asserted that a value is “simply a conceptual system, thus conveying that it is a way of making categories out of the varieties of satisfaction life offers” (Northrup, 1953, p.329). Additionally, Morris (1956) defined values as either individual or commonly held conceptions of the desirable. Fallding (1965) saw values as a generalized end that guides the behavior toward uniformity in a variety of situations, with the object of repeating a particular self-sufficient satisfaction. Williams, Jr. (1967) originally viewed values as those conceptions of desirable states of affairs that are utilized in selective conduct as generalized criteria for preference or choice as justification for pr0posed or actual behavior. Shortly thereafter, Williams, Jr. (1970) added that values are observable variables in human conduct. Williams, Jr. (1970) went on to suggest some conceptual boundaries of values. What is experienced by individuals as values have these qualities: 1. They have a conceptual element: They are more than pure sensations, emotions, reflexes, or so-called needs. Values are abstractions drawn from the flux of the individual’s immediate experience. 2. They are effectively charged: They represent actual or potential emotional mobilization. 3. Values are not the concrete goals of action, but rather the criteria by which goals are chosen. 43 4. Values are important, not “trivial” or of slight concern. Schwartz and Bilsky (1987) support Williams, Jr. (1970) and summarize five features they feel common to most definitions of values. Values are (a) concepts or beliefs, (b) point to desirable end states or behaviors, (c) transcend specific situations, ((1) guide selection or evaluation of behavior and events, and (e) are ordered by relative importance. Schwartz (1992) emphasizes that values are cognitive representations of three universal human requirements: (a) biologically based organism needs, (b) social interactional requirements for interpersonal coordination, and (0) social institutional demands for group welfare and survival. Schwartz (2004b), with Hitlin and Piliavin (2004), link values and action through four sequential processes. First, values must be activated. Second, values are motivational, leading toward the privileging of certain actions over others. Third, values influence attention, perception, and interpretation within situations. Fourth, values, when activated, influence the planning of action. Eitzen and Sage (2003) provide, it is suggested, the most applicable “values” definition to the athletic and sport domains: Values are the bases for making decisions. Values are the cultural prescribed criteria by which individuals evaluate persons, behaviors, objects, and ideas as to their relative morality, desirability, merit, or correctness. (Eitzen & Sage, 2003, p. 46) Willams, Jr. (1967), on whom much of Eitzen and Sage’s (2003) perspectives on values are drawn, and in support of Schwartz (1992), views values as initially emerging out of physical, biological, and social conditions, but, once formed, as exerting direct influence over behavior. In light of this definition, values might 44 partially influence the sports we choose to play, and the physical/emotional investment we put in playing them. Values: What they are not! Values are not attitudes or opinions. An attitude is a state of mind, feeling or disposition which can involve beliefs causing one to act in a certain way (Brown, 1976; Morris, 2000). An opinion is a verbal expression of an attitude, belief or value, which on its’ own is insufficient to prove with certainty (Brown, 1976). Values, beliefs and norms may seem conversationally identical. They are different. Specifically, Williams, Jr. (1967, 1970) states that values and beliefs are related but not the same. Beliefs have primarily an existential reference: they concern what the believer takes as reality -— the properties of and relationships among entities and processes. A belief is an inference of expectancy (Brown, 1976). Beliefs are true or false, valid or invalid, or not testable. In beliefs there is no criterion of good or bad, only “is” or “is not.” In its’ most simple and somewhat misleading formulation, a belief is a conviction that something is real, whereas a value is a standard of preference (Williams, Jr. 1970). Though values are closely related, conceptually and empirically, to social norms, norms are the more specific, concrete, situation-bound specifications. Values are the criteria by which norms themselves may be and are judged. Values, like norms, are a group-level phenomenon requiring shared agreement. In the team domain, values - to be of importance — must be shared somewhat equally by all in that realm. (Williams, 1967, 1970). Hitlin and Piliavin (2004) support Williams (1967, 1970), stating that norms are situation based; values, however, are trans- 45 situational. Norms are rules for behavior in specific situations, while values identify what should be judged as good or bad. As an example, flying the national flag on a holiday is a norm, but it reflects the value of patriotism (Snow, Wales & Gardner, 2008). Parsons (1961 a) sees values as being so general as to be neither “situation- specific nor function-specific.” As abstract concepts, they simply provide a referent for thought and action. In contrast, norms provide the specific “do’s and don’ts” of situations. Thus a given society’s achievement value merely indicates that achieving is a desirable end. Specifying how to achieve, even what to achieve, is the purview of the norms. Values: Why they are important! Williams, Jr. (1967) believes that values are important psychosocial causal components in individual conduct and in the functioning of social systems. Williams, Jr. (1967), in support of Parson (1961a) has stated that among the society’s store of cultural resources, values constitute especially economical sets of high-level guidance signals. Their economy lies in their generality. Spates (1983) felt that values have power and importance in social life because of (a) their element of moral suasion, (b) the sanctions that would or could be visited on transgressors of them, and (c) their transmission to new generations via socialization. Williams, Jr. (1970) argues that values are not motivational in an emotional sense, but rather are cognitive structures that provide information that gets coupled with emotion and leads to action. Values are certainly not the sole motivational factor behind action; values act in concert with other motives (Staub, 1989). In 46 addition to initial motivation, values seem to be related to the commitment individuals maintain in the face of adversity (Lydon & Zanna, 1990). Argumentatively, adversity can be equated with athletic challenge. In the definition of values (Eitzen & Sage, 2003), the phrase “culturally prescribed” is an important qualifier because it implies that human beings are socialized; they are taught the criteria by which to make such judgments. Children learn from their parents, peers, churches, schools, group interactions and the media what is right or wrong, moral or immoral, correct or incorrect. Behavior is a function of the individual’s environmental history (Skinner, 1969). Specific to American culture and sport are the contemporary culturally prescribed values, ideologies and social meanings of winning and success, hard work and sacrifice, individuality and conformity (Eitzen & Sage, 2003; Lomax, 2002); male authority (Sabo & Panepinto, 1990; Van Gennep, 1960); and masculinity (Sabo & Jansen, 1993; Boutilier & SanGiovanni, 1983). Socialization into values Socialization: What is it? What personal and social forces enabled study participants to choose a career in coaching? How were they directed to the identities, values and behaviors that moved them from player to coach? Who was involved in the process known as socialization? Socialization is an interactive process of learning, formation of ideas, and social development, which occurs as we interact with one another and become acquainted with the social world (Coakley, 2007; Graff, 2001; Landis, 1980). Sport 47 acts as one of the social structures (Landis, 1980; Mills, 2000); and social engines (Pickett, 2000) in which the socialization process occurs. Values are to be found in the relation between the hmnan actor and the objects that are of concern to him (Kluckhohn, 1951). It is during this process, and the developing relationship(s), networks, norms and social trust between people that social capital is developed (Ganley, 2003; Matthews, 2001; Putnam, 1995; Robison & Flora, 2003). This social capital has mutual benefits for all actors in the present and future functioning of the society. Williams, Jr. (1967, 1970) has stated that the inventories of values held by a particular person or shared within a population are not jumbled together in a completely random assortment. Many different individuals hold the same values, and this sharing also exhibits orderliness. These values are assembled into organized sets or systems, through the socialization process based on significant others who serve as role models (e.g., parents, teachers, athletic coaches), social situations (e.g., home, school, playground), and the role learners (e. g., children, adolescents) (Overman, 1997). The socialization process is influenced by social class, ethnicity, religion, gender, place and type of residence, ordinal position among siblings, and age (Scanlon, 1978). Therefore, societies may be characterized by value distributions, and by the arrangements of subsystems of values in different portions — political, social class, ethnic, gender - of the social structure. Socialization: How does it happen? Every society attempts to provide a type of “buffered learning” through which its children can absorb those cultural values that are considered important 48 (Overman, 1997). In modern America, special agencies are devoted to the codification, teaching, synthesis and reinforcement of values. Public schools, municipal courts, the Supreme Court, law schools, seminaries and theological institutions, universities, social institutions such as the Y.M.C.A., Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, Camp Fire Girls, youth and scholastic athletic teams are conveyers of American cultural and social values (Bowes, 1979; Curti, 1935; Guttman, 1989; Hall, 1994; Konvitz, 1966; Putney, 2001). All direct toward order, hierarchy, elite and authoritarian values (Brohm, 1976). Through this socialization process the children - also including the high school head football coach study participants as youth - acquire sensitivity to the obligations of society. They learn to get along with others and to behave like others. They acquire the accepted motives, values and opinions. They are introduced to the rituals, laws, taboos, legends, folk tales, standards, and beliefs of the society (McNeil, 1969, p. 3; Roberts & Sutton-Smith, 1962, p. 183). If society is successful in stamping these basic traits onto the child, they tend to endure throughout the individual’s life. Most often, these traits are acquired in the context of the family, but they are reinforced within other institutional contexts including organized sport (Scanlon, 1978, p. 309). And the process goes in both directions: When one is part of any organization, they bring their deeply held values and beliefs to that organization. There they co-mingle with those of the other members to create an organization or family culture (Healthfield, 2008). It is, therefore, conceivable that organizational values may differ based on the specific values held by various ethnic/racial groups and coaches working within urban, suburban or rural geographic school populations. 49 Groups, societies, or cultures have values that are largely shared by their members. Radcliffe-Brown (1922) suggested that a tribal member came to know what had value only through beliefs that were “impressed upon him by tradition.” Maio and Olson (1998) state that values are socialized into us through the teaching of moral absolutes; they are representations of emotions and are often employed in support of our affective reactions. Hitlin and Piliavin (2004) with Lehrmann (1962) support Radcliffe-Brown (1922) stating that values originate with biological, ethnic/race and gender, social structure, class, occupation and education, family, emigrant/immigrant and age, religion and national/geographic roots or social locations. Therefore, the values identify those objects, conditions or characteristics that members of the group or society consider important; that are valuable (Snow, Wales & Gardner, 2008). Van Gennep (1960) called the exercise of cultural and social tradition a “rites-of-passage,” evidenced in the past as “warrior” or “manhood ceremonies”; in the present as marriage, graduation and “making the team.” Discussions of fathers sharing sports talk with their sons and other men; sharing of men’s emotional responses and judgments, and the initiation of the boy into a male language and into male traditions, are part of the male rite-of-passage socialization dynamic (Whitson, 1990). In the sports tradition, heroism and community are rendered concrete in ways that encourage male bonding, but also encourage the exclusion of women from the brotherhood in actions and decisions of importance (Lever, 1976; Lomax, 2002; Nixon, 1993; Schaefer, 1975; Swain, 2003). This brotherhood and masculine culture can be evidenced in football. 50 The sports contest provides a public test, acted out in an arena where the outcome is visibly apparent to everyone in attendance. In providing a public setting for this ritual of achieved success, spectator sport extends the moral connotations beyond the level of the participants to the larger community. Peers absorb the value connotations as rationales for their behavior (Fiske, 1976; Van Gennep, 1960). A collective feeling of moral justification extends to sports fans following a victory. When a team wins a championship, an entire city, state, or nation vicariously celebrates their elevation to the realm of the “elect.” In this sense, winning in sport reaffirms American cultural values and the Protestant scheme of the world in which the worthy are rewarded (Overman, 1997). In the socialization process, what is the historical role of American public education? High school head football coaches in this study all shared the experience of attending high school, and playing high school varsity football. What are the foundations of the high school physical education and scholastic athlete experience? Why are such experiences deemed important to football coaches? Why has this aspect of socialization achieved such prominence in American education? Community based efforts for physical education were accompanied by organized sports programs in the public schools beginning in the 18903 and flourishing in the 19205. Some believed that public schools would have to initiate physical training if Anglo-Saxons were to save [the] race from physical degeneracy (Overman, 1997). Indeed, so important was this considered for the nation’s well being that many demanded it be made mandatory in the public schools, something 51 : may.swimming .. "s 't . * ”filly. luv-““11"“, h. nmfi“mlfw . ~fllelr‘l’»’u,h,,tpihirlljg I.) h“ 1'. 'lllr‘j'r «- -rI that first occurred statewide in Ohio (1892), then in Illinois (1895) and North Dakota (1899) (Putney, 2001). State and national organizations were formed to oversee school sports in the early 20th century (Overman, 1997). In 1903, George Wingate and Luther Gulick established a sports program for boys in the New York City elementary, junior high and senior high public schools. Seven years later, the program boosted 150,000 participants. By 1910, 17 other cities had formed athletic leagues modeled after the one in New York City (Jable, 1984, p. 234; Martens, 1978, p. 6). By 1925, school athletic associations existed in all of the states. This led to the forming of the National Federation of State High School Athletic Associations, which was primarily concerned with regulation, control, and standardization of rules- of-the games being played at public secondary schools across the country (Cozen & Stumpf, 1953, p. 74). The number of public high schools grew rapidly in the second quarter of the 20‘h century. By then, the games of adolescence had evolved into a system of highly organized, highly competitive athletic programs with-in, and outside of, the schools (Callahan, 1962; Cavallo, 1981, p. 84). American public education achieved substantial unity around a core of national values. The student, the young and adolescent citizen, was trained in what behaviors were “valued” and had “value.” Williams (1970) states that the principal cultural themes and values associated with education in the United States include (1) pragmatism, practicality, and anti-intellectualism (Hofstadter, 1963; Lasch, 1967 (e.g., maybe explaining, for example, why football is extremely popular to masses of Americans, and chess is not); (2) individual competition and success, (3) conformity, 52 (4) democratic creeds, behavior and authority, and (5) education in national beliefs and values. It is important to acknowledge the intended role of schools as apparatuses of social reproduction and sites of cultural reproduction at a high level of theoretical abstraction; we need to keep in mind the relationship of schools to the wide society and to recognize the realities of class and gender [and race] relationships in terms of power and control (Weiss, 1988, p. 24). High school sports All participant coaches in this study were high school graduates, thereby having been part of the high school educative process. The high school educative process is purposed to: (1) educate; (2) socialize; and (3) to serve as a ritualized rite- of-passage process. High school sports become an active, real—life example of socialization and symbolic interaction. The school is primarily a social institution. Education is a social process developing individual and group values (Holbrook, 1973). Dewey (1939) believed that: “The school is the essential distributing agency for whatever values and purposes any social group cherishes. It is not the only means, but it the first means, the primary means and the most deliberate means by which the values of any social group cherishes, the purposes that it wishes to realize, are distributed and brought home to the thought, the observation, judgment and choice of the individual. (Dewey, 1939, p. 15). Coakley (2001), Graaff (2001) and Landis (1980) support Dewey, describing socialization as an interactive process of learning, formation of ideas, and social development which occurs as we interact with one another and become acquainted 53 .‘i fiV‘-'v r'vu 0' ' '0 u . . 3. «Mama-Italic: .‘u . 51;} («*WQEMWM'QW with the social world. Sports are social constructions — part of American social conscious - that have been attached to the educative process. At the high school level, along with socialization, there exists for those who participate in sports both celebratory validating community symbolic ritual and rites- of-passage status (Fiske, 1976; Oriard, 1993; Overman, 1997; Van Gennep, 1960). Sport practice and games, especially combative team sports or activities include the endurance of pain or extreme discomfort. These activities become systemized ritualistic, semi-religious celebrations of symbolic primal survival skills (i.e., running, jumping, throwing) (Sabo and Panepinto, 1990). The high school football season is an annual, expected, series of practices, contests, and celebrations. Communities gain identity through the notoriety of their high school football teams. The entire autumn calendar of the community maybe organized around the scheduled contests and behaviors of the teams; and the contrived importance of the “life crisis” contests. It enables the community to enmesh itself, repeatedly and regularly, in its’ own identity. Socialization: Why is it important? Parsons (1961a) contends that values are the keystones of social structure. This would suggest that values are important because they give both macro-and micro group behavioral benchmark consistency within a society. Values are social facts for the further reason that individuals are introduced to them; they have been found for them by their forbears and symbolized in advance (Heathfield, 2008; Posner, 2008; Snow, Wales & Gardner, 2008). Values give advance structure for culture and socialization (Barrett, 1999). 54 Therefore, values are organizing ends; organizing precisely because many other satisfactions and actions are subordinate to them (Kluckhohn, 1951; Schwartz & Bilsky, 1987; Williams, Jr., 1970). Fallding (1965) believes values are, for the same reason, more realistically identified by noticing certain consistencies in behavior that involves effort (i.e., athletic activity), and some correspondence between this behavior and principles that the person professes to follow (i.e., in team membership). Behavior is affected by its own consequences (Nye, 1979, p. 93). Institutionalized rules, in any given time, in a particular culture implicitly says that there are expectations and consequences for conformity and nonconformity. This speaks to the “moral suasion” and power of “sanctions” on transgressors of values (Spates, 1983, p. 28). In team athletics, it is suggested, this translates to: “I should play hard;” the consequences of poor effort, “I will sit on the bench.” Hofstede (2001), Mukerjee (1946) and Williams (1970) saw values as the dynamic phenomena that define, maintain, and regulate the visible social structure and give it cohesion and stability so that it can cross the narrow boundaries of place and time. Hitlin and Piliavin (2004) emphasize that within-nation value systems tend to be stable over time. This suggests that values are fundamental to the structural functional underpinnings of society (Coakley, 2007; Durkheim, 1938; Malinowski, 1954; Radcliffe-Brown, 1952). Socialization is, therefore, given some permanence by the internalization of values. Parsons and Shils (1951b) suggested that the institutionalization of values in a social group could produce a “perfect” effect. In athletics, this could be called “Teamwork.” Players, to form a successful team, must conform their actions around 55 the same values. For teams to fairly and evenly compete, they must conform their actions around the same rules. For coaches to share an expectation of competitive equity they must conform their methods, beliefs and actions around the same behaviors, rules and values. This conformity will also allow for career mobility as the same or similar values will be held by those in authority and hiring positions at other schools. Administrators (i.e., superintendents, principals, athletic directors) will be comfortable hiring the next coach from “somewhere else” because he can be expected to hold familiar values. Socialization evidences its’ importance in the resulting commonality of values held by all related social actors. The socialization of teachers and coaches The majority of head coaches are teachers within the school system (Smith & Ewing, 1992). Therefore, the socialization process is also applicable to those entering any educational field of vocational or professional endeavor, including teaching and coaching. Coaches are, essentially, teachers (Gould, 1987; Josephson, 1999; Power, 2009). It is very clear that race, class, and gender are related to different life chances and educational outcomes for individuals (Delone, 1979; Weis, 1988). These issues need to receive much more attention in explanations of teacher and coach socialization (Zeichner & Gore, 1990). However, it is here conjectured that the socialization process impacts both of these educational practitioners in similar ways. Studies have shown that socialization into a profession occurs on three levels, those being evolutionary, attitudinal or experiential, and structural (Anderson, 2005; Hall, 1968; Kerr, VonGlinow, & Schriesheim, 1977; Messner, 1987; Stephens, 56 1967). Stephens (1967) proposes an “evolutionary” theory to account for the socialization of teachers and coaches, and emphasizes the role of primitive spontaneous pedagogical tendencies in explaining at least some of the reason why teachers and coaches act as they do. According to this view: Human beings have survived because of their deeply ingrained habits of correcting one another, telling each other what they know, pointing out the moral, and supplying the answer. These tendencies have been acquired over the centuries and are lived out in families and classrooms. Thus, children not only learn what they are told by parents and teachers [and coaches], they also learn to be teachers [and coaches]. (Feiman-Nemser, 1983, p.152) Ross (1987) argues that this process of modeling former teachers and coaches is a highly selective and deliberate process whereby student teachers, teachers and assistant coaches pick and choose the various attributes and practices they observed as pupils, players and assistants and synthesized them into the model they would like to become. Anderson (2005) adds that if we desire to understand how someone is socialized into the coaching profession, we must understand that almost all coaches have evolved from that of a player. The pattern holds that certain athletes find their experience in sports so thrilling they desire to participate in them as long as possible. Coakley says, “. . .they love their sports and will do almost anything to stay involved” (Coakley, 1998, p. 155). Part of this is because of the sheer glory that a good athlete may experience, but part of this is also because of the prestige allotted top-notch athletes in peer culture. Athletes (particularly in men’s teams) are publicly lauded as heroes; honored by their institutions and celebrated by fans (Bissinger, 1990). It is, therefore, understandable that from their perception, sport is a socially 57 positive vessel. Thus, athletes who are both sufficiently gifted and who exhibit the desire to follow the strict norms associated with sport are influenced to remain within the game. The longer they do, and the better they are, the more likely they are influenced to prolong their identity with athletics through coaching (Anderson, 2005; Messner, 1989). The psychoanalytic work of Wright (1959), and Wright and Tuska (1967, 1968), suggests that teacher and coach socialization is affected to a considerable extent by the quality of relationships teachers and coaches had as children with important adults (e. g., mother, father, teachers, coaches), and that becoming a teacher or coach is to some extent a psycho-social process (sometimes unconscious and sometimes deliberate) of trying to become like significant others in one’s childhood or trying to replicate early childhood relationships. According to this view, early relationships with significant others are the prototypes of subsequent relationships throughout life. Therefore, the kind of teachers and coaches education students become is governed by the effects of this early childhood heritage on their personalities (Wright & Tuska, 1967). This outlook lends itself to the concept of teacher and coach socialization occurring largely through “apprenticeship observation” (Lortie, 1975, p. 61-67, 81). This viewpoint is supported by the mixed method research of the Coaching Association ofCanada (1996a); Gould, Giannini, Krane & Hodge (1990); and Salmela (1996), which indicates that the primary source of coaching knowledge is direct coaching experience. The work of Gilbert and Trude] (2006), and Nelson, 58 Cushion and Potrac (2006) also supports that coaches say they learn mostly from experience. Here we find changes of perspective towards teaching and coaching due to the internalization of instructional models during the time spent as pupils or players in close contact with earlier teachers and coaches. Lortie (1975) supported by the work of Nias (1986) points to teachers who attested to the tangential role of their formal training as compared to the continuing influence of their earlier mentors which they referred to. Nias (1986) has shown that teachers and teacher-coaches continue to draw on their personal experiences as pupils even after up to nine years of teaching experience. Athletes who drop out, are forced out, or otherwise do not make the next level of sport, often find themselves detached from the cultural prestige they once enjoyed, something sport psychologists call the disengagement effect (Greendorfer, 1992). It makes sense that athletes who rode atop the athletic hierarchy would also feel the greatest loss upon disengaging from it. Thus, for those with no further opportunity to play competitive sports, coaching becomes one of the few avenues for getting back into the game (Lyle, 2002). Those who were marginalized by sport, or too intimidated to play them in the first place, do not go on to coach (Anderson, 2005). Indeed, sport almost always draws leaders from those who ascribed to the previous cohort’s ideals. As coaches, these ex-athletes reproduce hero-athlete narratives and promote their individual experience to inspire a new generation of athletes in the same ethos that they were once socialized into and profited from (Anderson, 2005; Hughes & Coakley, 1991). The socially exclusive nature of most 59 sports, particularly football, is influenced by the coach who came-up and evolved through this system, and may thereafter utilize his or her individual agency to reproduce a system they believed worked for them (Anderson, 2005). Secondly, teaching and coaching socializing occurs on an attitudinal or experiential level, such as the individual’s sense of “a calling” to the field. Stated another way, people entering a profession experience change externally, which is in the requirements of the specific career role, and internally, which is in the subjective self-conceptualization associated with the role (McGowen & Hart, 1990). This self- conceptualization can be viewed as one’s professional identity (Brott & Kaj s, 2001). Professional identity formation and development are individual maturation processes that begin during one’s training for the profession, evolve during entry into the profession, and continue to develop as the practitioner identifies with the profession. These processes can be viewed as the experiences that help the practitioner wed theory with reality in the direction of greater flexibility and openness (Brott & Kajs, 2001). Individual coaches are structured to shape their coaching identity and are influenced to utilize their agency in order to maintain, instead of challenge, the status quo (Anderson, 2005). Consequently, one would expect coaches in the current study to be more conventional and to support traditional values within the football culture. Issues of professional identity stem from professional socialization and development (McGowen & Hart, 1990). Professional socialization and development is a social learning process that includes the acquisition of specific knowledge and skills that are required in a professional role and the development of new values, attitudes, and self-identity components (Hall, 1968; McGowan & Hart, 1990; Watts, 60 1987). Molding a professional identity is a developmental process of maturation (Kuzmic, 1994). Effective mentors — including subject department chairs and head coaches -- assist beginning teachers and coaches to work through both the personal and the professional ramifications of teaching and coaching as they move through the stages of career development as a professional educator (Spuhler & Zetler, 1994). New teachers begin as novices and advance through the developmental stages to finally become experts (Berliner, 1988). After the beginning practitioner enters the profession, a number of initial losses can occur (e. g., change in leadership; elimination of subject, sport, or professional position due to budgetary cuts; firing due to program poor performance) that are likely to affect both the comfort level of one’s work as well as the quality of one’s professional functioning. Along with the losses, the new practitioner struggles to develop the sort of “work ego” that will enable the practitioner to make sense of the profession. Kuzmic (1994) spoke of the “process of becoming” as the reflective perspective that is an inner understanding from which new experiences are handled. As an example, in coaching frequent job changes can be part of the career. This aspect must be accepted as part of the career environment, if one wants to continue as a coach. Two processes constitute experiential learning for coaches: socialization and reflection. Through socialization, coaches engage and interact in a specific context. In doing so, they develop “the ability to communicate in the language of this community and act according to its particular norms” (Sfard, 1998, p. 6). In other words, coaches learn the acceptable behavior of a specific sport environment. Through socialization, coaches do not discriminate between acceptable and 61 unacceptable behaviors (i.e., such as rattling the opponent, tripping the opponent to prevent a scoring chance, or screaming at the official) from an ethical point of view. It is part of the culture as to what and how things should be done. This constitutes a significant limit of experiential learning (Lemyre, 2008). It should come as no surprise that coaches say they learn mostly from experience (Gilbert & Trude], 2006; Nelson, Cushion, and Potrac, 2006), and experiential learning (Beard & Wilson, 2002, p. 16) when you compare the number of hours they spend on the field to the time they spend taking coaching courses (Gilbert, Cote, and Mallett, 2006). The significant role of pupils on the socialization of teachers and coaches is supported both on logical grounds and by empirical evidence. Haller (1967) and Doyle (1979) argue, for example, that the important role of pupils in teacher socialization is understandable given the typical isolation of teachers from their colleagues and supervisors and given the transitory and invisible nature of the learning process. Accepted bidirectional models of childhood socialization (Baumrind, 1980; Drietzel, 1973) are supported by a substantial number of empirical studies on the nature of student influence (Blasé, 1985, 1986; Brophy & Evertson, 1981; McNeil, 1983; Riseborough, 1988). According to Doyle (1979), the influence of students ranges from effects on the general teaching approach and patterns of language that teachers use in classrooms to the type and frequency of specific teaching methods used by teachers. Furthermore, the individual characteristics of both teachers and students seem to affect the ways in which pupils influence teacher development. Larson (1986) argues that the socializing role of pupils becomes increasingly greater as teachers gain experience and become more aware of and 62 concerned with pupils. Students’ predispositions stand at the core of becoming a teacher, exerting a much more powerful socializing influence than either preservice training or later socialization in the workplace (Lortie, 1975). As a result of these classroom studies, as well as studies on teacher socialization (Grant & Sleeter, 1985; Hammersley, 1977a, 1977b; Jordell, 1987; Mertz, 1988; Tabachnick & Zeicher, 1985), there is little question that classroom influence is reciprocal in nature and that teachers’ perceptions of pupils’ characteristics, expectations, and behaviors influence the nature of teacher development (Zeichner & Gore, 1990). It is here assumed that the same can be said for the influence of players on coaches’ socialization. Further research is required. Without reflection, the second process of experiential learning, questionable behaviors are transmitted from one generation to the next and people accept them without reflecting on the message sent to the athlete and the general public. Ross (1987) cites several cases where previous teachers served as negative role models for secondary social studies teacher-education students. Upon reflection, most coaches can see ethical dilemmas in their efforts and, with little effort, they are able to add some nuances to make sure that the message they are sending is ethical (Trudel, Lemyre, Werthner & Camire, 2007). Reflection, which most often occurs during or between games and practices and between seasons, does not always have to be a solitary activity. Access to peers is one of the most influential factors of the reflective process (Gilbert & Trude], 2006). Third, teacher and coach socialization takes place on a structural level, such as formal educational and entrance requirement for entry into the profession (Hall, 63 1968; Kerr, Von Glinow, & Schriesheim, 1977). Socialization into both teaching and coaching is characterized by contradictions, and is a complex movement between the self, significant others, the curriculum, and the social structure (Britzman, 1985). Addressing the question, how do social forces frame the student teacher’s understanding of school life and the work of teachers, Britzman (1985) found that student teachers internalize the ethos and culture of the school they are situated it. This means, that the socialization components they have internalized must exhibit some flexibility as they teach and coach at different institutions throughout their career. The broad parameters of socialization into the culture of teaching and coaching (i.e., curriculum content; rules of the game) remain fixed; the small particulars must be adjustable (i.e. instructor’s appropriate attire for that school; relative importance of sports, or a particular sport, to the student body and community). Summary of socialization Socialization is an interactive process of learning, formation of ideas, and social development, which occurs as we interact with one another and become acquainted with the social world (Coakley, 2007; Graff, 2001; Landis, 1980). Sport acts as one of the social structures (Landis, 1980; Mills, 2000); and social engines (Pickett, 2000) in which the socialization process occurs. Every society attempts to provide a type of “buffered learning” through which its’ children can absorb those cultural values that are considered important. In modern America, the public school operates as a buffering agency. Through the function of the agency, children —— including the high school head football coach 64 study participants as youth —— acquired sensitivity to the obligations of society and sport (McNeil, 1969, p. 3; Roberts & Sutton-Smith, 1962, p. 183). Groups, societies, or cultures have values that are largely shared by their members. Radcliffe-Brown (1922), and others, suggested that a tribal member came to know what had value only through beliefs that were “impressed upon him by tradition” (Hitlin & Piliavin (2004); Lehrmann (1962); Maio and Olson (1998); Snow, Wales & Gardner, 2008). Van Gennep (1960), supported by F iske (1976) called the exercise of cultural and social tradition a “rites-of-passage,” evidenced in the past as “warrior” or “manhood ceremonies”; in the present as marriage, graduation and “making the team.” In the sports traditions, heroism and community values are rendered concrete in ways that encourage male bonding, but also encourage the exclusion of women from the brotherhood in actions and decisions of importance (Lever, 1976; Lomax, 2002; Nixon, 1991; Schaefer, 1975; Swain, 2003). At the high school level, along with socialization, there exists for those who participate in education and sports both celebratory validating community symbolic ritual and rites-of-passage status (Fiske, 1976; Oriard, 1993; Overman, 1997; Van Gennep, 1960). Community based efforts for physical education were accompanied by organized sports programs in the public schools beginning in the 18903 and flourishing in the 19205 (Overman, 1997; Putney, 2001). State and national organizations were formed to oversee school sports in the early 20th century (J able, 1984, p. 234; Martens, 1978, p. 6; Overman, 1997). By 1925, school athletic associations existed in all states. This led to the forming of the National Federation 65 of State High School Athletic Associations, which was primarily concerned with regulation, control, and standardization of rules-of-the-games being played at public secondary schools across the country (Callahan, 1962; Cavallo, 1981, p. 84;Cozen & Stumpf, 1953, p. 74). High school sports have become an active, real life example of socialization of both student athletes and coaches. The school is primarily a social institution. Education is a social process developing individual and group values (Dewey, 1939; Holbrook, 1973). Sports are social constructions — part of American social consciousness — that have been attached to the educative process. Parsons (1961), supported by others, contends that values are the keystones to social structure (Heathfield, 2008; Posner, 2008; Snow, Wales & Gardner, 2008). Values give advance structure for culture and socialization (Barrett, 1999). Values are seen by some as fundamental to the structural functional underpinnings of society (Coakley, 2007; Durkheim, 1938; Malinowski, 1954; Radcliffe-Brown, 1952). Socialization is, therefore, given some permanence through the internalization of values. The socialization process is also applicable to those entering any field of vocational or professional endeavor, including teaching and coaching. Coaches are, essentially, teachers (Gould, 1987; Josephson, 1999; Power, 2009). Through socialization, coaches engage and interact in a specific context. In doing so, they develop “the ability to communicate in the language of this community and act according to its particular norms” (Sfard, 1998, p.6). Studies have shown that socialization into a profession occurs on three levels, those being (1) evolutionary, 66 (2) attitudinal or experiential, and (3) structural (Anderson, 2005; Hall, 1968; Kerr, VonGlinow & Schriesheim, 1977; Messner, 1987; Stephens, 1967). Stephens (1967) proposes an “evolutionary” theory to account for the socialization of teachers and coaches, and emphasizes the role of primitive spontaneous pedagogical tendencies in explaining at least some of the reason why teachers and coaches act as they do. Ross (1987) argues that this process of modeling former teachers and coaches is a highly selective and deliberate process whereby student teachers, teachers and coaches pick and choose the various attributes and practices they observed as pupils, players and assistants and synthesized them into the model they would like to become. Anderson (2005) adds that if we desire to understand how some coaches are socialized into the coaching profession, we must understand that almost all coaches have evolved from that of student or player. The psychoanalytic work of Wright (1959), and Wright and Tuska (1967, 1968) suggests that teacher socialization is affected to a considerable extent by the quality of relationships teachers and coaches have as children with important adults (e. g., mother, father, teachers, coaches) and that becoming a teacher or coach is to some extent a socialization process (sometimes unconscious and sometimes deliberate) trying to become like significant others in one’s childhood or trying to replicate early childhood relationships. The outlook lends itself to the concept of teacher and coach socialization occurring largely through “apprenticeship observation” (Lortie, 1975). Secondly, teaching and coaching socialization occurs on an attitudinal or experiential level, such as the individual’s sense of a “a calling” to the field. Stated 67 another way, people entering a profession experience change externally, which is in the requirements of the specific career role, and internally, which is in the subjective self-conceptualization associated with the role (McGowen & Hart, 1990). This self- conceptualization can be viewed as one’s professional identity (Brott & Kajs, 2001). Individual coaches are structured to shape their coaching identity and are influenced to utilize their agency in order to maintain, instead of challenge, the status quo (Anderson, 2005). Coaches say they learn mostly from experience (Gilbert & Trudel, 2006; Nelson, Cushion, & Potrac, 2006), and experiential learning (Beard & Wilson, 2002, p. 16). The significant role of pupils on the socialization of teachers and coaches is supported both on logical and empirical evidence (Haller, 1967; Doyle, 1979). Accepted bidirectional models of childhood socialization (Baumrind, 1980; Drietzel, 1973) are supported by a substantial number of empirical studies on the nature of student influence (Blasé, 1985, 1986b; Brophy & Evertson, 1981; McNeil, 1983; Riseborough, 1988). Without reflection, the second process of experiential learning, questionable behaviors are transmitted from one generation to the next and people accept them without reflecting on the message sent to the athlete and the general public (Gilbert & Trudel, 2006; Ross, 1987; Trudel, Lemyre, Wertlmer & Camire, 2007). Third, teacher and coach socialization takes place on a structural level, such as formal educational and entrance requirement for entry in to the profession (Hall, 1968; Kerr, Von Glinow & Schriesheim, 1977). Thus, coaches in the present study have been socialized by early educational structures and role models as well as by students and players during their coaching careers. 68 Personal Values Introduction Personal values are made up of everything that has happened in the life of the individual and includes influences from parents and family, the religious affiliation or non-affiliation, fiiends and peers, teachers and coaches, media interactions, and more (Heathfield, 2008; Snow, Wales & Gardner, 2008). Each of us is socialized to move our lives in certain directions. That direction is determined by the values we subscribe to. Our values, are, thus the formations and ideations of thought; the distinct formulations of understandings that express what we perceive to be important truths about life (Posner, 2008). Personal core values Every individual has a core set of personal values (Posner, 2008). Personal core values are implicitly related to choice; they guide decisions by allowing for an individual’s choices to be compared to each choice’s associated values (Posner, 2008; Snow, Wales & Gardner, 2008). Personal core values developed early in life may be resistant to change. They may be derived from those of particular groups or systems, such as family, culture, religion, and political party. However, personal core values are not universal; one’s family, nation, generation, and historical environment help determine one’s personal values. This is not to say that the value concepts themselves are not universal, merely that each individual possesses a unique conception of them (i.e., a personal knowledge of the appropriate values for their own genes, feelings and experience (Snow, Wales & Gardner, 2008). 69 Some personal values are acceptance, achievement, change, competence, concern for others, fun, fairness, health, hard work, and self-respect (See Appendix I, p. 480). Without values or beliefs, we would be mechanical-like beings, driven here and there by the vicissitudes of life. Without values, we would be creature-like, compelled to action solely by our urges and passions. In this inhuman existence, there would be little consideration for truths we hold dear, let alone implement them to ennoble and enrich our lives. In this reality devoid of values, we would live unconscious lives, without meaning or purpose. On the other hand, when we connect to values, we live a purposeful and dynamic existence; we become truly human (Posner, 2008). American cultural and sport values Introduction What ideologies framed the coaching ethos? What is the root of physical activity as a social endeavor? What anchors American competitive athletics, specifically football, into the national social fabric? The beginnings are found in religion, industrialization and gender politics of imperial England; then finding their way to post Civil War America. The beginnings of American cultural values Michael (2000) sees the beginnings of American cultural values in 14th century Europe with the concept of “individualism” developing as the key western idea of freedom. He cites the later writings of J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur who in 1782 saw in America “enlightenment, rationality, industriousness, and self- 70 reliance.” Alexis de Tocqueville (1835) is remembered for his fascination with American concepts of equality and democracy, religion, and humanity. Hirnmelfarb (1994) saw American culture and values rooted in the Victorian ethos to work hard, prove yourself, rely on self/be independent, live within your means, cleanliness being next to Godliness, self-respect, neighborliness, and patriotism. Hill (2000) saw America’s values as being based on those of the nation’s founders: (1) the preeminence of Nature or Nature’s God; (2) right to property ownership and/or the pursuit of happiness; and (3) the dignity of the individual as a rational human being, parent and citizen. White (2003) proclaims that the 1890 values of fair play, equal chance, protection of the weak, and honor to women exemplified the American ethos. Overall, these American cultural values are rooted in the ideologies of the protestant ethic (Overman, 1997), muscular Christianity (Putney, 1995), Taylorism (Overman, 1997), and Fordism (Breedveld, 1996). The Protestant Ethic American culture has reflected the polity, theology, intellect, and the spirit of reformed Protestantism (Baltzell, 1965; Miyakawa, 1964; Perry, 1944; Riesman, 1950). Overman (1997), supporting Weber (1958), sees the basic values of the Protestant ethic as the “Seven Cardinal Virtues”: Worldly asceticism (i.e., sacrifice). Rationalization. Goal directedness. Individualism. Achieved status. The work ethic. The time ethic (i.e., management, appreciation, notice of the passage of) (Overman, 1997). SP‘SARP’N?‘ Loy (1968, 1978) in support of Riesman (1950) singled out the Protestant 71 Ethic as the keystone of American social character. Americans have been known for their rugged individualism, work ethic, competitiveness, spirit of achievement, and their asceticism. The colonial American had been inoculated with a strong dose of moral asceticism that manifested itself as pragmatic righteousness. These qualities defined not only the religious sects but also most social institutions (Chino, 1965). As a secular society emerged, asceticism or sacrifice became more rational. The strength of this ethic was personified in America’s political, business, and industrial leaders (e. g., John D. Rockefeller, Sr., Henry Ford, and Frederick Taylor) who espoused the values of rational labor, service, discipline, and restraint (Mrozek, 1983) The Protestant hegemony was reflected in America’s power brokers beginning in the Industrial Age. Positions in business, government, and education were held in disproportion by Protestants (Overman, 1997). Most of the early innovators in American industry were Protestant reformers. Frederick Taylor was a typical reformer in his intent to rationalize labor when the work force was increasingly drawn from non-Protestant immigrants (Denney, 195 7). Politicians elected to all levels of government were typically Protestants (except for the Irish in New York City). Every president and vice president of the United States through the mid—20th century belonged to one of the Protestant denominations. And, what was generally true in business and politics was true for the sports establishment. During the rise of organized sport in the 19th century, Protestant patricians held the vast majority of positions of power and influence on teams and in league offices and 72 continued to do so for decades. Thus, the Protestant establishment set the style, not only for industry and politics, but also for popular culture (Baltzell, 1965). Overman (1997) emphasizes that the Protestant ethic transformed sport into a medium in which individuals proved themselves through hard work and by the application of scientific training. The bias of Protestant ethic societies is that play became justified only if it could accomplish something. Play was expected to lead to positive consequences, whether promoting health or instilling serious carryover values for success in life. Given this requirement, it follows that much of American sport is now concerned less with “playing the game” than with extrinsic goals such as making money, acquiring status, or carrying out a political agenda. Scientific rationalization emphasized what was measurable and quantifiable, and in turn, spawned an exaggerated concern for material things over spiritual values. Beginning in the early 17th century there was a notable increase in the tendency to keep records and accounts (Nef, 1960, pp.7-11, 33, 50-64). This “materialism” committed the human mind to quantitative values and methods of reasoning, and to tangible, verifiable evidence. Numbers and numerical data came to occupy a place in the modern vocabulary that they hadn’t enjoyed previously. This practice eventually connects with the management of labor, eventually known as Taylorism and F ordism; and the management of human and athletic movement, complete with the keeping of sport performance records. Muscular Christianity Muscular Christianity can be defined simply as a Christian commitment to health and manliness (Figler & Whitaker, 1995; Putney, 2001). Its’ origins are in 73 England, its’ most modern dynamic form in America where during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, droves of Protestant ministers and social reformers in both countries concluded that men were not truly Christians unless they were healthy and “manly,” a term used to connote strength, endurance, and other stereotypically male attributes. Figler and Whitaker (1995) state that the Victorian age gave rise to a masculine concept of a “good sportsman.” It combined the widely accepted view of male physicality, honor, patriotism, and religiosity. Sport was now perceived as a “manly, moral, [and] even mystical, past time.” Hall (1906) stated: “Among all the marvelous advances of Christianity. . .the future historians of the church of Christ will place this movement of carrying the gospel to the body as one of the most epoch making.” Muscular Christianity: European origins Rooted in the pre-reformation Europe of 1000-1300 A.D., and then flourishing in the 1850’s, the muscular Christianity movement was a crusade originating as a reaction to the growing observation that European male youth were pale, weak and becoming feminized (Carter, 1984; Lewis, 1966; Park, 1978). Additionally, it has been stated (Ownby, 2002; Putney, 1995) that the movement developed out of Anglo-Saxon fear of hegemonic, racial and social-class decline. Inside the protestant churches (e. g., particularly the Anglican Church), the movement’s leaders feared being overwhelmed by a growing majority of female churchgoers. Fewer adult males attended religious services; adolescent boys were being trained, led, and surrounded by female schoolteachers and female religious role models. Male images of authority were in decline (Putney, 2001). 74 Outside the churches, there was the fear that urbanization endangered the health, strength and character, especially of professional middle class Anglo-Saxon men. The artificial equation of money and power had stifled the more natural masculine sources of power, those being exhibitions of physical strength and endurance through wage-labor (Rosen, 1994). Prestige now came from the possession of money, not from manly labor. Money making (i.e., profits far above what was necessary to live) was seen as an effeminate pursuit. Regimented factory labor and suit and tie bureaucracy, had replaced the physicality of rural and farm life. Young boys were being deprived of virile, active, masculine role models. Additionally, many spokesmen for Anglo-Saxon ethnic/racial superiority argued that the economically successful needed to strengthen the race against the growing numbers of southern European, Mediterranean and subversive Roman Catholic immigrant newcomers (Setran, 2005; Shattuck, Jr., 2003; Turner, 2003; Wee, 1994). Advocates of muscular faith, aiming specifically at middle and upper class Anglo-Saxon males, attempted to recapture men’s religious interest by linking Christianity to ideals increasingly defined as masculine in nature: aggressive action, business acumen, athletic prowess, and military fervor (Douglas, 1996; Setran, 2005). The movement consciously attempted to propagate the potent image of a masculine, charismatic, and authoritative Englishman who stood as a representative of a resolutely Anglo-Saxon and Protestant nation-empire (Wee, 1994). Efforts to promote male physicality included the founding of the Young Men’s Christian Association (Y.M.C.A) and The Knight’s of the Roundtable. 75 This ideology made Anglicanism a religion more suitable for the world conquering British people. Most social reformers told the English citizens that they were a chosen people “in covenant with God” (Putney, 2001). Some reformers complained of the effeminacy of the middle class (Rosen, 1994). For many in Victorian England muscular Christianity meant “macho.” While American culture coalesced (Pope, 1997; Tunis, 195 8), in Europe muscular Christianity had redirected the piously-inactive to the divinely-active. Muscular C hristianity: American Dynamics Mrozek (1983) tells us that shortly before the Civil War it was urged that the moral power and effectiveness of the “saints” on earth depended on the strength of their bodies (e. g., There exists a critical silence here. The conceptualization and identification of “saints” was applied only to white males!). This attitudinal shift towards vim and vigor producing physical activity and ‘manliness’ took place at the height of European colonial expansion, with the growing fear of the ruling imperialists that the uncivilized natives of the acquired lands were physically more robust and procreative than their white masters. Europe, then America, had to be made “safe” (Haller, 1995). After the Civil War, America became a unitary political entity and many leaders sought a unitary culture to ensure its’ continuity. The search led toward the promotion of team sports that were national in scope and “Americanizing” in effect (Oriard, 1993; Pope, 1997; Tunis, 1958). Postbellum changes (Putney, 2001) in American society --from agrarian to industrial-capitalistic — placed health and manliness uppermost in the minds of many male Protestants, who viewed factors 76 such as urbanization, female-lead public education, subversive Roman Catholic immigration, and “neurasthenic decay” as threats not only to their health and manhood but also to their privileged social standing. Refonners also feared the corruption of boys’ character by women teachers (e. g., who made up 80 percent of the precollege teaching force). In a 1914 Educational Review article, the author argued: “To put a boy. . .under a woman’s tutelage at his most impressionable, character-forming age is to render violence to nature and a gross wrong and inequity to the boy; it is to do violence to that most precious possession, his masculine nature — a large sense, his soul’ (Chadwick, 1914, p. 116). A material threat to manly men (Lucas & Smith, 1978; Putney, 2001) was the late—nineteenth-century emergence in America of large corporations, with their plethora of mid-level management positions. America had always emphasized the strenuous life (Lucas & Smith, 1978), the struggle, competition, and drive for success. From the start of the first colonial settlements on the east coast, to the frontier experiences, there had been a need for the rugged individual, what was called the “masculine type.” With the rise of cities and the corporate state there was a loss of individuality, something which had been an integral part of manhood. From 1890-1940, Michael (2000) contends that due to urbanization “conformity” — as opposed to individualism - became more highly valued. The decline of the frontier and the crowding of the cities created what a number of observers called the threat of “over civilization” — a softness that posed a threat of decay in American society (Merwin, 1897; Roosevelt, 1897; Scudder, 1912). Charles W. Eliot, president of Harvard University, suggested that vigorous 77 sport must keep the nation from being dominated by feminine, thus what he considered weaker, qualities (Gardiner, 1914). Eugene L. Richards, a noted Yale mathematics professor, said that vigorous sports would lead to the “death of that effeminacy which is so rapidly undermining the American nation” (Richards, 1886). The perceived lack of national virility was observed and commented upon by the American novelist, Henry James (James, 1886). Through his characters, James wanted to save Americans “from the most darnnable feminism. . .the whole generation is womanized, the masculine tone is passing out of the world.” James wanted to preserve “the masculine character, the ability to dare and endure, to know and yet not fear reality...” (James, 1886, p. 283). The sedentary middle class, and their bureaucratic office jobs did not provide the same opportunity for exercise as farm or factory work. Nor did the resultant weakening of men’s musculature escape the notice of contemporary writers and Progressive Era reformers, many of whom began to bemoan to softness inherent in “over civilization,” city living, and the preponderance of women teachers. The vitality of Anglo-Saxon males was being “sapped;” the “decline of the race” was inevitable (Carnes, 1989; Putney, 1993). Defenders of Protestant hegemony also felt threatened by an influx of muscular immigrant hordes. Largely non- “Western” and non-Protestant in character (especially after 1880) this influx was often taken by Anglo-Saxons as a sign of their cultural displacement (Putney, 1993). In the half century between the end of the Civil War and the beginning of the First World War, over 24 million immigrants entered the United States (Steinberg, 1981). At the very least, warned Comel professor Edward Hitchcock, Jr., known by some as the ‘father of physical 78 education’ (Ladd & Mathisen, 1999, pg. 38), “Americans weakened by “neurasthenia” were vulnerable to race “mingling” and the loss of their distinctive Anglo-Saxon heritage” (Hitchcock, Jr., 1896). Oliver Wendell Holmes, for example, decried the existence in cities of “such a set of black-coated, stiff-jointed, soft- muscles, paste-complexioned youth as. . .never before sprung from the loins of Anglo-Saxon lineage” (Holmes, 183 5). If Anglo-Saxon men wanted to retain their dominant position in American society, preached various reformers, then they would have to follow the example set by Theodore Roosevelt, who transformed himself via boxing and barbells from a sickly house-bound teenager into the thug-beating, rough-riding, safari-going, big- stick-wielding Bull Moose of legend. Progressive Era reformers hurried to endorse artificial exercise, outdoor camping, and other methods of strengthening America’s elite; to endow “white boys” with “brute strength” and basic survival skills (Bederman, 2001; Hall, 1906; Putney, 1993; Rotundo, 1993). Some believed that public schools would have to initiate physical training if Anglo-Saxons were to “save our race from physical degeneracy.” Theodore Roosevelt (1897) said: “We don’t want to see the virtuous young man always have shoulders that slope like those of a champagne bottle, while the young man who is not virtuous is allowed to monopolize the burly strength which must be possessed by every great and masterful nation.” Roosevelt preached the virtues of athleticism, the outdoors as a remedy for urban life, improved character as an impediment to vice, and the necessity of opposing “race suicide.” 79 Mrozek (1983) also stresses that sport came to be associated with sexual behavior — first as a means of guarding what they thought to be the limited sexual energy of the male, and later as a means of increasing his sexual potency and improving the women’s capacity to bear healthy children. Casual sex was frowned upon. Bodily exercise became an acceptable prophylactic against unfettered lust, self-pleasuring, and unwanted sexual activity. Physical activity was believed to foster desirable moral qualities, and to actually strengthen libido and marital relationships. Muscular Christianity also had particular appeal to a generation of Americans who embraced a form of social Darwinism that applied the idea of “survival of the fittest” to human society (Perry, 1944, p. 246-255). Those individuals who survived and prospered were seen not only as biologically fit but also morally fit. This belief incorporated the idea that sport was a character-building activity with moral consequences for individuals and society. American’s political leaders envisioned sports as a medium for teaching democratic values, while educators embraced sport as a means of building group loyalty and personal discipline. The noted psychologist G. Stanley Hall argued that the character and morality of young people could be better achieved through physical conditioning than by intellectual training (Cavallo, 1981, pp. 59-60). Muscular Christianity inspired the development of American sports and athletics, also leading to the idealization of the all-American boy (Bundgaard, 1982; Lurnpkin, 1979; Overman, 1997). Muscular Christianity in America inspired the development of the Y.M.C.A., Y.W.C.A., Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, Camp Fire Girls, 80 Little League baseball, youth league athletic programs, and public school physical education and athletic programs (McCallum, 2005; Putnam, 2001; Wiggins, 1987). The evidence presented suggests that when white muscular Christians spoke of “American manhood,” they generally had in mind some sort of Anglo-Saxon, white male privileged, ruling class, patriarchal ideal (Hall, 1994; Putney, 2001). Roediger (2005) points out that American immigrant groups considered “white” today (i.e., Greek, Irish, Italian, Jewish, Polish, Scot, Slavic, or Spanish) occupied a confused “racial status” in their new country. The English, French and German were white; the others, including freed Afiican-American slaves and their descendants, were just that, “others.” And the inclusion of “others” into mainstream American life and activity was vigorously shunned during the early twentieth century. T aylorism and F ordism The requisites of industry, along with those of urban commerce, would reshape the American workers’ lives. Industrialization meant that the human scale was steadily and inexorably replaced by a highly rationalized and bureaucratic one (Martin, 1978). Artisans working in or near their homes gave way to gatherings of specialized workers in factories. In the 18305, four out of five workmen had been employed in shops with no more than 20 employees. As late as 1850 the typical centers of manufacture remained the home and the workshop. But industrial consolidation spread rapidly and widely in the 18705. By the turn of the century the majority of employees in the northeast United States worked in factories of more than 100 workers. By 1919, the great industrial corporations were employing four- fifths of all wage earners in America (Barnes, 1966). 81 As early as 1776, Adam Smith (Overman, 1997) gave the first detailed explanation of how the division of labor could increase productivity. Smith’s principles were applied expeditiously in the emerging factories of the industrial nations. What Smith contributed to theory, the Quaker industrialist Frederick W. Taylor carried out in practice. Taylor’s revolutionary methods of scientific management resulted in the rationalization of the structure and function of the 19th century work place (Schermerhom, 1993; Stewart, 1989; Wrege & Greenwood, 1991) The goal of the new system —— referred to as “Taylorism” — brought about increased productivity standardization and control (Franklin, 1977; Scherrnerhorn, 1993). Introduced during the late 19th century, Taylorism imposed new standards of rational efficiency and discipline which required that workers be predictable (Becker, 1991; Becker & Steele, 1995; Brohm, 1976; Kwoleck-Folland, 1994; Nelson, 1980). Every facet of production, and workers’ movements, were critique, measured and timed in an effort to maximize efficiency. Scientific management quickly branched out from the work place to influence virtually every level of social structure. The rationalization of work was followed by rationalization of the family. Mass auto-maker Henry Ford, who introduced the income standard of the “$5 day,” required that his married male employees be the sole-provider for their stay-at-home wife and well behaved children. This practice set the model for the twentieth-century American labor class family, responsible femininity and responsible masculinity (Breedveld, 1996; 82 Collier, 1987; Lacey, 1986; Meyer, 1981; Singer, 2003). The rationalization of the family lead to the rationalization of recreation (Overman, 1997). The work ethic and the need for achieved status contributed significantly to the rationalization of American sport. Achievement required rationalized standards against which to measure it objectively (Rigauer, 1981, p. xiv). Rationalized labor had provided clear standards for achievement, and sport appropriated the standards of achievement used by labor. By its’ very nature, sport proved to be well adapted to objective standards as it consisted of highly visible accomplishments that were easily measured. Sport borrowed other methods and values from industrialized labor: division of labor, ultra-specialization, calculation and measurement, planning, efficiency, the parceling up of the body, repetition of stereotyped movements, self- discipline, stop-watch timing and subordination to experts (Brohm, 1976; Goldman & Wilson, 1977). For an achievement-oriented society, like America, which prided itself on productive work and disdained futility of effort, it was predictable that the usual methods of amateur athletes would give way to a rationalized brand of sport pursued by scholastic (Armstrong, 2002), collegiate (Camp, 1910), and professional artisans (Morgan, 1985). Training for sport evolved in a process that was calculated, analyzed, dissected, and synthesized as the production process in the factories (Sage, 1974a; Overman, 1997). Taylorism was introduced as a series of managerial control techniques that fragmented, routinized and specified in extreme detail the way in which factory work should proceed (Kwolek-Folland, 1994; Overman, 1997; Schermerhom, Jr., 1993). Every work process was broken down into activity units 83 that could be timed and, therefore, controlled (Appendix H, p 477). Football coaches, like Benton Harbor, Michigan’s 1903 high school coach Tetzel, and his college contemporary Walter Camp at Yale, copied Taylor as they timed and measured every facet of their team members’ performance: speed, stamina, power, agility, and mental factors (Armstrong, 2002; Sage, 1998). This practice continues today, even at the scholastic level of football where team members are timed in dashes and shuttle runs, measured in vertical jumps; and tested in bench press and squats, in an effort to determine who might prove to be the superior player, thereby making a better contribution to the team’s winning effort. The conception of the product and process was what gave workers a feeling of control of their labor. However, under Taylorism, the managers were the only ones who conceptualized the process and the product. The worker simply was handed instructions to follow (Franklin, 1997). This was now applied to athletics, particularly football. Team positions became structured for precise specialization. Game planning was left to the scouts and coaches, only. Football became suffused with the technical imagery and values of the work place; calculation, planning, efficiency, self-discipline, and subordination to experts (Goldman & Wilson, 1977). The quest for more efficiency led to sophisticated offensive formations that would accommodate both the running and passing games, and defensive alignments to stop the offensive strategies. Coaches analyzed each team position for specific movement patterns and then trained each player specifically for the position played. For instance, field goal kickers in football developed skills distinct from most other line 84 and backfield players (Denny, 1957). Football, it is suggested, has become the apex of the sport coaching-rationalization movement. Masculine Ideologies In December 1750, the Academy of Belles Lettres of Corsica, responding to unsettled issues of gender in pre-revolutionary Frances, sponsored an essay competition on the question: “What is the virtue most necessary to the hero?” Rousseau, in an unsubmitted 1768 essay answered: “Manliness!” (Rosen, 1994). Convinced that the archetypal button-down Victorian gentleman was ill-equipped to handle the challenges posed by modernity (Putney, 2001), many Progressives proposed a new model of manhood, one that stressed action rather than reflection, and aggression rather than gentility. To describe their new ideal man, a new word was adopted; the adjective “masculine,” which did not come into general usage until the 18908 (Bederman, 2001). “Masculine,” now connoted the sort of raw male power needed to combat disruptive changes in society. Hall (1994) states that the literature of the Victorian period depicted smug sexism and glorification of violence; a celebration of resiliency, determination, comradeship, and hard-fought, successful struggles against overwhelming odds. Rosen (1994) finds suggestions that manliness — being a “real man” — required ‘boldness,’ ‘honesty,’ and ‘plainness;’ defiance of authority; stoic patience; violent energy, and a ‘sanctioned” sexual appetite. “Animal passion,” was linked to masculine physicality by some writers, described as a hot rage, and becomes the primal stuff of virtue that stamped the male nature and sought expression through 85 sex, fighting, and morality. Manliness could only be achieved by following primal forces. Whitson (1990) states that the “muscular Christianity” athletic fields were places where the development of physical presence, stoic courage in the endurance of pain, and judgment under pressure was portrayed as simply part of the achievement of manhood. Connell (1987), supports Whitson (1990), arguing that body sense is crucial to the development of male identity. To learn to be male is to learn to project a physical presence that speaks of latent power. It is suggested that sport, including football, is empowering for many young males precisely because it teaches how to use the body to produce effects, and to achieve power through practical combinations of force and skill. Whitson (1990) adds that “becoming a man” is something that boys, and especially adolescent boys, work at. Oriard (1993) supports, stating that learning to be a man illustrated the force of the belief that “what it means to be masculine is, quite literally, to embody force, to embody competence.” Especially among adolescent males, for whom other sources of recognized masculine authority (e.g., based on earning power, adult sexual relations, or fatherhood) are some ways off, the development of body appearance and body language that are suggestive of force and skill is experienced as an urgent task. This explains boys’ embarrassment at weakness or lack of coordination in many forms of exercise, in cults of physicality and martial arts, and especially in sport. Since the beginning of the game of football, including at the scholastic level, visible, active “toughness” has been the basic requirement. Some degree of injury was normal. Being seen as tough was the recognition desired. A concussion was not 86 considered genuine unless the player was lying on the ground, unconscious. Each player joined the team with the understanding that participation would involve some pain. Just how much pain was the gamble? And even if injury occurred, complaints were not welcomed; that would be taken as a sign of weakness. Being “tough” meant your were able to experience physical discomfort without complaining (Armstrong, 2002) Being a winner meant you outlasted the other fellow. That’s why most participants continued to play with injuries, regardless of the severity, and tried to hide them from the coach to prevent being pulled [out of the game]. Young men willingly played until they dropped (Armstrong, 2002). In Armstrong’s (2002) narrative of Michigan high school football played in 1902, one of the student-athletes relates: “. . .some [opposing player] elbowed me in the face. . .I recovered quickly, but my right eye- tooth was loose and I wiggled it with my tongue until it dropped [out]. Most of the fellows had lost teeth playing football, but that was my first and it made me mad as hell. That’s when I decided to make [the other team] pay. . .so I held the tooth in my cheek, and with the taste of warm blood in my mouth called out the next play. . . [I later] ran over to the bench, tossed my tooth on the grass where I could find it later, and grabbed a wad of gauze [from the trainer] and clamped it between my teeth” (Armstrong, 2002,p.189) In contemporary Western culture, Whitson (1990) supported by Brohrn (1976) argues that sport, and especially confrontational team games, ritualizes aggression and allows it to be linked with competitive achievement and, in turn, with masculinity. Sport has become one of the most important sites of masculinizing 87 practices in cultures, and within social classes, characterized by periods of longer schooling, in which other kinds of physical prowess (e.g., physical labor or combat) have become devalued and in which direct aggression is officially illegitimate. The major team games (i.e., American football in particular), in other words, continue as institutions through which the reproduction of hegemonic masculinity is actively pursued. These games are typically institutions in which physical strength and fighting skills are celebrated, in which male solidarity [and especially solidarity among aggressive, dominating males] is also celebrated and which therefore reinforce constraints on boys’ experimenting with other ways of being male. Being a male dancer or painter is not publicly encouraged by the masses; but, being a football player, it is suggested, is promoted by the culture. Both females and males have been victims of sex-oriented enculturation and sex-role stereotyping (Bryson, 1987; Mawson, 1983). Formal athletic structures (i.e., leagues, clubs, conferences, associations) have existed as male only, female exclusionary institutions (Sherrod, 1987). Until the passage of Title IX in 1973 (Coakley, 2007; Dowling, 2000) athletic participation solely served as an extremely accessible means to construct public masculine identity (Messner, 1989). Organized sport is thus an institution that has served to construct gender order, class and ethnic/race inequities (Connell, 1987; Gorley, Holroyd & Kirk, 2003; Sabo & Jansen, 1992). Sport socialized boys to be men, including the “masculine” cultural values and behaviors of competition, acceptance/tolerance of pain and injury, winning at all costs, and devaluation of women, female sensibilities and experiences (Lever, 1976; Nixon, 1984; Schaefer, 1975; Swain, 2003; White, Young & McTeer, 88 1995). Instrumental violence that, which is within the rules of the sport, was also justified (Bredemeier & Shields, 1985; Ewing, 2002; Figler & Whitaker, 1995). Anti-Feminine Ideologies, and Damage Done to Men Anti-feminine ideologies Organized team sports — and those who coach them have traditionally, although often unknowingly-- largely serve a limited number of athletically talented, able-bodied, misogynist, white, heterosexual males (Anderson, 2005). Sport is quite unique in that it near totally segregates women away from men —something more akin to orthodox religions than state-sponsored social welfare programs (Anderson, 2005). Football, due to the fact that women have been historically both excluded and systematically discouraged from full participation, continues to exhibit an anti- feminine ideology. The male warrior culture places men in dominant places- of physical power, denying that the current post-industrial society now prioritizes productive brain power and intellectual prowess, over symbolic physical power placed on commodified exhibition. Burstyn (1999), in reference to institutionalized and organized sport, emphatically states: “Modern sports, as a masculinist culture in a superseded ‘seperatesphere’ gender division of labor, has succeeded because it has been able to literally embody forward-looking values associated with emergent, then dominant, industrialization and and national formation while basing itself in archaic, residual values associated with highly differentiated, ranked gender order of tribal male warrior culture.” (Burstyn, 1999, p. 32) 89 Football played a limited role in the construction of gender during the Progressive Era, but gender concerns played a major concern in assuring football’s acceptance (Oriard, 1993). In the 1906 issue of American Physical Education Review competitive sports were presented as damaging to femininity and a threat to a woman’s reproductive capabilities (Dowling, 2000; Putney, 2001; Smith- Rosenberg & Rosenberg, 1973). Most outspoken on the subject was Harvard physical education proponent Dudley Allen Sargent, who feared the female competitor’s “tendency to become masculine in form and character” and who foresaw the day when “effeminate man will succumb to virile woman” (Twin, 1985, p.202-203). To “postpone that time,” he urged that woman’s role in the “rougher sports” be confined to that of uplifter and encourager and that her knowledge of such sports be sufficient only to enable her “to be the sympathetic admirer of men and boys in their efforts to be strong, vigorous and heroic” (Putney, 2001). The reproduction of anti-feminine attitudes among men in sport is achieved by both structural and cultural methods. First, few other institutions naturalized the structural segregation of men and women so near perfectly as do team sports (Anderson, 2005; Messner, 2002). While occupational sex segregation is declining in other institutions (Cotter, DeFiore, Hersen, Kowalski & Vanneman, 1995; Johnson, 1998; Rotolo & Whaton, 2004), institutionalized, competitive team sports remain segregated through formal and social reasoning (Messner, 2002). This segregation has many historical sources including the belief that women were not physically or emotionally capable of playing sport and the overriding belief that women were not 90 naturally inclined to participate in such activity (Crosset, 1990; Hargreaves, 1993; Kidd, 1990; Whitson, 1990). Whitson (1990) identified a clear concern to maximize and [among men] celebrate the difference between men and women. Masculinity is often organized not as a positive construct but rather as that which is not feminine, or more bluntly, not effeminate. And while we no longer believe that sporting participation is physically incompatible with womanhood, a still salient cultural variable in men’s sports is that masculinity remains predicated in not associating with femininity (Anderson, 2005). The reasons for this are multiple and complex but the equation of predicting masculinity in opposition to femininity is one of sociology’s most durable findings (Kimmel, 1994). Damage done to men But freedom for women in sport is inextricably linked to freedom for men as well. Men have been described as “both guarantor and victim” of patriarchy (Reynaud, 1983: 114). Some work on men and masculinities has been written by men who reject dominant ideas about their sex and are struggling to redefine themselves. Segal (1990) has said: “Our power in society as men not only oppresses women but also imprisons us in a deadening masculinity which cripples our relationships — with each other, with women, with ourselves” (Segal, 1990, p. 287). Men are seen as victims in the sense that our society forces them in a very brutal way to subjugate their sensitivities in favor of aggressive displays of masculinity and, as Messner (1987) argues, sport has become one of the most important channels for this process in a society where traditional male roles are in crisis. As he puts it: 91 “Both on a personal/existential level for athletes, and on a symbolic/ideological level for spectators and fans, sport has become one of the “last bastions” of male power and superiority over — and separation from -— the “feminization” of society” (Messner, 1987, p. 54). Some men who have sensed the brutalization of their own subjectivities have actively rejected aggressive competitive sports. Many others, however, have been humiliated and suffered a sense of failure of manliness by being incapable of meeting the demands of traditional male sports. They have excluded themselves from sport altogether and thereby miss out from the social and social capital building experiences the sport participation offers. Such experiences highlight the importance of Messner’s (1987) suggestion: “. . .since the sports world is an important arena that serves partly to socialize boys and young men to hierarchical, competitive, and aggressive values, it is also an important context within which to confront the need for a humanization of men “ (Messner, 1987, p. 65-6). Sex-role stereotyping in sport impoverishes both men and women: few of either sex have a wide and fulfilling range of movement experiences — those that are energetic, powerful, skillful and exciting and those that are expressive and sensuous, using the body with delicacy and flexibility. We need to examine more closely the lived complexities of men’s as well as women’s sporting experiences and the changing forms of masculinities and femininities in sport which are linked to changing values. Although many men in sport may be agents of oppression, men are not inherently oppressive and they have a primary role to play, with women, to eliminate in sport uneven gender divisions, the construction of chauvinist masculine 92 identities, the treatment of women as sex objects, and the sexual harassment of women. Accordingly, the social world created around men’s team sports is one of subversion for the respect of women, who are not viewed as worthy participants in the sporting terrain. Instead of valuing the athleticism of women, their social location in relationship to men is one that frequently posits them as bodies to be pursued and conquered by the ‘rightful’ participants of the sporting terrain. This has even been theorized to lead to elevated rates of sexual violence against women by members of certain team sports (Crosset, 1990; Crosset, Benedict & MacDonald, 1995). The continued place we accord to confrontational team games in our hierarchy of sports, and then the continued acclaim we accord to the men who shine in them — and the exclusion of women from equal participation - mean that these games continue to offer important opportunities for masculinizing practices. Individual coaches utilize their agency (willingly or not) in order to help reproduce sport as a socially exclusive institution (Anderson, 2005). Contemporagz American [ootball values Contemporary American football values are carryovers from traditional societal values, symbolic warfare, and the history of the game (Fowler, 2001; Oriard, 1993; Spirling & Chesler, 2001). More directly, high school head football coaches and professional football coaches socialized in traditional gendered values since the mid-twentieth century have continued to socialize young men through the game of football (Cashion ,1998; Kramer, 1976; Kramer & Schaap, 1985; Lombardi & Heinz, 1963). 93 High school football values from the mid-twentieth century Cashion (1998) established a dialogue in 1993 with old Texas high school football coaches by sending them a survey questionnaire and then arranging interviews. His goal was to produce a social history that would examine the men whose rites and doctrines largely shaped his own outlooks and values along with those of several generations of Texas schoolboys. Over a period of four years, he conducted almost two hundred hours of interviews with coaches and received numerous letters relating their coaching experiences. The text that emerged from countless hours of taped interviews with more than eighty coaches, as well as follow- up calls, periodic correspondence, and casual conversations, represents the first scholarly treatment of Texas high school coaches as a social group. The values the coaches spoke of included achievement, competition, courage, good character and citizenship, hard work and never quitting, honesty, and success. The coaches spoke of the importance of being masculine, of militaristic type toughness, and about the importance of how coaches treated their players. Coach Morris Southall spoke generally: “Values are very important — honesty, hard work, ethics, be on time, follow rules, and contribute”[are important values for players to learn (Cashion, 1998, p.37). Other coaches indicated additional values such as conformity, respect for authority, and facing adversity. Achievement and Competition Achievement was a value spoken of by a few of the coaches. Joe Hedrick stated: “Coaching was getting kids to do what they didn’t want to do, to achieve what they (the players) wanted” (Cashion, 1998, p.37). Bill Shipman alluded to 94 achievement being a desired goal of youth. He said: “Kids want to prove themselves by accomplishing difficult things. . .you’ve got to let a kid measure up” (Cashion, 1998, p.15). Bill Shipman remembered his early coaching days when “Texas was rowdy and virile, and also extremely competitive.” Coach Carlos Berry felt: “Competition is good. . .if things come easy, then kids will never have to search themselves [and find ways to achieve at higher levels]” (Cashion, 1998, p.181). Conduct, Character and Citizenship Texas high school head football coaches connected good conduct, with good character and good citizenship. Coach E.C. Lerman made it a point of guiding his players with the statement: “Good conduct, good living!” (Cashion, 1998, p. 37). Ascribing somewhat to the future behavioral mantra of college football’s Lou Holtz, who summed up his team conduct rules as “Do the right thing,” Texas high school head football coach Allen Boren told his players: “If it’s right, do it; if it’s wrong, don’t do it.” He felt his kids “can tell the difference [between right and wrong] because they have a conscience” (Cashion, 1998, p. 37). At the core of beliefs of Coach Robert Lowrance lays a conviction that “discipline and a sense of accountability were the keystones of character-and that it was football’s job to teach those lessons” (Cashion, 1998, p. 15). John Reddell stressed taking pride in one’s work as evidence of good character. He told his players: “You don’t have to be tough, mean, or ugly, just have pride in what you do” (Cashion, 1998, p. 37). Bill Hartley said: “Through this game of football, we are going to make good citizens — or better citizens --- and we stressed this point [to our players)” (Cashion, 1998, p.36). Jewell Wallace felt his goal as a coach was to: “Try to make them [the 95 players] become better citizens and live a life that means something to them. Honesty and a hard work ethic” [were the keys to that end] (Cashion, 1998, p. 37). At times the coaches were called upon to display character, even if it placed the success of their season in jeopardy and made them unpopular. Coach Bob Ledbetter, amid howls of protests from angry parents, suspended tvventy-two players from his 1994 play—off-bound team for merely attending a party where alcohol was served. Coach Ledbetter had done the same thing in 1992. Additionally, a few years before that, he had to kick four boys off the team for a drug violation. Three of those players were two-way starters, and that was the only year [ that the team] didn’t make the playoffs. In 1996, Coach Bill Keith assured himself a dismal season by dismissing several players from his squad after they confessed to more serious after- garne revelry (Cashion, 1998, p.3). Conformity and Respect for authority Coach Allert stated: “I want my players to like me, but the ultimate is that I want them to respect me” (Cashion, 1998, p. 13). John Reddell remarked: “I always told my players to ‘look right, act right, be respectful, and don’t embarrass the team” (Cashion, 1998, p. 251). “As defenders of traditional values, Texas high school head football coaches fervently believed that it was their duty to compel conformity among the young men on their teams (Bissinger, 1990; Cashion, 1998, p. 248).” Honesty, Hard work and Success; Commitment and Facing Adversity Jewell Wallace believed that: “Honesty and a hard work ethic are values the kids need to learn” [through playing football] (Cashion, 1998, p. 37). Robert Lowrance taught self-reliance. “Success comes through hard work, whether it’s 96 football or life. Nobody ever gives you anything — you have to earn what you get (Cashion, 1998, p. 14). This could also be described as the value of ‘self-reliance.’ Almost all the old-time Texas coaches possessed a firm belief that the game presented their players a microcosm of life’s future obstacles (Cashion, 1998). Herb Allen declared: “All athletics is life played in the form of a game. You get knocked down, you have to get up. If you get knocked down seven times, you have to be prepared to get up eight times” (Cashion, 1998, p. 38). Taskmaster Leon Vinyard stated: “Football has a great deal of bearing on staying hitched to the wagon — you know, not quitting when things get tough” (Cashion, 1998, p. 14). Head coach Eddie Joseph directed his players: “I don’t care who you are, you’re going to have adversity come. . .Football, more than anything else, teaches you never to quit” (Cashion, 1998, p. 38). Masculinity, Courage and Military Experience To a generation of Texas high school football coaches who grew up and reached maturity in times of depression and war, the things that were “right” revolved around the values of self-reliance, sacrifice, discipline, accountability and survival — in a word that coaches so often used, manliness, in its most positive sense (Cashion, 1998). A manly attitude went hand-in-hand with the qualities that football imparted. Bill Hartley remarked: “If you got hurt out there on the field, don’t you crawl back to the huddle, you walk back to the huddle, and then you can get down, but don’t you let that guy know that he got the best of you. That sounds kind of brutal, but there are times when you get to feeling sorry for yourself, and you’re 97 tired, and you want to give in, but you’ve got to keep going. . . .you don’t show pain” (Cashion, 1998, p. 179). “It is manly to withstand the problems of football,” said John Reddell, who used athletics as a ticket out of Oklahoma’s Dust Bowl. “It introduced success, failure, excitement, work ethic, and respect for group.” The code of masculinity nevertheless demanded that they stop short of putting their emotions on display — at least those that betrayed weakness, pain, disappointment, and, sometimes, even mercy. At the same time, the coaches’ devotion to shaping young manhood coincided with the child-centered society that had emerged in the generation following World War II. Coaches reinforced such prevailing ideas as obeying authority, following rules, and conforming to social expectation, yet they did so by shepherding their charges the same way they had been coached (Cashion, 1998, p. 175). Some coaches even linked these football values to military combat. This football-combat nexus is part of the historical masculine-identity building ethos of the sport (Fowler, 2001; Spirling & Chesler, 2001). Ex-marine Ray Atkins, who fought at Okinawa, believed that football could reinforce a sense of survival, the most basic of human instincts (Patoski, 1987). Joe Hedrick, who survived Iwo J ima, believed that “only war brings out the same type of camaraderie” as football. Donald Jay agreed: “There is a bond there that doesn’t exist in other professions” (Cashion, 1998, p.178). Coach Eddie Joseph related that during the Vietnam War he occasionally received letters from former players who told him how football helped them cope with combat. One wrote: “All around me I see people who have surrendered, but I can’t, because you never let me quit” 98 (Cashion, 1998, p. 15). That combat mentality sometimes framed how coaches conducted practice, and prepared for games. “If you can get over the mental part, the physical part is easy,” remarked Joe Bob Tyler who suffered a nightmarish experience as a World War II prisoner of war. “If we worked them [the players] unreasonably hard, it was our effort and our philosophy that this is what was required in order to have your youngsters physically conditioned for the rigors of combat and football” (Cashion, 1998, p.39). Coach Maurice Cook declared: “Football is special to me. I think it teaches a lot of firings that some other sports don’t. I’ve always told my players football is a game that brings you face-to-face with your courage factor. ‘You’re going to get to know yourself because you’re going to see what you do when you’re scared.’ When you line up against a guy that outweighs you by twenty, or thirty, or forty pounds, you’re going to know in your heart —“What do I do when I’m scared?” That, he proclaimed, was a lesson in character building that made the drudgery of football worthwhile (Cashion, 1998, p. 177). The coaching fraternity, treatment of players, and construction of the teachable moment or environment Bob Harrell, head football coach of Irving High School asserted: “Coaches are a tight-knit fraternity. They all think alike. They have the same pressures. The job life is confining. There’s a common goal, and you struggle together to reach it. And if you lose, you’re all under the same pressure. The pecking order was God, coaching, and family — that order” (Cashion, 1998, p. 42). 99 Eddie Joseph, another head football coach stated: “You treat every single kid like they’re your own.” Coach Emory Bellard: “The key is to create a situation where the kid wants to do what you want him to. You’ve got to be able to play with confidence. Confidence is a ‘result,’ not something that precedes the other (Cashion, 1998, p.37). The mutual expectations, behaviors and goals or coaches; and the perceived benevolent treatment of their players, has the potential of bounding all participants into a everlasting ideologically homogenous social group. Summary of Texas high school head football coaches’ values The coaches whose careers began around the time of World War II and continued though the tumultuous social changes in the decades that followed possessed a conviction that football imparted the qualities that would turn fuzzy- chinned boys into stalwart young men (Cashion, 1998, p.14). Cashion (1998) found it difficult to appreciate that most of these men’s fathers were born in the nineteenth century (Cashion, 1998, p. 16). These Texas coaches had been raised by parents born in the 18008; some parents born when Texas was still a territory, and America not yet a truly united nation. These men, who had grown up with nothing [through the depression], taught their players to be resilient; these men, who had been fed old- time religion, encouraged their players to act on their emotions; these men, most of them [World War II] veterans, many of whom had killed other human beings in combat, treated their players like soldiers; and they felt that passing on the lessons that they had learned of competition, hard work, honesty, and other values was in the best interest of the kids. The imparting of life’s lessons, and values, seemed natural to these old coaches. Those values included achievement and success, accountability, 100 character and citizenship, commitment, competition, conduct, conformity and respect for authority, discipline, facing adversity, hard work, honesty, sacrifice, self-reliance, and survival. Professional football values fiom the mid-twentieth century Contemporary American football values, at the youth and interscholastic levels are rooted in the current image of professionalism. Lombardi (Kramer, 1976; Kramer & Schaap, 1985; Lombardi & Heinz, 1963) is most noted for his winning record and his testosterone dripping statements. They embody concepts of (l) courage; (2) commitment; (3) tolerance of pain; and (4) the importance of winning. Courage “Fatigue makes cowards of us all.” Commitment “You must be willing to pay the price.” “You must have a commitment to excellence; A single-mindedness of purpose.” “The greatest thing a man can do is to lie in total exhaustion, on the field of battle, victorious. Tolerance of pain “You must play this game with reckless abandon; a total disregard for your body.” The importance of winning “Winning is the only thing!” Lombardi’s statements distill aspects of Weber’s Protestant Ethic viewpoint to its most basic elements. Lombardi tied directly and succinctly to football what capitalism and industrialism, as depicted by Weber, had 101 demanded of the general culture. Fatigue could not be accepted as a reason for failure; dedicated commitment to a rational goal was a societal expectation for the individual; pain and discomfort was an expected and tolerate part of any question; and achievement, success and/or winning had to be approached and embraced as the only acceptable outcome of effort. Coakley (2007) points out that to understand the connection between the sport or football ethic, as promoted by Lombardi, and behavior in sports, three points must be kept in mind. I The norms of the sport ethic are widely accepted in cultures in which people believe that it is important to de dedicated to what you do, strive for improvement, make sacrifices to achieve goals, push yourself even when things are difficult or painful, and pursue dreams despite obstacles. I It is expected that those who wish to be accepted as athletes in sport cultures will conform to these norms. I People with power in sports take great care to control deviant underconformity, but they often ignore or encourage overconformity. Kramer (1968; Kramer & Schaap, 1985), coached by Lombardi on the Green Packers of the National Football League stressed the value of camaraderie. He relished the on-and-off field, in-season and out-of-season friendships he developed with his teammates. They were united against opposing teams, since all or part of their financial lively-hood depended on the successful or unsuccessful outcome of 102 the season. Head coaches, at all levels were usually viewed as the greatest teacher- of—life a player would ever have (Telander, 1989). This collective, patriarchal, and authority accepting good will is also noted in the works of Lomax (2002), and Sabo and Panepinto (1990). Institutionalized Aggression and Violence At its most rudimentary and unpolished level it was, and still is, believed that a player’s duty includes the disabling of his opponent. Coaches and athletes frequently express ill feelings toward one’s competitor as they have been socialized into an in-group/out-group perspective that is predicated upon establishing the other team as the enemy (Anderson, 2005). Youth sometimes accept the intentional infliction of injury upon an opposing player as being part of the game. Armstrong (2002) in his narrative of mid-westem high school football in 1902, quotes a youth who played the game before television and the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) or National Football League (NFL) had yet been conceived. One youth states: “. . .we have been taught from the very beginning that hurting your opponent was good football (Armstrong, 2002, p.32). “...we believed it was a player’s duty to disable his opponent” (Armstrong, 2002, p. 106) And the chance of injury was an accepted part of playing the game. “We eagerly traded our health for the fun and glory” (Armstrong, 2002, p.105). Most who are involved with playing football, even without overt thoughts of “masculinity,” embrace the physical toughness, the hard-hitting nature of the game, 103 along with most of the behavior necessary to engage in competition. Tatum (1979), a former New Jersey high school All-State, Ohio State University All-American, and Oakland Raider NFL, All-Pro player, known for his intimidating and physically threatening style of play, proudly and defiantly stated: “...I and others like myself learned early in our careers that in football, the name of the game is hitting, and to play it well, you have to play it hard” (Tatum, 1979, p. 4). “I never make tackle just to bring someone down. I want to punish the man I’m going after and I want him to know that it’s going to hurt every time he comes my way” (Tatum, 1979, p. 11). “...the structure of football is based on punishing your opponent” (Tatum, 1979, p. 18). NFL player Jeremy Shockey supported Tatum with the statement: “I feel like I’ve been coached...my whole life — to play dirty and to play mean” (Lieber, 2003, p. 1C). Though the professional ethos is based on the infliction, and tolerance, of pain the actual practice of the game is no less on the high school and youth levels. The musculature and power is progressively lower, yet the physical intent remains the same. Football remains the same. To be played well, it must be played with “reckless abandon,” (Kramer, 1976; Kramer & Schaap, 1985; Lombardi & Heinz, 1963) a total disregard for your body or that of the opponent. This holds true even at the high school or youth levels. Deviant Behavior and drug usage as an accepted pattern in football Chandler (1984) prepared for each NFL professional game by getting an injection of Xylocaine and Indocin to control the pain of old injuries, and added 104 Benzedrine for extra energy. This drug dependent behavior is common at the professional level because the measure of a football player isn’t just how well be performs on Sunday but how well he performs in pain (Williams, 1999). Furthermore, coaches at the professional level look for players will to take risks and play through pain; they like injured players in the lineup because it shows teammates that overconformity to the norms of the sport ethic is values on their teams (Coakley, 2007) Lombardi’s (1963) testosterone dripping statements set the frame for, and reflect, the brutal high school, college, and professional practices conducted in the 1950’s and through the Vietnam era 19703. The drinking of water was not allowed during practice; salt tablets were dispensed without limitation to retain fluid; rubber sweat suits were worn to promote weight loss even during hot-weather drills; drills were conducted until players vomited or collapsed, only to be encouraged to get back up and “Be a man!” There was no such thing as sports medicine; players were strongly encouraged to avoid doctors, and ignore injury. “Be a man!” It was an embarrassment to curtail activities due to some micro trauma (i.e., broken fingers, broken nose, some dislocations, nose-bleeds, cuts and abrasions, lost teeth). Since this was pre-HIV/AIDS, playing while bleeding was considered a “Red Badge of '99 Courage To stop play, or to be taken. out of a game, because of a bloody wound was unheard of. These values of toughness, sacrifice, accepted, expected and desired aggression and violence are still part of the game at all levels, including high school and youth, college and professional sports levels (Armstrong, 2002; Bissinger, 105 1990). And the paying fans, at all of these levels, support, even demand that those values be put on seasonal and public display. Kaye (1973) finds nothing wrong with the “good, clean violence” offered by football. Football continually and currently exists by perpetuating old forms of male dominated tribal inspired contrived feudalism. For example: I Cowboys vs. Redskins aka Dallas vs. Washington I Giants vs. Ravens aka New York vs. Baltimore I Raiders vs. Dolphins aka Oakland vs. Miami Isn’t this the same as the Brits versus the Anglo-Saxons; the Huns versus the Romans; or Christians versus the Moors? In a post-industrial, computerized, globalized, arguably and operationally post-national world, the social — structural functional and symbolic interactional — model and reasons for football may be outdated. Yet, football is still the only team sport in which violent physical collision is a taught, practiced, instrumental (Ewing, 2002; Figler & Whitaker, 1995) and specifically designed skill. Violence is not innate within the human psyche; it is partly trained into us by culture (Leizrnan, 1999). Atyeo (1979) believes that the football field and the hunting lodge (e.g., the locker room) are two of the last great bastions of male bonding. Indeed, overt masculinity — machismo - is one of the reasons why sport is as violent as it is. Only sport offers the opportunity of breaking a stranger’s nose, destroying an opponents’ knee ligaments or crashing someone against the boards without the threat of being thrown into prison as a homicidal maniac. 106 The game of football practices “designed collisions,” not just anticipated contact. For a specific segment of the team — offensive and defensive linemen, and linebackers — it is the basic skill they are taught, must perfect, and are expected to execute on every single play. The linemen, except for the offensive center, never touch the ball. Except for the knockdown or interception of a pass, linebackers never touch the ball. These groups have one basic, continual, repetitive purpose; violent, aggressive designed-collisions on every play! The related probable infliction of pain, possible injury, and tolerance of both, is an expected, integral and inherent necessity for the conduct of this activity that serves as a social structure, social location, and social engine. Football — as played by some and viewed by many — has arguably become a socially condoned male rite-of—passage within American culture. Summary of high school and professional football contemporary values Professional football values included courage, commitment, tolerance of pain, the importance of winning, and willingness to play with aggression. But the Texas high school coaches emphasized achievement and success, accountability, character and citizenship, commitment, competition, conduct, conformity and respect for authority, discipline, facing adversity, hard work, honesty, sacrifice, self-reliance, survival and toughness. There is a difference between the professional and high school vantage point. The professionals seem to be tied to competitive outcomes; the high school coaches seem to be locked to lifetime processes. The coaches are using the competitive social structure of football, and the social location of the football team to socialize young men towards values which will enable a productive life. The professional coaches are pointing towards values that magnify the possibility of 107 immediate success outcomes; the winning of a football game, only. Therefore, though professional and scholastic football participants share many of the foundational values of courage, commitment, and toughness, the scholastic arena adds an emphasis on values which have a long—term focus on life applications, not just the immediacy of competitive outcomes. Football: History, coaching culture, coaching organizational processes Introduction Football has held a unique place in American social history. It flourished as America sought to establish a national identity (Pope, 1997; Tunis, 1958). American white male identity — as participation in the game was initially limited to the privileged Anglo-Saxon Protestants who attended northeastern colleges -- was developed by playing the game (Fowler, 2001; Spirling & Chesler, 2001). The game then prospered as an instrument to socialize the urbanized immigrant masses into pools of industrialized labor (Becker, 1991; Breedveld, 1996; Brohm, 1976; Camp, 1910; Morgan, 1985; Rigaur, 1981; Stewart, 1989). (Dunning, 1999; Messner, 1990; Oriard, 1993). The values of the original and contemporary game have remained consistent. Football History in American Culture Predating the end of the Civil War, the Boston “Oneidas” formed the first high school football conference, with five teams, in 1862 (Armstrong, 2002). In 1901, an informal national high school football championship was played between Brooklyn, New York Polytech and Chicago’s Hyde Park. Both teams were scholastic champions in their home areas. Chicago was victorious, 105 — 0 (Armstrong, 2002). 108 According to Armstrong (2002), Michigan high school football began in the 18905, and by 1902 included teams in Ann Arbor, Benton Harbor, Escanaba, Grand Rapids, Ishpeming, Kalamazoo, Lansing, Mount Pleasant, Muskegon, Niles, and Saginaw. A high school state championship game was played annually during that period. Other states fielding high school teams included Illinois, Indiana, New York and Wisconsin. Many of the young men playing came from the ranks of the neighborhood football clubs, groups that were loosely organized but served as good training grounds for boys who wanted to play high school football (Armstrong, 2002) Fowler (2001) supported by Spirling and Chesler (2001) relate that the birth of American football was in the search for identifiable and practical masculinity. At the end of the Civil War, some northern college students, the sons of the privileged, were confronted with thousands of Union Army veterans retuning home looking for work in the mills, mines, foundries and factories owned by their fathers. They, the sons of the privileged, would one day run those businesses. The problem was, however, that as children of the rich and privileged, they had been sheltered and protected from the harshness of life. The returning veterans included those who were both psychologically and physically maimed by war. They might not take orders from the “bosses’ kids,” who were unproven young men. They might not respect those who had neither seen war, nor faced death. How could those veterans be expected to subordinate themselves to a group of managers who had never been physically challenged? 109 The wealthy privileged, sheltered and refined students at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Williams and Amherst colleges, among others, began to play a game involving their running into each other, blocking, tackling, hitting, shoving, piling on, breaking bones and noses; tearing ligaments, loosing teeth, fracturing ribs, shedding blood, sometimes even dying. All was done to prove that northeastern college students — ministers in training and/or privileged and coddled sons of the captains of industry — were as rough, tough, inhumane, and just as masculine as the scarred and bruised Civil War veterans (Fowler, 2001; Spirling & Chesler, 2001). The American game of football was born. The industrial revolution prospered; college football exploded! Lucas and Smith (1978) quote the sentiments of prestigious members of the establishment: Charles W. Eliot, president of Harvard University, when referring to football said that: “. . .effenrinacy and luxury are even worse evils than brutality”; Eugene L. Richards, Jr., the football playing son of a Yale mathematics professor, suggested that vigorous sports like football would lead to the “death of that effeminacy which is so rapidly undermining the American nation” (Oriard, 1993, p.248). Oriard (1993) cites others who qualified football’s virtues, saying: “Rough it is, and always will be, as any sport is where human beings come together, but there are many other things in life that are rough, and the lesson is not a bad one for the young man to learn.” (Oriard, 1993, p. 201) As a “manly” game, football played by boys would teach them to be men; football played by men would demonstrate their manliness. 110 At the same time as America sought a national identity (Pope, 1997; Tunis, 195 8); as urbanized industrialization coalesced capital wealth and power, and as ' football formed masculine identity (Fowler, 2001; Oriard, 1993; Spirling & Chesler, 2001), scientific labor management practices changed the socio-cultural face of the nation. Taylorism, the scientific management of specific human movement (Becker, 1991; Brohrn, 1976; Stewart, 1989) began to emphasize the measurement, direction and control of the efficiency of human movement. in the industrial production process. Time-of—production, competitive production, production record-keeping became management tools. Fordism, the mass management of specific human movement (Breedveld, 1996), pointed to new ways in production management. Production could now be standardized; the same item could be produced in massive numbers with each product identical in size, shape, complexity, and color as the last. Coaching methods began to reflect managed-labor practices (Morgan, 1985; Rigauer, 1981). Walter Camp, president of Connecticut’s New Haven Clock Company, Head Football Coach at Yale University, founder of the College All- American Football Team, contemporary of “rugged sportsman” United States President Theodore Roosevelt, and supported by the industrial barons/captains of industry lead Yale athletic booster club (e.g., John D. Rockefeller; Harry Whitney, brother of Payne Whitney — husband of Gertrude Vanderbilt, daughter of Cornelius Vanderbilt; and son of Alfred Vanderbilt), took the Taylor and Ford based principles of specialization of movement, production-teamwork, standardization of product, 111 productive competition, and time management, and introduced them to the game of football. Taylor gave us labor specialization. Ford gave us mass labor management and standardized mass production; a model of the middle class, male-as-sole provider/stay-at-home-mom family, and a leisure time consumer-based society. Stagg (Hicks, 1995) gave the game purpose. Camp gave us the modern game of football as a social location (Eitzen & Sage, 2003), a social structure (Landis, 1980; Mills, 2000), a social engine (Picket, 2000), and a site for the development of social capital (Ganley, 2003; Matthews, 2001; Putnam, 1995; Robison & Flora, 2003) in corporatized America. Stagg (Higgs, 1995), known as the father of football, in a book on football as a science proclaimed: “...the objective of football [is] to win rather than to play merely for pleasure. And winning require[5] planning, specialization, and coordinated --in short, ‘system’ and ‘order.’ (Higgs, 1995, p. 194) In an undated letter, Camp (circa 1910) stated: “American business has found in American college football the epitomization of present day business methods. . .Football has come to be recognized as the best school for instilling into the young man the attributes which business desires and demands.” (Camp, circa 1910) And just like the anti-industrialization and gender-hegemonic tenets of Muscular Christianity, masculinity was championed by football. President Woodrow Wilson (circa 1916) stated: 112 “. . .football encourages virile qualities, it is a valuable antidote to the corrupting tendencies of modern industrial society.” (Link, 1966, p.482-483; Riess, 1997, p. 245-246). All, however, were not in favor of football. High school educators were among the protestors. Michigan’s Saginaw High School Principal Frank Sage at an 1895 meeting of the State Teachers Association of Michigan said: “A game which, at best, leaves each player with every inch of his body bruised and sore, and many faces so disfigured that they are not fit to be seen, seems to me to favor a prize [fight] ring and the bullfight, and equally deserve our condemnation. I personally noticed the accounts of the killing of three young men in football this season, and have been told of as many more. Teachers of the high schools in Michigan, I ask you if a game in which such things are possible is a game fit [for] our boys? (Armstrong, 2002, p. xi). In spite of Sage’s protest in Michigan, and the approximate 309 deaths; 1,568 serious injuries, and 11 cases of paralysis reported from 1902 through 1916 (Clurman, 1911; Kindred, 2001; Moore, 1976; Outing Magazine, 1910; Park, 2001; Watterson, 2000) occurring to high school, college and club players, football was adopted by the industrial ruling class and pushed upon the American public as the sport to build the man (e. g., and arguably, by silence, the woman) necessary for the times. Cashion (1998) believed that football elicits the values of pride, playing for the love of the game, and thrill of community support. Dunning (1999) underscores that because of the emphasis on the precise measurements of time, distance and the quantifiable aspects of individual performance, American football is also reflective of the high level of rationalization reached by capitalism and sport in the United 113 States of America. In support of authority and patriarchy, Norwood (2004) reports that players have positive remembrances of receiving either encouragement or a dressing down from a father or a coach. Football Culture Introduction Football culture is how all the people involved in the game relate to each other; how they share experiences; how they understand “The way we do things around here,” providing a positive pattern in which values, ideas, and rituals are tidily ordered (Barrett, 1999; Bower, 1966; Coakley, 2001; Fairchild, 195 5; Hofstede, 1994; Landis, 1980; Trice & Beyer, 1984). Football, Ritual, and Rites-ot-Passage Junger (1997) states: “The need for a man to prove his worth is why he will gravitate toward competitive sports and the challenges of those sports. Initiation, by way of the American ceremony called ‘football,’ is a symbolic process whereby the transference of the desired roles of male adult life is achieved.” (Junger, 1997, p.68-69) Oriard (1993) supports Junger (1997), viewing tum-of-the century sport journalist’s narratives as implicitly buttressing the idea that football offered American youth a rite-of—passage into manhood. Underwood (1984) adds that coaches as far back as the 18005 used football as a means of instilling in young men the beliefs of the American value system. Sabo and Panepinto’s (1990) study, supported by Lomax (2002), shows that the football coach-player relationship could be understood as a nexus of patriarchal 114 ritual. At that nexus, ceremony reproduces hegemonic forms of masculinity, as well as competitive behavior and achievement ideologies. Football’s historical prominence in sport media and folk culture has sustained a hegemonic model of masculinity that prioritizes competitiveness, asceticism, success measured as winning, aggression, violence, superiority to women, and respect for and compliance with male authority. Sabo and Panepinto (1990) theorized that football is an American male initiation rite. Masculinity rites entail ongoing interaction between two groups; older men, or “Officiants,” and younger men, or “initiates.” To examine this concept, the investigators conducted 25 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with a convenient sample of high school, college and professional football players. All but one of the men were white and came from either working-class or middle-class backgrounds. Interviews generally focused on the coach-player relationship, conformity, social isolation, male authority, and pain. Both interviewers were former intercollegiate football players themselves. The results of the study indicated the following cultural and sport values: a. Coach-Player Relationship ~—- The football coach fulfilled many of the requirements of the offrciants’ role. All players agreed that coaches exerted an important influence on their “growing up.” b. Conformity and Control — Coaches exerted a great deal of influence over their athletes’ lives. “He taught us that you have to learn to work with them if you’re going to succeed at anything.” 115 c. Social isolation — One form of social isolation is sex segregation. During both pre-season practice sessions and pregame evenings during the season, it becomes common for players to be transported to camp, removed/housed- away/secluded from other influences, excluded from outsider/non-team members and members-of-the-opposite sex. (I. Deference to Male Authority — Officiants of primitive masculinity rites are, in part, the social-psychological manager of boy’s gender identity development. Coaches interpret the meaning of the game for the player-initiates, calling it a “manly 99 66 99 66 99 66 enterprise, preparation for life, more than just a game, a sport that requires great sacrifice,” or “Football is the closest thing to war you boys will ever experience; it’s your chance to find out what manhood is really about.” e. Infliction of Pain — Coaches orchestrated and rationalized a variety of pain-inducing experiences. Physical pain was inflicted by injury, playing while hurt, excessive conditioning, contract drills, and fighting. Emotional pain was inflicted by verbal criticism, public ridicule for errors or inadequacies, and humiliation by benching or demoting players. These findings strongly suggest that football can be identified as an American masculinity ritual. A ritual can be described as patriarchal when it contains elements of gender socialization that promote and express institutionalized patterns of both 116 segregation and male dominance. The most thorough anthropological treatment of patriarchy is found in studies of male initiation rites. Through these rites boys “learn the definition of the male situation maintained by adult males “(Sabo & Panepinto, 1990). Van Gennep (1960) was the first anthropologist to coin the phrase ‘the rites- of-passage,” noting the regularity and significance of the rituals attached to the transitional stages in corporate and socialized human life. It is here that the cognitive-emotional training for adult roles in condensed. One group may stress the aspects of proper training for parenthood; another group may emphasize appropriate role assumption. The same process is at work within our modern society; baptism, confirmation, graduation, puberty, and marriage indicate a transition from one social role to another. Van Gennep (1960) defined the rites-of-passage as: (l) prelirninal, the separation from a previous world; (2) liminal, that which is executed at the threshold; and (3) postliminal rites, ceremonies of incorporation into the new world. Fiske (1976) offers a scale of dramatization of initiation rites, including: minimal social recognition, social preparation and physical seclusion, personal dramatization when the initiate is ceremoniously dressed and/or gives public performance, and organized social response. Fiske’s hypothesis also defines initiation ceremonies as dramatic forms of sex recognition. The social meaning of male solidarity must be dramatized in a memorable way. Sex role dramatization, defined as the consensus among the men regarding the purpose and activities of males, is necessary when there is a high degree of male solidarity. The candidate(5) must participate intensely. The 117 ceremonies; (1) must be periodic in the same general forms and supervised by adults; (2) must apply to all adolescents of one sex only; and (3) of a series of imitation events (e.g., football practice scrimmages), only the most elaborate are to be considered (e. g., football games). Football meets Fiske’s (1976), Sabo and Panepinto’s (1990), and Van Gennep’s (1960) criteria as a value transferring rite-of-passage. Oriard’s (1993) review of sports journalistic narratives also supports this position. On Fiske’s (1976) scale of degree dramatization of male initiation, football rates as one of the most dramatic of all possible rites and meets the transformational demands of all criteria. The performance of football is a symbolic act of initiation for the entire male adolescent group. Football is a social engine (Picket, 2000). The high school is the locale of cultural affiliation. Although public display is limited to the fittest, the principles that are taught apply to all the adolescents of the culture. The football coaches who participated in this study, all went through this ritual as high school players. Football and Manhood The popular admiration for athletes may have stemmed from the 18905’ maturation of the newspaper sports page, which endowed athletes with widespread name recognition (Oriard, 1993; Putney, 2001). In part, it stemmed from the fervor related to the Spanish-American War and the conviction of more than one journalist that it was athletics upon which victory depended, or more precisely an athletically proficient soldiery. A further extension of masculinity is that war and combative 118 sports show a direct relationship, and appear to be components of a broader cultural pattern (Jones, 2006; Kindred, 2001; Pope, 1995; Sipes, 1973). At the end of the nineteenth century some social historians contend, the word “manliness” itself changed meaning, coming to signify less the opposite of childishness than the opposite of femininity (Oriard, 1993), In spite of the hundreds of deaths, numerous serious injuries and cases of paralysis reported from 1902 through 1916 (Clurman, 1911; Kindred, 2001; Moore, 1976; Outing Magazine, 1910; Watterson, 2000) occurring to high school, college and club players, football was promoted as the sport for the times. For those who played, says Oriard (1993), football became an arena for defining and validating both success and their masculinity; for those who read about the game in the daily newspaper, football generated dramatic narratives in which competing ideas of manliness were a major theme. Many adjectives were routinely attached to football in the early decades, but none more often than “manly.” Narratives, cited by Oriard (1993), from magazines of the times include: Football is “The most manly and most scientific sport in existence.” Outing Magazine, 1 885. “To bear pain without flinching, and to laugh at the wounds and scars of a hotly-contested game, it is very good discipline, and tends to develop manliness of character.” Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly, 1892. “We have believed, and still do believe, in football. . .as a splendid test and development of [manly] qualities...” Outlook Magazine, 1894. “The manly qualities which are necessary to the building up of a successful player call forth the best. . .the splendid examples of mental and physical manhood.” Outing Magazine, 1901 119 Dunning (1999) states that American football is essentially an embodiment and display of male aggression and power. In Messner’s (1990) words, football: “. . .provides comforting clarity. . .between the polarities of traditional male power, strength and violence and the contemporary fears of social feminization.” Kaye (1973) questions: “What’s wrong with ‘good clean violence’” such as offered by football? Football coaching and organizational processes An understanding of football culture and the values thereof, allow the game to be conducted in a consistent form across urban, suburban and rural geographic locations, by coaches of diverse ethnic/racial and cultural backgrounds, and with a variety of winning-losing competitive records. The practice, organizational culture, structure and design, and styles of football coaching and coaches have remained consistent. There is both structural firnctional and symbolic interactional unity within the coaching fraternity. The coaching process The athletic coach (Overman, 1997) represents the seriousness with which Americans undertake games and contests. The values of the Protestant Ethic are distilled in the American coach. The football coach, in particular, emphasizes hard work, sacrifice, and the discipline to achieve mastery of self and events for a large group of team members in the pursuit of victory. The coach’s role in American society has been institutionalized on the playgrounds, and in the schools (Sadler, 1973; Sage, 1974a). Salaried coaches became a fixture not only on the professional 120 sports but also in colleges and schools during the second half of the 19’h century (Betts, 1984a; Mrozek, 1983). Thereafter, the professional coach — a salaried educator in the schools —— began to play a large role in American sport. The number and variety of coaches multiplied as the profession became increasingly specialized. Professional status implied expertise and the use of scientific knowledge gave these “sport experts” certain legitimacy. These experts at coaching were expected to implement the rigorous, systematic forms of training necessary for success in athletics. C.M. Daniel, coach of the New York Athletic Club, applied rational methods to competitive swimming. A. G. Spalding, who pioneered scientific coaching techniques in baseball, published booklets of ready-made instructions for coaches and athletes in the late 19th century. Fielding Yost, then the new coach at the University of Michigan, wrote a book on football in 1905 (Bartlett, 1951; Mrozek, 1983). Coaching organizational culture Price (2004) tells us that organizational culture and organizational types can be classified as follows: 1. The club culture - typical of a small company; a personal, informal culture, focused on the owner. 2. Role culture — hierarchal with an organization chart providing an orderly set of job boxes/roles. 3. Task culture — the main focus is on groups such as project teams. 121 4. Person culture — suited for professional who are self-managing and require minimal structure or supervision. Football matches the “role culture” definition in which each coach has a distinct, though coordinated, orderly set of job boxes, roles and responsibilities (See Figure 5). Coaching structure and design Football is a machine bureaucracy in which the coaching staff functions with leadership from the head coach. The functions are communicated from the head coach through the offensive, defensive and special teams coordinator, to the individual position coaches (e.g., at times some of these can be dual roles). All activities are organized around a daily practice and seasonal game schedule, providing a centralized hierarchy and high level standardization. (See Appendix H). Duane (1996) and Mintzberg (1993) point out that organization design concerns the structural elements of an organization. There are five organization design configurations: 1. Simple structure — no technostructure, few support staff, no managerial hierarchy, and a loose division of labor. Flexibility is an advantage. 2. Machine bureaucracy — characterized by high levels of standardization, formalized communication procedures, the functional grouping of tasks, routine operating procedures, a clean delineation between line and staff relationships, and a centralized hierarchy of authority. Efficiency is an advantage. 122 3. Divisionalized forms: corporate staff that do not have to concern themselves with day-to-day operational issues, but corporate headquarters can allocate financial resources more efficiently. Autonomy and risk spreading are advantages. 4. Professional bureaucracy — an operating core, staffed by specialists who operate with relative autonomy in a decentralized structure. Standardization of skills but independence in application. The advantages are the minimization of interpersonal conflict. A disadvantage is that autonomy can defeat cohesion. 5. Adhocracy - has low levels of formalization; no structural hierarchy, and high levels of horizontal differentiation, with specialists grouped into functional units of organizations. There are high levels of decentralization; little in the way of standardized operating procedures. Coordination is achieved through mutual adjustment, as teams containing manager, operators, and support staff work together to solve problems. Coaching Styles The football coaching bureaucratic structure is a blend of authoritarian/command, and democratic/cooperative styles (Martens, 2004b; Olson, Breitenbach, Hirsh and Saunders, 1990) . Free discussion is open, at the right time. Staff input is welcomed, at the right time. The right time ends when the head coach ceases discussion and makes the final decision. That decision is the action to be carried out with the loyal, wholehearted support of the staff, and conveyed in earnest to the players. 123 Olson et al. (1990) described three styles of administration: authoritarian, democratic, and laissez-faire. The authoritarian style is based on adherence to rules, deadlines, training restrictions, health and safety rules, adherence to state and federal laws. The democratic style freely formulates department policy; is open to staff input; uses an unbiased third party to arbitrate grievances; consistently seeks advice and guidance from others. The laissez-faire style allows staff to develop their own administrative and coaching styles without outside interference; is allowed to freely operate within budgetary and administrative guidelines without supervisory restriction; has autonomy in all personnel and operation decisions, as long as all acts remain within the rules. Martens (2004b), however, proposed three other coaching styles: command/dictatorship, submissive, and cooperative. In the command or dictatorial style of coaching, the head coach makes all the decisions. The role of the athlete is to respond to the coach’s commands. The assumption underlying this approach is that because the coach has knowledge and experience, it is the coach’s role to tell the athletes what to do. The athlete’s role is to listen, to absorb, to comply. Coaches who adopt the submissive style make as few decisions are possible. It’s a ‘throw-out-the-ball-and-have-a-good-time’ approach. The coach provides little instruction, provides minimal guidance in organizing activities, and resolves discipline problems only when absolutely necessary. Coaches who adopt this style: (1) lack the competence to provide instruction and guidance; (2) are too lazy to meet the demands of their coaching responsibilities; or (3) are very misinformed about what coaching is Martens (2004b). 124 Coaches who select the cooperative style share decision making with their athletes. Although they recognize their responsibility to provide leadership and guide young people toward achieving the objectives set forth, cooperative-style coaches also know that youngsters cannot become responsible adults without learning to make decisions. The challenge of the cooperative style is providing the right balance between directing athletes and letting them direct themselves. It is here, suggested, that the authoritarian style of Olson et. al. (1990) equates with the command/dictatorship style of Martens (2004b); the laissez-faire style of Olson et. a1. (1990) is the same as the submissive style spoken of by Martens (2004b); and the democratic style of Olson et. a1. (1990) duplicates the cooperative style of Martens (2004b). Because of the bureaucratic structure, football socializes boys to be men, including the “masculine” cultural values and behaviors of competition, acceptance/tolerance of pain and injury, winning at all costs, and devaluation of women, female sensibilities and experiences (Lever, 1976; Nixon, 1993; Schaefer, 1975; Swain, 2003; White, Young & McTeer, 1995). These men, as happened for the participants in this study, sometimes become high school head football coaches. Interrelationship of Cultural and Sport Values The concept of an American sport ethos made of the Protestant Ethic is built on the proposition that sport incorporates a constellation of related values and behaviors (Loy, 1969; Overman, 1997). The Protestant Ethic shaped middle-class values, and these values were reproduced on the field of competition (Loy, 1969; Overman, 1997). Sport facilitated well the goal of success through individual 125 achievement within the framework of group competition. The codified rules and norms for sport behavior reflected middle-class ideology: “Set yourself a goal! Prepare yourself conscientiously for your task! Recognize the coaches’ authority! Social scientists have identified the values that prevail in sport. Collectively, they make up what has been termed the American Sports Creed (Edwards, 1973). This creed has been conceptualized as including such traits as character, discipline, individual achievement through competition, physical fitness, mental fitness, religiosity, nationalism, high aspirations, unbridled competitiveness, time management, and an emphasis upon winning (Loy, McPherson & Kenyon, 1978; Overman, 1997). This creed supports the components of the Protestant work ethic (Weber, 1958). In brief: 1. Authority — Authority was defined by Weber (1958) as a type of pure domination, of which there are three legitimate types: rational-legal (legitimacy claimed from a general agreed upon set of rules and procedures); traditional (legitimacy based on continuity over time); and charismatic (legitimacy based on the extraordinary personally qualities of the leader) (Scott & Marshall, 2005). The ideals taught in the public schools have been largely “democratic,” the teacher-pupil relation relatively informal, the peer-groups equalitarian; but the authority structure of the schools and teams has been broadly speaking, less democratic than the creeds (Curti, 1935). Empirical studies have found that outstanding athletes share a 126 respect for authority (Ogilvie & Tutko, 1971). Coaches enact authority in the rational-legal, traditional, and charismatic span of the definition. Officiants of primitive masculinity rites (i.e., football coaches) are, in part, the social-psychological managers of boy’s gender identity development. Coaches interpret the meaning of the game for player-initiates, calling it a “manly enterprise,” “preparation 99 66 for life,” “more than just a game, a sport that requires great sacrifice” or “Football is the closest thing to war you boys will ever experience. It’s your chance to find out what manhood is really about” 2. Competition - Competition is defined as any performance situation structured in such as way that success depends on performing better than others (V andenBos, 2007). From its very beginning, America was a nation held together by pitting group against group, state against state, region against region in competition (Mead, 1965; Overman, 1997). Parents regularly brag about which child could walk or talk at the earliest age. The term “sibling rivalry” was coined to explain this phenomenon. American parents have routinely directed their children into competitive activities against siblings, neighbors, and schoolmates. The child who couldn’t compete successfully was put to open shame by parents, teachers and coaches (Kakar, 1970). American life and schools are structured around 127 competition (Boyle, 1963). The spelling bee became a national institution. The curriculum and methodology reflected a view of human nature in which intellectual gifts were unevenly distributed. Teachers graded “on the curve,” and children were encouraged to compete for high grades and honors. Scholastic competition meant that some students passed and some failed. Children learned that parents’ and teachers’ approval could be won by winning in competition. Competition was rationalized as good training for success outside the family and school — especially, in the business world (Mead, 1965, pp. 106-07). Brohm (1976) states that the theme of progress is tied to that of competition, since “the ideal of going beyond one’s one limitations, of pushing back the frontiers of human capacity is the basic driving force behind the practice of sport. And this ideal inevitably gives rise to top-level competition. Unlike the British, who seemed to take competition for granted and assumed that it would exist even if one didn’t set up an ideology for it, Americans were of the paradoxical opinion that competition is natural but only if it is constantly recreated by artificial rules and reinforced by ideology (Denney, 1957). 3. Conformity — Conformity is defined as the pressures on individuals to meet and match the expectation of the group, society, organization or leader (Asch, 1952). To conform is to accept cultural goals and the legitimate or approved means of achieving them 128 (Merton, 1968). Members take part in a culture even if each member’s personal values do not entirely agree with some of the normative values sanctioned by the culture. This reflects an individual’s ability to synthesize and extract aspects valuable to them from the multiple subcultures they belong to. If a group member expresses a value that is in serious conflict with the group’s norms, the group’s authority may carry out various ways of encouraging conformity or stigrnatizing the non-conforming behavior of its’ members. For example, imprisonment can result from conflict with social norms that have been established as law (Snow, Wales & Gardner, 2008). To conform is a way of acknowledging authority. Watson (1973), in a study replicated by Sutton Smith (1981) of boys little league baseball found that lower class parents showed more involvement in the game, emphasized it’s value as authority over the boys and the importance of the boys conformity. The lower class boys also emphasized belonging to the group, and developed a much more highly structured and ritualistic game. By contrast, the middle class parents emphasized the learning of cooperation, and the middle class boys the display of their skills in a competitive setting. One gets a clear contrast between a game used by middle class boys as an enhancement of personal status, and a game used by the lower class boy and parent as a means of collective integration into a community. It is not difficult to believe that it is the latter role that 129 game and sports have performed historically in integrating the lower class and immigrant groups into the larger system of cultural values. In due course these particular “collective” values have given way to the individualistic ones that are more characteristic of the middle class achiever. It can be suggested that children are directly socialized as they play games. 4. Hard work- Hard work is defined as the supply of physical, mental, and emotional effort needed to produce. This includes schoolwork, studying, and strenuous effort in sport or exercise (Scott & Marshall, 2005). “Hard work” suggests an extraordinary intensity of effort. Hard work, originally a secular value, is sometimes held as a sacred virtue. Carlyle (1843), a Scottish Calvinist wrote: “For there is perennial nobleness, and even sacredness, in work...there is always hope in a man that actually and earnestly works...in idleness alone is there perpetual despair...a man perfects himself by working...the whole sole of man is composed in a kind of harmony, the instant he sets himself to work! Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness.” (Carlyle, 1843, pp. 196-197) The industrialist Frederick W. Taylor wrote the following sentiment regarding hard work: “I look upon it as the greatest blessing we have” (Kakar, 1970, p. 187). As Beisser (1967) observed, “modern sports are dominated by the spirit of work, arduous practice, long 130 hours of learning signals and plays, sweating, bruising, bone—breaking practice, all in preparation for the big game” (Beisser, 1967, p.7). Coaches continually exhort the virtues of hard work, sacrifice, and discipline to achieve mastery of one’s sports (Sadler, 1973). The vocabulary of sport is replete with the terminology of work: 99 66 “teamwork,” “workout, warm-up work,” “speed work,” and “weight wor ” (Rigauer, 1981). Hard work is a valued behavior for team members. “Hard work beats talent, until talent decides to work hard,” has been stated been some coaches (Johnson, Castillo, Sacks, Cavazos, Edmonds & Tenenbaum, 2008). Coaches are no easier on themselves when it comes to hard work. America’s athletic coaches stand as paragons of the work ethic, someone even proudly describing themselves as “workaholic” (Borden, 1985) 5. Masculinity -— Masculinity is defined as the state or quality of being masculine; the properties of the male sex; the trait of behaving in ways considered typical of men. Men are expected to be stoic; non- emotional, never shed tears; neither avoids confrontation nor challenge (Messner, 1990; Picket, 2000). Brohrn (1976) is in support, emphasizing that the vertical hierarchal structure of sport, models the social structure of bureaucratic capitalism with its’ system of competitive selection, promotion, hierarchy and social advancement. The driving forces in sport — performance, competitiveness, and records — are directly 131 carried over from the driving forces of capitalism: productivity, the search for profit, rivalry and competitiveness. 6. Success/winning — Success is defined as the accomplishment of an aim or purpose (Lindberg, 2002). Winning is defined as being successful or victories in a contest or conflict (Lindberg, 2002). Empirical studies have found that outstanding athletes share the need for achievement (Ogilvie & Tutko, 1971). In sport violent behaviors maybe acceptable as long as it helps win (Berger, 1990). In 1902, some Michigan high school football players were taught: “. . .your ultimate satisfaction will come from winning” (Armstrong, 2002). Achievement, an overcoming of obstacles, can be considered in the same light (Reber & Reber, 2001). Overman (1997) points out that the application of rational methodology altered not only the quantity but also the quality of training. Early on, training had been directed almost exclusively to practicing the event itself, the so-called “whole method.” The rationalization of training led to the increased use of the “part- method.” Applied to an event like discus throwing, this incorporated weight training to build strength, drills on footwork, and practicing the release separately. Swimmers would take laps with kick-boards, and tennis players tossed balls into the air repeatedly to perfect their serves. Ultimately, scientific findings determined when each method, the “whole” or “part-whole,” was expedient. Yale University’s Walter Camp was noted for training innovations that applied the methodology of industry (Tunis, 195 8). Purposeful planning and 132 movement and position strategies transformed loose team play — which typified British rugby, for example — into a kind of tactical operation based upon specialized skills and division of labor. Team training programs became imitative of industrial methods. Peter D. Haughton reputedly was the first coach to apply the principals of the assembly line to the game of football. Beginning his career at Harvard University in 1908, he developed a mechanistic system that left almost nothing to chance. Haughton was a drillmaster who required his players to concentrate on selected plays until they executed them perfectly. At a time that chalkboard talks were still a novelty, he required his athletes to learn the assignments of every other player on the team. Rigauer (1981) emphasizes that in the development of industrialized labor and institutionalized athletics “we find the same general characteristics: different tasks, allotted to standardized work-stations, are carried out in continuous succession...” Mechanical techniques, involving the automatic performance of broken-down training routines and the systematic inculcation of effort and resistance to pain, are now the general rule in sport. One of Charles K. Taylor’s, director of Philadelphia’s Department of Moral Education, notable “experiment[s] in character building” involved making boys wear buttons that designated them the possessors of first-class, second-class, or third-class physiques. Any boy wanting to join extracurricular activities had to wear a button, Taylor explained, and naturally the dishonor attached to being anything less than first-class would induce him to become stronger (Putney, 2001). Today some football players are acknowledged by their coaches as making outstanding efforts with the awarding of stickers, worn conspicuously on their helmets as a public sign 133 of worthiness (e.g., the Ohio State University football “buckeye”; the Florida State University “tomahawk”). Football coaches developing character in players Introduction Today, it is widely recognized that character is a complex, multifaceted concept. Character refers to those aspects of a person that guide moral and social life, and that enable the person to live in fidelity with their moral values, judgments and intuitions. A person of character is a person who acts consistently in an ethical way. Deficiencies of character may reflect shallow or misguided moral desires or, alternately, failures of will — insufficient determinations, perseverance, or courage to act consistently with one’s ideals (Shields & Bredemeier, 1995). A strong belief exists that sport programs have the power to promote the development of “. . .sportsmanlike behaviors, ethical decision-making skills, moral and social character...” (Stoll, 1995, p. 335), and provide a social environment to acquire personal and social values and behaviors contributing to good character and good citizenship (Arnold, 1984; Lange, 2002; Lauer, 2009; Sage, 1998). The idea that competitive sports provide effective means for promoting character has been around for a long time, at least since the Ancient Greeks. In modern history, the British boarding schools of the nineteenth century —— driven by the ideology of Muscular Christianity -- gave new impetus to this theme (Hall, 1994; Putney, 2001). Believing that muscles and morals develop simultaneously through involvement in team sports, these schools’ administrators encouraged or required their students to participate in competitive athletics. The idea soon crossed the 134 Atlantic and became popular in US. schools and culture. “Sport builds character” became a popular cultural saying providing the rationale for including sport programs in a wide range of educational institutions (Bredemeier & Shields, 2006). Within the sport-character development framework were found the tenants of character, being defined as taking responsibility and not assigning blame for failure or shortcoming on others, having a keen sense of courage, of integrity, of honor (Lange, 2002; Griffin, 1998, p. 55), honesty, self-discipline, sportsmanship; emotional stability, assertiveness, respect, responsibility, caring, (Martens, 2004), independence, good citizenship and social skills are also included (Griffin, 1998, p. 55). The concept of character can also be divided along moral and social lines (Lumpkin, Stoll & Beller, 2002). But, the question must be asked, if sports builds character, why do we hear stories about hazing, binge drinking, drug abuse, and fighting in sports? Players face suspensions and juvenile court, while parents and coaches face charges of aggravated assault (Murray, 2007). The arena of sport can provide one of “the greatest opportunities for a student to learn honesty, integrity... and ethical behavior” or it can provide “one of the greatest opportunities in school for a youngster to learn how to be dishonest or hypocritical” (Sabock, 1985, p. 271. Social thinking on sports commonly attributes most sport activities as desirable vessels for the building of self- esteem, the teaching of teamwork, and for delivering improved health to the individual and community, despite this paradigrn’s failure to prove this under empirical scrutiny (Anderson, 2005). Little empirical research exists supporting that mere participation in and of itself leads to the development of moral character. 135 In fact, the opposite appears true, that sport participation may be more likely to negatively affect, or have no affect at all, on the development of moral character (Bredemeier, 1984a; Priest, Krause, & Beach, 1999; Stoll & Beller, 2000). Miracle and Rees (1994) surveyed the most current research through the lens of “conflict theory” and concluded: “We find little empirical evidence that sport builds character or has any positive influence on youth. The consensus. . .is that there is no evidence to support the claim that sport builds character in high school. Miracle and Rees (1994) also critique what they called the “sports myth” that “one becomes number one. . .through hard work, dedication, following orders, and sacrificing self for the good of the team” In a study of 1,330 male‘ and female high school students, Beller and Stoll (1995) found that the non-athletes scored significantly higher, in terms of moral reasoning, than the team athletes. However, in the Bredemeier and Shields (1986c) study, no difference was found between high school athletes and non-athletes. Similarly, Rulmyr (1996) found no differences between athletes and non-athletes among his sample of 540 students in southern Arizona high school. Athletes learn and model behavior from those closest to them. Coaches are the most influential significant others when it comes to influencing aggression or willingness to injure another player among athletes. Athletes often look up to their coaches and want to please them. Coaches can create environments — utilizing teachable moments within teachable environments -- that stress strategies to promote personal growth and development or environments that reward aggressive play, rule bending, and taunting/injuring other players. When athletes perceive that 136 their coach would want them to cheat or hurt another player, they are more likely to do so and are more life to approve of such behaviors (Murray, 2007). How can appropriate models of character be presented to youth through coaching? Character education, both formal and informal, is one way (Martens, 2004; Stoll, 2000). Character education through coaching in sport Character education refers to the deliberate and intentional activity of cultivating, modeling, and teaching positive moral growth, moral judgment and social character (Stoll, 2000, p.3.). Good character development stems from one’s ability to determine what is right or wrong in a given situation (Murray, 2007). Coaches of character are described as those who help young people know what’s right, instill the desire to do what’s right, and guide them in the process of doing right (Lickona, 1989; Martens, 2004).Sports provides a receptive setting for teaching and learning. Because the vast majority of youngsters who participate in sports are highly motivated, coaches have unusual influence and authority as educators (Conroy, 2009; Josephson, 1999). Coaches are in position to teach the two types of character and character values that are evident in sport: moral and social (Lumpkin, Stoll & Beller, 2002). Moral character values and moral character Moral values include honesty, fairness, fair play, justice, and responsibility (Lumpkin, et al., 2002). Moral character refers to the assemblage of qualities that distinguish one individual from another. The concept of moral character can imply a variety of attributes including the existence or lack of virtues such as integrity, 137 courage, fortitude, honesty, and loyalty, or of good behaviors or habits (Pervin, 1994, p.108) Within sports, moral reasoning has been shown to relate to such important moral variables as aggression (Bredemeier, 1985, 1994; Bredemeier & Shields, 1984a, 1986a; Bredemeier, Weiss, Shields & Cooper., 1987); sportspersonship (Horrocks, 1979); beliefs in fair play (Stephens, Bredemeier, & Shields, 1997); self- esteem, empathy, loving the good, self-control, and humility (Beller, 2002). Thus, it is important to know whether sport participation influences moral reasoning and development. Social character values and social character Social values, which are highly esteemed in our society, are about the real world and how society views the importance of social character (Lumpkin, et al., 2002). Typical social character values include loyalty, dedication, sacrifice, teamwork, and good citizenship (Lumpkin, et. al., 2002). Because sport may foster social values, character development through sport should help athletes learn to weigh a social value against a moral value and then on that moral value (Lumpkin, et al., 2002). Central to a life of character is the ability to understand and consider the views of others. Perspective- taking is primarily cognitive and involves understanding a situation from multiple points of view. Empathy is more of an affective skill. It is the ability and tendency to vicariously participate in the experience of another person or group of people. Both skills provide a foundation for social and moral character behavior because a person cannot act appropriately and responsibly unless they 138 understand and empathize with all those involved in a conflict situation (Emler, 1999) It seems reasonable that participating in strategy-based team sports might increase perspective-taking ability (Coakley, 1984; Martens, 1976). Athletes may or may not learn positive behaviors that are socially correct while they are playing as a team. What traits and behaviors they learn may not be reflected in their daily lives. They may not display the same good qualities in other settings and contexts. On the other hand, they may learn the elements of character. It depends on the person, and on the coach as well (Lange, 2002). These positive character behaviors can be taught through either formal or informal character education methods. Three steps for teaching character and sportsmanship are presented: identify the principles of character, teach the principles of character, and provide opportunities to practice (Martens, 2004b). Formal character education Formal character education programs are direct and purposefirl in their intent to affect character development (Stoll & Beller, 1999, p. 2). Individuals are challenged to reflect upon moral issues, values, and principles in relationship to others and society, translating those reflections into good moral action. Formal character education can involve extensive study whereby athletes are challenged by peers, instructors, and themselves through reading, writing, discussion, and reflection on issues of honesty, fair play, responsibility and decency towards others. Less time- I intensive programs, with empirical research support, involved education through I training videos (Stoll & Beller, 2000). i | I 139 Informal character education Informal character education programs are highly influenced by the environment (i.e., all of life’s experiences, beginning with immediate families, family traditions, family values, religious training, and family history, school work and play), as well as television, newspapers, sports and movies (Stoll & Beller, 1999). Strategies for teaching principles of character include creating a moral team environment, modeling moral behavior for athletes, and setting rules for good moral behavior (Martens, 2004). Role modeling as an informal process of character education holds that leaders take responsibility for their actions and demonstrate good character. Any person can serve as a role model and teach through actions and words. Significant people in an athlete’s life such as teachers, coaches, parents, administrators, other athletes and boosters teach through verbal and nonverbal instruction, including body language, gestures, and facial expressions (Docheff, 1998; Lumpkin et al., 2002). A single coach or a caring parent can make a significant difference in the lives of today’s youth (Murray, 2007). These individuals, whether aware or not, are in a position to assist young people in the development of their character. If they are leaders of moral character, the outcome of this endeavor is generally positive (Beller, 2002) There is some evidence that coaches or physical educators who actively seek to promote moral reasoning development can do so (Bredemeier, Weiss, Shields, & Shewchuk, 1986b); Romance, Weiss & Brockover, 1986). The most important educational process is probably dialogue. Moral reasoning is unlikely to advance if 140 the athlete is simply a passive recipient of the coach’s exhortations, however prosocial they may be. Children and adolescents need to talk about their values; they need to discuss their views of right and wrong, both with their peers and with respectfirl adults. Coaches should make space in team meetings for discussion of moral issues relevant to sports in general and to the life of the team in particular (Bredemeier & Shields, 2006). The power of dialogue will be amplified if it is combined with meaningful responsibility. Athletes who cooperatively share in important dimensions of team decision-making are likely to benefit substantially. To maximize moral and social growth, coaches should use a democratic leadership style in which responsibility for developing team norms, goals, and expectations is shared with the members of the team. If team members develop a sense of ownership for the team and feel responsible for maintaining the team’s expectations, they can learn important lessons about both character and citizenship (Bredemeier & Shields, 2006). Summary of character development For more than a century, the contention that sport builds character has been popular among educators. It is clear that the early optimism regarding the character- building power of sports was overstated or unfounded. Participation in sports does not have any automatic beneficial effects on character. Sport might build character, but only under the right conditions (Bredemeier & Shields, 2006). Sports are powerful social experiences that may, under the right circumstance, have positive effects. Character development does not happen automatically. Character doesn’t 141 appear magically or automatically, but that it can slowly appear, over time, with struggle, and with the help of someone who cares and guides (Lange, 2002). If sports are to have a positive impact on the character development of participants, the leadership and behavior of the coach is key (Bredemeier & Shields, (2006).The development of character through sport can be systematic or non- systematic and involve formal and/or informal processes. Well-organized sport character education can provide powerful contexts for the teaching and learning of good moral and social habits. The ideal would be sport programs that address both formal and informal educational processes for character development. For character education to succeed, athletes need both thinking and reasoning programs, role models, a supportive environment, and the strong moral/philosophical commitment of commrmity members, parents, coaches, teachers, students, boosters, and the media (Beller, 2002). In sports, especially in the great game of football, character is constantly tested. Therefore, responsible coaches are character educators, able to take advantage of the endless procession of teachable moments that sports provide. Beyond the x’s and 0’s, responsible coaches teach athletes life lesions in persistence, teamwork, sacrifice, effort, empathy, discipline, leadership and overcoming adversity (Boudreaux, 2007). An overemphasis on winning is self-defeating since most teams or individual athletes don’t win. In fact, in terms of life skills, it is even more important that all athletes learn to try their best and to deal with any outcome with grace and dignity (Josephson, 1999). 142 Many factors influence whether sports build character or characters. Sport science research consistently shows that it takes the right conditions and the right people to develop good character. It involves purposeful and direct approaches to teaching youth about pro-social values, emotional control, and responsibility. Building character involves parents, coaches, and the entire community consistently emphasizing values and never placing winning before character development. Athletes’ relationships with significant others, level of development, and definition of success can all influence character development (Murray, 2007). Do team sports build character? The answer is a clear no. Sports do not build character, the adult leaders involved in sports do. They do so by creating a positive environment and consistently placing emphasis on character development. Winning can be emphasized, but should never supersede personal development. We should all remember that character is taught, not caught! (Murray, 2001) The major objective of organized sports is to promote the physical, mental, social and moral character development of participants (Josephson, 1999). At the interscholastic level of sports, coaches are first and foremost teachers. Their success is not only measured by player skill development, victories and records, but by the extent to which they help their athletes become better people. They are responsible for contributing to their players’ character development (Power, 2009). The impact of assisting the formation of positive character traits in young people will have an effect on societal mores and values for the betterment and prosperity of all concerned (Conroy, 2009). 143 Summon; of football values, and [ootball culture American football arose in the shadows of the urban factories. Many of America’s athletes and fans that watched them came from the mill towns, steel towns, and coal mining towns of the East and Midwest. Industrialism facilitated the rise of organized sports (Brohm, 1976; Coakley, 2007; Eitzen & Sage, 2003). It created the technical capacity to promote and market sport to a mass audience. The American inclination for order and control was accompanied by the relentless quest for increased efficiency and ubiquitous rationalization (Morgan, 1985, p. 65; Overman, 1997). Football led this trend (Camp, 1910). The quest for more efficiency in football led to sophisticated offensive formations that would accommodate both the running and passing games, and defensive alignments to stop offensive strategies. Coaches analyzed each team position for specific movement patterns and then trained each player specifically for the position played. For instance, field goal kickers in football developed skills quite distinct from most other line and backfield players (Denny, 1957, pp. 114-1 16). Mass production led to greater discretionary income for workers to spend on spectator sports and commercial recreation. The railroads provided transportation for professional and college teams to compete, and carried fans to the contests. Mass production techniques were applied to the manufacture of sporting equipment and facilities. Later, the invention of public lighting made night contests possible (Overman, 1997, p. 125). As a result, sport became an important part of the lives of the working class (Hoch, 1972, p. 20; Lasch, 1977, p.24; Loy, McPherson & Kenyon, 1978, p. 301). 144 Taylor’s and Camp’s time conscious and organized/synchronized-movement directions turned football into a model of efficiency for industrial labor management practices (Camp, circa 1910; Goldman & Wilson, 1977, pp. 169, 185). Ford’s mass production techniques became models for the massed practices of football teams (Rigauer, 1981). Through the halls of education, politics and journalism came the cries for masculinity and manhood, usually tied to football, which produced the type of young man who valued success and winning, competition, hard work, at least adhered to external conformity practices, respected authority, and thirsted to show virility, action, courage and toughness (Camp, circa 1910; Link, 1966; Riess, 1997). Through the influence of the social structure of football, and the formal and informal guidance of coaches, football players maybe guided toward positive moral and social character development, allowing them to become good citizens who interact with others in society in good and meaningful ways. This study is designed to determine if these personal, cultural and football values, and character development goals, are of importance to the high school head football coaches studied. Section B: Social Theoretical Perspectives, and Applied Sociology at Sport Introduction to Social Theory Social theories provide frameworks for asking research questions, interpreting information, and uncovering the deeper meanings and stories associated with society. The use of social theories provides a generalizable or transferable way to interpret social phenomena and interaction (Coakley, 2001; Graaff, 2001; Landis, 1980; Teddlie & Yu, 2007; Trochirn, 2006). Theorizing involves a combination of 145 description, analysis, reflection, and application. Theories enable us to see things from new angles and perspectives, and make informed decisions about social forces in our lives, families, communities, and societies (Coakley, 2007). Radcliffe-Brown (1952) cited Durkheim’s social theory definition that the “function of a social institution is the correspondence between it and the needs of the social organism.” Theory allows us to take a perspective or side from which to examine the nature of that “correspondence” between institution and organism. Theory provides the criteria enabling one to clearly see how social institutions and the people, who created those institutions, truly interact. Harrington (1985) felt that “truths about society can be discovered only if one takes sides.” He further stated: “You must stand somewhere in order to see social reality, and where you stand will determine much of what you see and how you see it. The data of society are, for all practical purposes, infinite. You need criteria that will provisionally permit you to bring some order into that chaos of data and to distinguish between relevant and irrelevant factors or, for that matter, to establish that there are facts in the first place. These criteria cannot be based on the data for they are the precondition of the data. They represent — and the connotations of the phrase should be savored — a “point of view.” That involves intuitive choices, a value-laden sense of what is meaningful and what is not” (Harrington, 1985, p.1). Each sociologist who gives scholarly attention to social phenomena is guided by a theoretical perspective (Eitzen & Sage, 1997); a set of criteria; a point of view (Harrington, 1985). Social theory allows those who study society, and sports in society, a “point of view” from which to begin or ground research; a point of reference to frame findings; and a foundation upon which to anchor conclusions. 146 Those who study society want to understand four things: (1) the social and cultural contexts in which sports exist, (2) the connections between those contests and sports, (3) the social worlds that people create as they participate in sports, and (4) the experiences of individuals and groups associated with those social worlds. Investigators maybe motivated by combinations and curiosity, interests in sports, and concerns about social life and social issues (Coakley, 2007). This study discusses American cultural and sport values, grounded, framed and anchored by three theoretical viewpoints providing diverse perspectives; here, specifically being Structural F unctionalism, Symbolic Interactionist, and Critical theories. Structural F unctionalism Theory: Strengths, weaknesses, and summary Strengths of Structural functionalism Structural firnctionalism is a theoretical viewpoint which is characterized by a concern for providing explanations of the status quo, social order, consensus, social integration, solidarity, need satisfaction, and actuality. It approaches those general sociological concerns from a standpoint which tends to be realist, positivist, deterrninist, and nomothetic (Burrell & Morgan, 1979, p. 26). Functionalism is based on a conception of science which emphasizes the possibility of objective inquiry capable of providing true explanatory and predictive knowledge of an external reality. F unctionalists tend to assume the standpoint of the observer, attempting “to relate what they observe to what they regard as important elements in a wider social context” (Burrell & Morgan, 1979, p. 107). Structural functionalism theory drew its inspiration from the ideas of Emile Durkheim (1 93 8), Bronislaw Malinowski (1954) and Alfred Radcliffe-Brown 147 (1952). Durkheim (1 93 8) began the structural functional theory development with the question of how societies maintain internal stability and survive over time? He sought to explain social cohesion and stability through the concept of solidarity. Parsons’ (1951a) and Davis’ (1959) later interpretations of the structural functional theory are based on the assumptions that society is an organized system of interrelated parts held together by shared values and social processes that minimize differences, and promote consensus among people. Therefore, the driving force underlying all social life is viewed as the tendency for a social system to maintain itself in a state of balance, 50 that it continues to operate efficiently (Coakley, 2001). Societies are seen as coherent, bound and fundamentally relational constructs, who function like living organisms, with their various parts (i.e., social institutions) working together to maintain and reproduce themselves. The various parts of society are assumed to work in an unconscious, quasi-automatic fashion towards the maintenance of the overall social equilibrium. All social and cultural phenomena — both institutional and individual -- are therefore seen as being functional in the sense of working together to achieve this state and are effectively deemed to have a “life” of their own. From a structural functional viewpoint, they are examined in terms of the function they play. Social institutions and individuals are significant not in and of themselves but in terms of their status, their position in patterns of social relations, and the roles their behaviors associate with their status (Layton, 1997, pp. 37-3 8). Eitzen and Baca Zinn (1995) support this viewpoint stating that “the firnctionalist perspective attributes to societies the characteristics of cohesion, consensus, cooperation, reciprocity, stability, and persistence.” 148 Sport, from this perspective, preserves the existing social order in several ways. To begin with, sport symbolizes the American way of life - competition, individualism, achievement and fair play. Not only is sport compatible with basic American values, but it also is a power mechanism for socializing youth to adopt desirable character traits, to accept authority, and to strive for excellence. Sport also supports the status quo by promoting the unity of society’s members through patriotism (e.g., national anthem, militaristic displays, and other nationalistic rituals that accompany sports events (Eitzen & Baca Zinn, 1995). Supporting the structural functional position, Sage (1981) states: “. . .it is perhaps of no coincidence that the belief systems of Protestantism and modern sports are so congruent. The two systems use similar means to respond to their members’ needs. They try to enforce and maintain through a strict code of behaviors that is typically adopted and internalized by all who are involved in that particular institution. They serve cohesive, integrative, and social control functions for their members, giving them meaningful ways to organize their world.” (Sage, I 981, p. 1 ) The values of the Protestant Ethic -— hard work, sacrifice, and delayed gratification — and even the holidays held dear to Christians — Thanksgiving and Christmas, in particular — have become the focal points of football worship. According to structural functionalist theory, social systems operate efficiently when they are organized to do four things: (1) to socialize people so that they learn and accept important cultural values, (2) promote social connections between people so that they can cooperate with one another, (3) motivate people to achieve socially approved goals through socially accepted means, and (4) protect the overall system 149 from disruptive outside influences (Coakley, 1990; Davis, 1959). A more detailed description of structural functional theory dictates follows. Structural functional theory asks: 1. How are people socialized so that they learn and accept important cultural values? This reflects a need within the social system for both “pattern maintenance” and “tension management.” Functionalists examining any aspect of society, emphasize the contribution that a part makes to the stability of the whole society (Eitzen & Baca Zinn, 1995). For a society or culture to survive over time, there must be methods through which people in the system are taught the basic values and rules they are supposed to live by. These methods must be effective enough to teach people to want to do what they must do to keep the system operating efficiently. This process of shaping the feelings, thoughts, and actions of individuals does not happen without some repetitive communal acceptance, practice, and ritual celebration; with the co-creation a certain amount of frustration and tension Coakley, 2007; Fiske, 1976; Kleiber & Kelly, 1980; Luschen, 1967; Oriard, 1993; Van Gennep, 1960). Therefore there must also be ways for people within the system to express their frustration in harmless behaviors. It is here suggested, that sports in general, and high school football in particular, provides seasonal examples of societal “pattern maintenance,” and methods for harmless “tension management.” 2. How are social connections promoted between people so that they can cooperate with one another? The system must contain a variety of social mechanisms for bringing people together and establishing a network of social relationships. These mechanisms create the cohesion, solidarity, and social 150 integration required to keep the system operating smoothly and efficiently. Functionalists are also interested in the extent to which sport brings people in a society or community together in ways that create feels of group unity. In other words, functionalists are concerned with the integration functions of sport. They ask questions about how sport creates and strengthens the social relationships, and develops the social capital, (Ganley, 2003; Matthews, 2001; Putnam, 1995; Robison & Flora, 2003) that are necessary for groups of people to work together in constructive ways. For example, Lever’s (1983) detailed study of soccer in Brazil led her to conclude the following: Sport contributes to national integration by giving people of different social classes, ethnicities, races, and religions something to share and use as a basis for their ritual solidarity (Lever, 1983, p. 478-87). Lever’s (1983) findings, therefore, support the traditional structural functional viewpoint that sport in America has served as the great social-class, ethnic/racial unifier, equalizer, and integrator of this nation. It is here, also, suggested that from a structural functional theoretical viewpoint, sports in general, and high school football in particular, serve as mechanisms of establishing both elements of social capital, and networks of social relationships in America. 3. How are people motivated to achieve socially approved goals through socially accepted means ?. There must be methods through which people in the system can be taught the goals that are supposed to be important in their lives. Furthermore, there must be methods through which people can be taught the socially approved means of achieving those goals. For example, in the United States it is assumed that sports are popular because they socialize youth and adults to feel 151 comfortable in tasks that involve competition, goal achievement, and teamwork under the supervision of an authority figure (Eitzen & Sage, 1997). Furthermore, because functionalist theory leads to the conclusions that sports build the kind of character valued in society, it supports policies that recommend the growth of competitive sport programs, to expand developmental sport programs for children, establish criminal background checks and certification requirements for coaches, and build a sport system that trains young people to become elite athletes (Coakley, 2007). It is suggested that sports in general, and high school football in particular, serve as social locations, social structures, and social engines which teach socially approved goals, and motivates some individuals towards appropriate ways to achieve those goals. 4. How is the overall system protected from disruptive outside influences? The social system must contain mechanisms through which changes in the external social and physical environments can be handled without disrupting the consensus and solidarity on which the social order depends (Cagigal, 1982; Coakley, 2007; Landis, 1980; Wohl, 1979). It is suggested that the continuous dependence of society on the regularly scheduled and repetitive nature of sport in general, and football in particular, helps to protect the system from disruptive outside influences. Stability in the system serves as a way to manage tension in the society (Elias & Dunning, 1986). As an example, National Football League games were not canceled the weekend after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963. The commissioner, Pete Rozelle, felt that the slain president would have wanted the 152 American people to continue, as much as possible, in a normal fashion. (Palmer, Pullis, Lahman, Maher, Silverrnan & Gillette, 2007, p. 1118). Functionalists assume that, if these four “system needs” are satisfied, social order will be maintained and everyone will benefit (Coakley, 2007). Adaptation to the cultural environment; development of social connections, integration, coordination and cooperation; motivation and achievement orientation; sustainability and protection of the system are how the structural firnctional model can be summarized (Graff, 2001). According to those using a functionalist approach, those four things are called “system needs” (Coakley, 1990). The satisfaction of these needs is essential for the smooth operation of any social system, whether it is a society, a community, a business organization, a social club, a small group, or sports team. Weaknesses of structural functionalist theory Structural functionalist theory has three major weaknesses. First, it does not acknowledge that sports are social constructions that take diverse forms as they are created and defined by people interacting with one another. Functionalists see sports as a relatively stable social institution that always serves specific functions in societies. The functionalist paradigm emphasizes reproduction of existing arrangements and assumes that socialization produces continuity (Wentworth, 1980). Such an approach overlooks the diversity in sports, the extent to which sports promote the interests of powerful and wealthy people, and the possibility that sports may sometimes produce or reproduce social outcomes that actually disrupt the smooth functioning of society (Coakley, 2007). 153 Second, functionalist theory leads to overstatements about the positive effects of sport in society and understatements about its negative effects. It does not help us understand that women in society are disadvantaged when sports are organized in ways that legitimize the use of physical power to dominate others. Nor does it help us understand how sport teams in high school can undermine social integration, when status systems favor athletes and lead other students to feel marginalized (Coakley. 2007). Third, functionalist theory is based on the assumption that the needs of all groups within a society are the same. It is “geared to providing an explanation of the regulated nature of human affairs” (Burrell & Morgan, 1979, p. 107), and in so doing, focuses on central tendencies and deemphasizes complexity, contradiction, and human agency. This overlooks the existence of real differences and conflicts of interest in society and cases when sports benefit some groups more than others (Coakley, 2007). The structural functionalist paradigm presents conditions and findings as they exist, today, only. It does not examine why problems, conflicts, or inequalities exist; it only says that they do exist. The theory does not promote change, only embraces things as they are, with no regard to how to make things better. Gouldner (1970) has summarized the weaknesses of structural functionalism in the following manner: Clearly the trouble with functionalism is that it is committed to the present society, with all its dilemmas, contradictions, tensions, and indeed, with its immorality. The trouble with functionalism is, in a way, that it is not really committed to social order in general, but only to preserving its own social order. It is committed to making things work despite wars, inequities, scarcity, and degrading work, rather than finding a way out (Gouldner, 1970, p. 28). 154 People in positions of power in society favor functionalist theory because it is based on the assumption that society is organized for the equal benefit of all people and therefore should not be changed in any dramatic ways. The notion that the system operates effectively in its present form is comforting to people with power because it discourages changes that might jeopardize their privilege and influence (Coakley, 2007). Structural Functional Summary Functionalist theory is based the assumption that society is an organized system of interrelated parts held together by shared values and established social arrangements that maintain the system in a state of balance or equilibrium. The functionalist paradigm, is realist in attempting to explain the status quo; positivist, in the methods employed and in the predictive intent; determinist, in that school boards are seen as determining the social, professional and curriculum orientations of student teachers or new assistant coaches; and nomothetic, in that law-like statements are made (Hoy & Rees, 1997, p. 25). The most important social arrangements are social institutions such as the family, education, the economy, the media, politics, religion, leisure, and sport. If these social institutions are organized around a core set of values, functionalists assume that a society will operate smoothly and efficiently. When sociologists use functionalist theory to explain how society, community, school, family, sport team, or other social system works, they study the ways that each part of the system contributes to the system’s overall operation (Burrell & Morgan, 1979; Coakley, 2007; Davis, 1959; Durkheim, 1938; Malinowski, 1954; Parson, 1951b; Radcliffe-Brown, 1952). 155 F unctionalist theory focuses on the ways that sports contribute to the smooth operation of societies, communities, organizations, and groups. This is why a functionalist approach is popular among people interested in preserving the status quo in society (Cagigal, 1982; Coakley, 2007; Landis, 1980; Wohl, 1979). Many people connected with organized competitive sports also prefer functionalist theory because it emphasizes the “functions” of sports and supports the conclusion that sports are a source of inspiration for individuals and societies (Eitzen & Baca Zinn, 1995). All social change is gradual, adjustive, and reforming because the primary social process is cooperation and the system is highly integrated. Societies are therefore basically stable units (Eitzen & Sage, 1997) In conclusion, a structural functionalist analysis of sport focuses attention on how sport helps satisfy system needs. Because of this emphasis, the functionalists often compare sport to other institutions like the family, education, and religion — all of which are viewed in terms of their socialization functions in society. Clearly, then, sport from the functional perspective is good. Sport socializes youth into proper channels, sport unites, and sport inspires. Thus, to challenge or criticize sport is to challenge the very foundation of society’s social order (Eitzen & Baca Zinn, 1995). The ultimate goal of structural functional analysis in the sociology of sport is to discover the ways in which sport contributes to personal growth and the preservation of the social order at all levels of interaction (Coakley, 1990). Structural functional theory frames this study by looking at social actors (i.e., head coaches); and social structures (i.e., high school football teams) and how their personal, American 156 cultural, and football values, possibly continue to replicate the American cultural value system. Symbolic Interactionist Theory: Strengths, weaknesses and summary Strengths of Symbolic Interactionist Theory The Symbolic Interaction theory of George Herbert Mead (Barnes, 2002; Charon, 1998; Landis, 1980) focuses on the issues related to meaning, identity, social relationships and subcultures. The theory is a social-psychological interpretation of the internalization of social reality (Berger & Luckmarm, 1967). It is based on the definitions of reality that people form as they interact with others. Interactionist theory helps us understand human beings as choice makers and creators of identities and relationships. We actively make decisions based on the values we hold and consequences that we think our behaviors will have on the people around us, and the social world we live in. We create the norms, roles, and relationships and structures that make up society itself. Culture and society, according to the interactionists, are produced as patterns emerge in our actions and relationships with others (Coakley, 2007). According to interactionist theory, our ability to reflect on our actions and relationships with others enable us to develop identity - that is, a sense of who we are and how we are connected to the social world (Mead, 1964). Identities are key factors as people interact with one another and construct their social worlds. They are the foundation for self-direction and self-control in our lives. The work of Erickson (1968) supports Mead (1964) as identity is presented as a life cycle process of socialization by parents, educational and other organizations. Erikson (1968) 157 proposes that beginning in the infancy stage, the child progresses through early childhood, childhood and anticipatory roles, school age taskidentification, adolescence, and adult identity. Mead (1964) presents a corresponding identity formation process depicted as primary, secondary, and anticipatory stages. According to Mead (1964), the primary stage of identity formation happens during childhood; the secondary stage occurs during adolescence and young adulthood; and the anticipatory stage takes place when we seek out new roles and social situations. Young adulthood is the time when we “take on the role of the other” (Berger & Luckmarm, 1967). Identities are never formed once and for all time; they change over time as our actions and relationships change, as we meet new people, and as we face new situations (Coakley, 2007). Forte (2001) adds that more than any other theoretical approach, symbolic interactionism attends to the reciprocal relationships between actors and actor’s social organizations. Interaction of these selves is only possible, if out of this diversity, unity arises. Unity implies acceptance of social identity, and social roles, by an individual (Berger & Luckmarm, 1967). Blumer (1969) supports these contentions in his systemization of Meadian social psychology. He states: (1) humans act toward objects on the basis of the meanings of these objects; (2) meanings emerge through interaction between people; and (3) meanings are used and modified through an interpretive process, and this facilitates transactions with the environment. Thus Mead’s thesis is that a new kind of process emerges from the involvement of the human and socially structured organism in the social act; a 158 process in which the unique character of human behavior is found not in its empirical dimension but in the fact that behavior takes place within a context of symbolically experienced actual and potential relationships and that this behavior itself is a relationally perceived object of experience to the actor. These conditions make social behavior meaningful behavior; meaning is the experiencing of relationships and of objects as interactive potentialities in symbolically coordinated social-symbolic and reflective, space. Unlike functionalists and other theorists, interactionists view culture and society from the bottom up rather than from the top down (Coakley, 2007). Those who use interactionist theory to study sports focus on the following social issues: 1. What are the characteristics of sport cultures, how are they created, and how do they influence people’s lives on and off the field? 2. What are the social processes through which people become involved in sports? 3. How do people become involved in sports, become defined as athletes, and derive meaning from from participation? It can be said that sports are given meaning as people interact with one another. Sport participation is grounded in the decisions made by people in connection with their identities and relationships (Coakley, 2007). Sports, by themselves, do not give meaning to people; people give meaning to sport (Coakley, 2007). In the current study, high school head football coaches are the 159 actors/organisms. All are located in the “sphere of action,” the game of high school football (Bolton, 1958; Riezler, 1950). Weaknesses of symbolic interaction theory Symbolic interactionist theory has two primary weaknesses. First, it focuses our attention almost exclusively on relationships and definitions of reality without explaining the ways that interaction and the construction of the meaning of sports are influenced by social organization, power, and material conditions in society. Therefore, symbolic interactionist research often ignores power dynamics and inequality in connection with sports and sport experiences Second, interactionist theory does not provide critical visions of the ways that sports and society could and should be organized (Coakley, 2007). Symbolic Interaction Theory Summary Social meanings and identities are based on the symbolic interactions of the role players (i.e., Head Coaches, and social structures such as the game of high school football). Interactionists generally do in-depth, sometimes purposive, research that involves observations of and interviews with people who are members of particular groups or identifiable cultures. The qualitative interviews of this study will focus on the interactive nature of the Head Coach-player relationship from the Head Coaches’ personal, American cultural and football values and perspectives. The goal of this research is to understand social worlds from the inside — through the perspectives of the people who create, maintain, and change them. 160 Critical Theory: Strengths, weaknesses, and summary Strengths of critical theory Critical theory, an offshoot of Marx’s conflict foci (Bolter, 1983, p. 303; Coakley, 2001), views social order as being created by people with power and influence within the constraints imposed by historical forces, social situations, and social conditions. Instead of focusing on society as a whole, critical theory focuses on the diversity, complexity, contradictions, and changes that characterize social life as it is lived and experienced by people who interact with one another and struggle over how to organize their lives together. A central purpose of the critical theory approach is bringing to consciousness the ability to criticize what is taken for granted in everyday life. Class, gender, and race relations become key foci, given the historical and contemporary alienation of particular groups. Critical theory assumes that social relationships are grounded in political struggles over how social life should be defined and organized. Critical theorists study sports to see if they are organized to systematically privilege some people over others (Coakley, 2007). Abell (2004) states that critical theory “is founded on the vision of a better world, and simultaneously, the refusal to describe [any] utopian vision in positive, substantive tones. Critical theory is a “self-critical agent and hence a powerful tool for good governance,” he concludes. Anderson (1978) explains this goal in the following way: [“A critical perspective] seeks to cultivate an understanding of what the potential of society is and what the society ought to be given its level of social and material resources. [It focuses on] the tension 161 between actuality and potentiality and seeks to liberate human thought and action for the purpose of potentiality” (Anderson, 1978, p.17). In other words, the ultimate goal of research based on critical theory is to examine the potential for change (Coakley, 1990). Critical theory is based on the following three assumptions: 1. Societies and groups are characterized by shared values and conflicts of interest. The ideologies that people use as they make sense of the world are based on interactions with others, the formation of identities, and transforming of the social conditions of their lives (Coakley, 2007). (2) Social organization and values change over time and from one situation to another as there are shifts in the power balance between large groups of people in society (Coakley, 2007). Critical theory examines how economic, political, legal, gender, religious, educational, ethnic/racial, and historical power shifts within a society can change values and social behaviors over time. For example, sports are cultural practices that repress some, yet empower, other people (Coakley, 2007). (3) Social life involves continuous process of negotiation, compromise, and coercion because agreements about social organization and values are never permanent. Critical theorists promote the change from male dominated sport role models, to an equalitarian sharing of female and male sport “sheroes” and heroes before the youth of contemporary America (Hargreaves, 1990; Hearn, 1984; Messner, 1987; Segal, 1990). Critical theorists would embrace the fledgling, national, fifty-one member-teams professional Independent Women’s Football 162 League (IWF L) as the beginning of a breakdown in traditional feminine/masculine identities (Frederick, 2008). This example leans toward the eventual possibility of creating coed team structures in youth, interscholastic, intercollegiate, and professional basketball, baseball, football, track and field, and other sports. Critical theory allows for the examination of the ways that power, influence, social and experiential inequalities are involved in the formation of societal, group, and individual personal, American cultural and sport values across geographic (i.e., urban, suburban, and rural) locations, ethnic/racial, and performance-outcome (i.e., win-loss) categories. Weaknesses of critical theory There are three general weaknesses associated with critical theory. First, most critical theory does not provide clear guidelines for determining when sports reproduce culture and social organization and when they become sites for resisting and transforming them (Coakley, 1990/2007). Second, because critical theory emphasizes the need for actions that disrupt current forms of social organizations, there is a tendency among those who use it to see value in all actions that violate prevailing norms or oppose prevailing ideas. This is especially true when critical theorists study the actions of marginalized or powerless people in society. However, prevailing norms are not always unfair or oppressive, and the interests of marginalized or powerless people are not always based on concerns about fairness and justice (Coakley, 1990; Critcher, 1986; Morgan, 1985). Use of critical theory in the sociology of sport has seldom led to a consideration of the experiences of actual people in everyday life settings, despite the 163 fact that it emphasizes that society is based on the definitions and meanings of everyday life developed by people through their relationships with one another (Messner, 1984). Third, some critical theories use vocabularies that are confusing and make it difficult to merge different critical ideas into theoretical frameworks that expand our knowledge of the strategies that, under certain conditions, are most likely to produce progressive change (Coakley, 2007). In conclusion, critical theory does not always provide a tight, clearly understandable, and consistent framework for the analysis of the sport-society relationship (Coakley, 1990). Critical Theory Summary Critical theorists emphasize that sport, like other aspects of society, grows out of the struggles between groups of people trying to live their lives in satisfying ways. These struggles are affected by the distribution of power and resources among people and by the constraints and opportunities built right into the social, political, and economic contexts in which people live this lives (Coakley, 1990). Critical theory allows for analysis of social conditions, issues and structures to be made from historical, economic, legal platforms, ethnic/race or gender experiences, and other platforms (Abell, 2004; Anderson & Gibson, 1978; Bolter, 1983; Coakley, 2001). Critical theory recognizes that the existence of sport in society must be explained in terms of something more than simply the needs of the social system or the production needs of a capitalist economy. It recognizes the fact that sport is created by people interacting with one another and using their own power and resources to make sport into something that fits their interests and concerns 164 (Coakley, 1990). Critical theory proposes that sport is more than a reflection of society. Of course, like other spheres of social life, it shares things in common with the social settings in which it exists. But according to critical theory, sports have never been developed in a neatly ordered and rational manner, and there are no simple rules for explaining the sport-society relationship. Instead, the structure and organization of sport inlany society varies with the complex and constantly changing relationships within and between groups possessing varying amounts of power and resources (Gruneau, 1983). In addition to being concerned with how sport emerges in society, critical theorists are concerned with how sport itself affects the processes through which people develop the orientations and beliefs used to explain what happens in their lives (Hargreaves, 1982). They want to know how and when sport might have the potential to encourage changes in the lives of people in society as a whole (Donnelly, 1988). Critical theory allows for the investigation of American cultural structures and values, within the social location of high school football, and among those who relate to others as “high school head football coaches.” How is power used among this group? Do the coaches exert power over team captains and other players? Do captains attempt to socialize others to the Head Coaches’ point of view? What happens when power dynamics between coach and player are in conflict? What are the intersections and further influence of geographic location (i.e., urban, suburban and rural), ethnicity/race, and high school head football coaches’ career win-loss records with value orientations? Through critical theory, this study will attempt to answer these questions. 165 Summary of Social Theories The material presented within the review of literature ties the concept of “values” into the process of socialization, supported by Structural Functional (Durkheim, 1938; Malinowski, 1954; Parson & Shils, 1951b; Radcliffe-Brown, 1952), Symbolic Interactionist (Barnes, 2002; Bolton, 1958; Charon, 1990; Landis, 1980; Mead, 1964), and the Critical (Abell, 2004; Bolter, 1983; Coakley, 2001), theoretical models, with football acting as the social engine and social structure for the conveyance of acceptable and appropriate decisions. These decisions lead to behaviors and value formation, from one generation of males to another (Eitzen & Sage, 2003; Fiske, 1976; Sabo & Panepinto, 1990). Functionalists contend that social order is based on consensus and shared values. Functionalist theory generally leads to the conclusion that sports are popular in society because they unify the society, maintain the values that preserve stability, and preserve order in social life. This balance is achieved “naturally” as groups of people develop consensus, common values, and coordinated organization in the major spheres of social life, such as family, education, the economy, the media, politics, religion, leisure, and sports. Societies and groups need to perform these stabilizing tasks in order to maintain their existence (Landis, 1980). Interactionist theory focuses on issues related to meaning, identity, social relationships, and subcultures in sports. It is based on the idea that human beings, as they interact with one another, give meanings to themselves, others, and the world around them, and use those meaning as a basis for making decisions and taking 166 action in their everyday lives. Interactionists see social order as being created from the bottom up through normal social interaction (Coakley, 2007). Critical theorists study how sports affect the processes through which people develop and maintain cultural ideologies — that is, the webs of ideas and beliefs that they use to explain and give meaning to the social world and their experiences in it (Coakley, 2007). Critical theorists may see values as being shaped by the economic, historical, political, and social similarities and differences in urban, suburban or rural geographic areas; or by ethnicity/race perspectives of the coaches; or by the win-loss history of the coaches. Applied Sociology of Sport Applied sociology of sport (Yiannakis, 1989) is the process of generating knowledge of practical value and importance, and translating that and delivering it to professionals for use in diverse contexts of application. These contexts include physical education and coaching. In either case, whether a sport sociologist serves as a consultant to the various professions or becomes the actual change agent, the objective is clearly to solve, change and ameliorate. Sport sociology should “matter.” The development of a “sport sociology that matters” (Nixon, 1991) requires sport sociologists to confront’and make fundamental decisions about major imperatives and challenges that implicitly or explicitly can be found in work, in the field, and in daily life. Yiannakis (1989) pointed out that the published works in applied sociology often failed to reach consumers, government agencies, and the private sector since most of such work appears in scholarly journals. Additionally, scant efforts have been made to communicate the findings in language that the 167 consumer can understand or in media that are accessible to the public. There has been little organized and coordinated activity by sociological organizations and societies to penetrate societal institutions, organizations, and communities to promote the potential contributions of applied sociology. F igler and Whitaker (1995) supported by the earlier works of Nixon (1991) and Yiannakis (1989) present four major operational forms in the dynamics of sport sociological research: (1) enlightenment/evaluative commentary (i.e., broad range of study), (2) social engineering (i.e., a specific area of study), (3) radical sociology (i.e., social change), and (4) mixed methods (i.e., research by any evaluative means necessary, including pure descriptive methods). This study encompasses three of these operational forms; enlightenment, and the broad range of the study of an understudied topic (i.e., values in general, coaches’ values in particular); how coaches’ personal values are related to their cultural and football values; and the use of mixed-methods. What does Yiannakis, Nixon, and Figler and Whitaker’s position mean? Bok (1990) tells us. We should “balance the pursuit of truth and meaning for their own sake with a commitment to use this knowledge to solve society’s problems.” As academicians we must be proactive. We must research the topics of both obvious and not-so-obvious importance to the general public. And then, we must speak to the general public, the common people, because it is the common life in which we hope to make positive change! The change will occur when the common people have a common understanding of the social environment in which they live. 168 The ultimate goal of applied sociology is to help better understand ourselves and our society by studying human and Social behavior in one of its most pervasive and powerful cultural forms; in the case of this study, sport in general, high school football in particular (Yiannakis, 1993). This study utilized the actual experiences, the actual sites of action and participation, in an attempt to enlighten not only the field of sociology but also the people involved. 169 CHAPTER THREE: RESEARCH METHODS INTRODUCTION This chapter will discuss the research methods and design for the study. This study will focus on understanding the values, social meanings, and context of high school football head coaches’ personal, American cultural and football values. The study will determine if there are differences or similarities in the coaches’ values based on statewide geographic locations of the schools in which they coach (i.e., urban, suburban, rural); on the coaches’ identified social locations of ethnicity/ race; and on the coaches’ cumulative recent win-loss record. The study was conducted during the 2007-2008 academic year. The football schedule was played during the fall of 2007; the interviews were administered from January through June of 2008. Study Design: Rationale for Qualitative Research Methods A qualitative approach to studying the personal, American cultural and football value orientations of head high school football coaches was the approach used. The approach is based on disciplined inquiry (Creswell, 2003; Shulman,1988) More specifically, the researcher wants to know the value orientations and social meanings of coaching, the strength of values, and whether those values differ because of high schools situated locations in urban, suburban or rural geographic locations, and based on the ethnicity/race of coaches. In qualitative research, there is the additional responsibility of selecting and presenting the data rhetorically. Qualitative research requires a balance between particular data with more general data (Bogdan & Biklan, 1992); offering ‘a stratified hierarchy of meaning structures” (Geertz, 1973); while providing data that 170 are “rich and thick” (Firestone, 1993; Kuzel & Like, 1991; Palmquist, 2005; Ruff, 2007; Smaling, 2003). The qualitative researcher must decide the degree of self-presence in communicating the data (Krieger, 1991; Smaling, 2003). Krieger (1991) argues that, “it is important to be present in our studies and to create forms in which we can be known as specific authors” (p. 48). Qualitative data probes deeper than quantitative efforts to ascertain the meanings of the findings as ascribed by the participants. Likewise, the triangulation of qualitative with literature, and social theory, provides a more comprehensive view of the participants and their interpretation. We will have a better understanding of specific personal, American cultural, and football values as held by high school head football coaches. 171 IA Comparison of Hith School Head Football Coaches' Values Personal, American Cultural 8. Football Values .- u.- I I - ‘ fl . t —.-..__ Geographic Locations Ethnicity/Racial Identity Urban, Suburban, & Rural. Differences/ Differences/ Similarities Similarities FIGURE 3.1: RESEARCH DESIGN MODEL The research model shows categorical variables, and factors being studied. It proposes studying head football coaches' personal, American cultural and football values based on both geographic locations, of the high I schools (i.e., urban, suburban, rural), and the ethnicity/race of the coaches. NOTE: The broken lines indicate studying head coaches value orientation differences and similarities based on geographic location (i.e., urban, suburban, rural) of the school, and the ethnicity/race of the study participants. 172 Qualitative Research Design The qualitative research design (Figure 3.2) shows the balance between the qualitative data, literature review, and social theory components of the study. The qualitative research component was based on face-to-face interviews with high school head football coaches, recruited from the members of the State High School Football Coaches Association (SHSFCA) in one Midwestern state. The dimensions studied included: (1) the personal, American cultural, and football values of high school head football coaches; (2) similarities and/or differences in these values based on the geographic location of the school (i.e., urban, suburban, or rural); and, (3) similarities and/or difference in these values based on the ethnic/racial background of the participant coaches. The analysis includes: (1) the interpretation of study participant experiences by identifying the big ideas; (2) identifying the big emergent themes; (3) using quotes to tell the story; and (4) seeing the story using historical, social, geographic, and ethnic/racial viewpoints (Baumgartner, Strong & Hensley, 2002; Denzin & Lincoln, 2000). The triangulation component compares results from the qualitative interviews, with literature reviewed, and the application of social theory in the Discussion Chapter. Critical, structural functional, symbolic interaction theories and applied social theory will provide in-depth examination of the major findings and perceptions emerging from the study. 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EoEEEE .mco..mo:nm on. cam .m.o>o.. EmEEmEq 35:833. Mafia nocoumomom .o com...mano new 2an 197 2. What are the cultural backgrounds of the high school head football coaches interviewed? What are the cultural heritages of the high school head football coaches studied? What are the geographic areas (i.e., urban, suburban, rural) and cultural perspectives of the schools in which they coach? Data will be presented around the areas of (1) ethnic/racial background; and (2) geographic location in which the high school coaches worked and mentored young men. Ethnicpz’ /Race oz Coaches Interviewed Coaches in the interview were asked to self-identify by ethnicity and race (See Table 4.4). A total of twenty-five (N=25) high school head football coaches were interviewed. The ethnic/racial identity of the interview participants included nineteen (N =19) White/Caucasian, Non-Hispanic (n = 19 or 76%); and six (11 = 6) Black/Afiican-American, Non-Hispanic (n = 6 or 24%). No other ethnic/racial groups were represented among those interviewed. Of the White/Caucasian head football coaches interviewed, four (4) or 44% represented the coaches in urban high schools; seven (7) or 100% represented the coaches in suburban high schools, and eight (8) or 89% represented coaches in rural high schools. Of the Black/African-American head football coaches interviewed, five (5) or 56% represented the coaches in urban high schools; zero (0) were from suburban high schools; and one (1) or 11% represented coaches from rural high schools. 198 OOH Ha. 00H m 09H n ma 2 cancznzm 09H mm. 3». N O O O Q 0 v t :35 OOH VN. mu. m mm u z museum uEfim Q 350 .w 33:). . cmutmé< -cm.m< ..mtcmfi. o u.$.uma\cm.m< ~3sz cmxmm.< 0 >565 58.384. 0 6.5%.... . c8225.. .0 -cmu.xm.>.\o:mu...u . u.:mnm..._-:oz 635:3 m -cmu.:<\v.om.m o.cmn.m....-:oz S .cmassmuaazg . Cl .30... 326.535 8:88 ...o 8:35.: .m.umm\u_c£u «6 0.3m... 199 Geographic location of Coaches Interviewed The number of interview participants equaled twenty-five (N = 25). Nine (9) head coaches interviewed were located in urban school districts (pop. of 50,000+), seven (7) coaches in suburban school districts (pop. of 2,501 — 49, 999), and nine (9) were coached in rural school districts (pop. 1 -2,500). (See Table 4.5). Table 4.5 Geogr_aphic Location of High School Football Coaches Interviewed N % Urban 9 36 Suburban 7 28 RuLal 9 36 Total = 25 100 1. What are the football experiential backgrounds of the high school head football coaches interviewed? Did anyone in the family provide a football coaching role model? When did the study participants begin playing organized football? How long have they been head coaches? How stable have their head coaching careers been? How successful have they been as head coaches? Data will be presented around the areas of (1) Family coaching background; (2) First and highest organized football participatory experience; (3) Head coaching longevity; (4) Head coaches’ stability and service; and (5) Head coaches’ success records. 200 Family coaching background Was there a family coaching background — a coaching role model in the immediate family — that further socialized this group towards the coaching profession? First and highest organized football participatory experience Most coaches have some socializing experience involving peers and participation in some type of formal organized physical activity. Many of these sporting experiences go beyond entry/youth sport level playing of the game and then continue through middle school, the various levels of high school participation, college and professional football activity . Head Coaching Longevity Eight (8) interview participants have been high school head football coaches for ten years or more (10+). Seven (7) have held the position for five years or more (5+); four for four years; two for three years; three for two years; and one had just completed his first year as a head coach. The head coaches who participated in the interviews (n = 25) had held that position and title for a mean of 5.76 years. Approximately one-third of the study participants have held their position for ten years (10) or more (See Table 4.6). 201 Table 4.6 Longevity of the Head Football Coaches Interviewed Years as “Head Coach” N % 10+ 8 32 5+ 7 28 4 4 16 3 2 8 2 3 12 1 1 4 N = 25 100 Mean Yrs. as Head Coach . 5.76 Stability of the Head Football Coaches Interviewed Stability refers to the number of years a head coach remains at the same School (See Table 4.7). Head football coaches who participate in the interview have been head coaches at their current high school for a mean of 4.6 years (See Table 4.7). Over half of the interviewed coaches, fourteen (14) or fifiy-six percent (56%) have coached at their current high school for five (5) years or more. Five (5) or twenty percent (20%) of the interview participants have held the position of head football coach at their current high school for ten years (10+) or more. Nine (9) or thirty-six percent (36%) have been a head football coach at the school they currently served for five (5) or more years. 202 Table 4.7 Stability of the Head Football Coaches Interviewed Years at current high school N % 10+ 5 20 5+ 9 36 4 4 16 3 2 8 2 3 l2 1 2 .8 N = 25 100 Mean. Yrs. as HC at current HS 4.6 Geographic Comparison of Stability of Head Football Coaches Interviewed Thirteen (13) or fifty-two percent (52%) of the interview participants have held the position of head football coach at their current school of five years or more (5+) (See Table 4.8). In urban areas, only one (1) coach or eleven percent (11%) has coached at the current school for ten or more years (10+). Four coaches (4) or forty- four percent (44%) have coached at the current high school for five or more years (5+). In suburban areas, no coach (0) has coached at the same high school for ten years or more (10+). Two coaches or twenty-nine percent (29%) have coached at the same high school for at least two years. Additionally, two coaches (29%) have 203 coached for four years (4), and two coaches (29%) have coached for three years in the same suburban areas high schools. In rural areas six (6) head coaches have served at their current high school for five or more (5+) years. Four (4) coaches or forty-four percent (44%) have coached at their current school of ten or more (10+) years. Two coaches (2) or twenty-two percent (22%) have served at their current high school as head football coach for five or more (5+) years. This data suggest that high school head football coach longevity at one school has a greater possibility in rural areas. In rural areas (n = 9), six coaches (6) or sixty-six percent (66%) had enjoyed head coaching positions at their current school for five (5) years or more. Only five (5) or fifty-five percent (55%) enjoyed a five year or more tenure in urban areas. In suburban areas, only two (2) or twenty-nine percent (29%) enjoyed a five year or more tenure. Rural high school head coaching appointments appear to be the positions of greatest longevity. 204 ooé mu: 0 0 34.0 v NN.0 N 2:0 H 0 0 2.0 N. 2.0 H & c 32335 .muzm 00..” mu: 0 0 0 0 0N0 N 0N0 N 0N0 N 3:0 H 0 0 § : 3.6.235 c3533 8a mu: 5.534. e o oz :6 N +8 3% 4 it. - mm... m a o o m :6 H N :6 H H .0053. a : cm... 2&235 “5:3 :35 “meme, 33223:. $580 ..mfioo“. 0mm: .oJfi...nmum u.o 28.50800 uzamfiomu w...» mBm... 205 00A mu: 3E0 NN.0 :0 3:0 2:0 § 0 36.0225 .23. 00... nu: 0N0 0N0 0N0 3:0 0 Va N c 36.28:. 23:53 84 mu: 626:4 o 6 oz 2.6 H +8 3% v +m - mg m e o o m 2.6 H N :6 H H .0053. a c cm... 32235 26.23 :35 63mg 0636.362. mmsumou ..mnuoo“. 0mm... ,6 >5.an 0o comtgou 6.535060 wé 63: 205 Head Coaches service at several high schools Service refers to the number of schools at which they have coached (See Table 4.9). Head football coaches who participated in the interview (n=25) had served for a mean of 1.84 high schools. It is important to note that nineteen (19) or 76% of the interviewed coaches have been Head Football Coach at only one (1) school (See Table 4.9). It, therefore, can be said that the coaches surveyed and interviewed for this study reflect a consistency of leadership and service over time for a specific high school, a designated community, and high school football team. Table 4.9 @gching Service - Number of High Schools at which interview participants served as Head Football Coach Participants Number of H. S. served as Head Coach N % l 19 76 2 3 12 3 2 8 4 O 0 5+ l .4 N = 25 100 Mean Number of Schools served at 1.84 206 The permanence of these head coaches suggests that their particular personal, American cultural, and football values have been taught, and transferred to several classes of student-athletes. It is also conceivable that these values, modeled by both the head coach and the graduates the high school football programs represented, are also emulated by other graduated peers and members of the larger community. The longevity and fixedness of their service may have provided a lesson in value orientation for a long period of time, for many. Head Coaches ’ success records H_ea_d Coaches’ Lifetime Championship Season Record Conference or League Championship Fourteen (14) or 56% of the interview participants (n=25) have won conference or league championships as head coaches; eleven (11) or 44% have not. The samples are similar (See Table 4.10). Division Championship Wins Thirteen (13) or 52% of the interview participants (n=25) have won a division championship; eleven (11) or 44% have not. One (1) or 4% gave no answer. The samples are similar. Regional Championship Wins Six (6) or 24% of the interview participants (n=25) have won a regional championship; eight teen (1 8) or 72% have not. One (1) or 4% gave no answer. The samples are similar. 207 State Playofl Participation Sixteen (16) or 64% of the interview participants (n=25) have made the state playoffs; eight (8) or 32% have not. One (1) or 4% gave no answer. Survey participants seem to have a slightly higher percentage of state playoff appearances than interview participants. State Championship Wins Two (2) or 8% interview participant (n=25) has won a state competitive class (i.e., A, B, C, D) Championship; twenty-three (23) or 92% have not. Geographic Comparisons of Coaches ’ Lifetime Championship Record Urban interviewed coaches Urban interviewed coaches (n = 9) have won no (0) state competitive level championships (See Table 4.10). Suburban interviewed coaches Suburban interviewed coaches (n = 7) have won no (0) state competitive level championships. Rural interviewed coaches Rural interviewed coaches (n = 9) have won two (2) state competitive level championships. More state competitive level championships (3) were won by suburban area high school coaches, followed by rural area high schools coaches (2), and then urban area high school coaches (1). Perhaps this indicates that the greater financial resources of the suburban school districts provides scholastic athletic resources which enable successful competition on a state-wide level. 208 8; o E. N NN. N 03 o o 8.“ 0 US a- o o 03 o :. F 8. w 03 3. F m». o NN. N E. N 2: o 8. m 3.. v 2: E. c 8. o E. N NN. N 03 o ,8. m 3. v 03 3. F R. Q NN. N S. N 2: 0 mm. m 5. 03 3. P m». e 3.. 4 on. m <0 <2 <0 02 as 8> <0 <2 <0 <2 .2. oz .2. 8> m u c 3222:. N u c m n c 3222:. .83”. 23525 :35 9%:anch _m>mi_ 922858 29m 8286me .2065 29m 923anch ficofiom 9:2anch 8635 92.0.:anch osmmmdoocmcohcoo co>> 32:. 9:92anch 280m aEmcoEEimco 0:53: .mmcomoo co comlt.moEoo oiqwaiomo o; 2an 209 Ethnic/Racial and Geographic Comparison of Interviewed Coaches’ Championship Records Urban Interviewed Coaches Nine urban coaches (n=9) were interviewed. White/Caucasian urban coaches interviewed (n = 4), about their coaching careers, have: won two (2) conference/league championships; won three (3) division championships; two (2) regional championships; participated in three (3) state playoff series; and they have not won a state competitive class championship (See Table 4.11). Black/African American urban coaches interviewed (n = 5), about their coaching careers, have: won three (3) conference/league championships; won four (4) division championships; not won a regional championship; participated in four (4) state playoff series; and they have not won a state competitive class championship. No other ethnic/racial groups were represented among those interviewed. Suburban Interviewed Coaches Seven suburban coaches (n = 7) were interviewed. White/Caucasian suburban coaches interviewed ( n = 7), about their coaching careers, have: won three (3) conference/league championships’ won two (2) division championships; not won a regional championship; participated in three (3) state playoff series; not won a state competitive class championship. No other ethnic/racial groups were represented among those interviewed. 210 Rural Interviewed Coaches Nine rural coaches (n=9) were interviewed. White/Caucasian rural coaches interviewed (n = 8) about their coaching careers, have: won five (5) conference/league championships; won three (3) division championships; won three (3) regional championships; participated in six (6) state playoff series; won one (I) state competitive class championship. The Black/African American rural coach interviewed (11 = 1), about his coaching career, has: not won a conference/league championship, division or regional championship; participated in one (1) state playoff series; and he won one (1) state competitive class championship. No other ethnic/racial groups were represented among those interviewed. It must be noted that White/Caucasian, Non- Hispanic, and Black/African American, Non-Hispanic, were the only two ethnic/racial groups represented in the group of high school head football coaches interviewed in this state. In the urban sample both White/Caucasian and Black/African American coaches were represented. In the rural sample White/Caucasian coaches were represented at a higher level than Black/African American coaches. In the suburban area only White/Caucasian coaches were represented. Therefore, the interview sample tends to be representative of the cultural diversity, or lack of diversity, within the state. 211 Table 4.11 thniclR ciaI an ra hi Q. 13. In 2007, did your high school win a conference! league Championship? Q. 14. In 2007, did your high school win a division Championship? Q. 15. In 2007, did your high school win a regional Championship? Q. 16. In 2007, did your high school make the state playoffs? Q. 17. In 2007. did your high school win the state competitive class (I.e., A, B, C. d) Championship? Comn' of Interview Cham ion hi R r s n = 4 n = 5 N = 9 White/ aucasian j IIBLIack/African-American ] Yes No Yes We 7 If % f % J f % If % | l 2 50 2 50] 2 40] 3 60' l 3| 75' 1[ 26' I 2| 40| 3l 60l [ 3| 75] 1] 25' [ SI 60' 2| 40] I 0| 0| 4 103' I 0[ Ol 5| 100' Q.13a. Have you ever won a conference/league Championship. Q.14a. Have you ever won a division Championship? Q.15a. Have you ever won a regional Championship? Q. 163. Have you ever made the state playoffs? Q.17a. Have you ever won the state competitive class (i.e.,A,B,C,D) Championship? 212 Table 4.11 -continued Ethnic/Racial and Geographic Comparison of Interviewed Coaches Championship Records n=7 n=O N=7 ISUBURBAN I IlWhite/Caucasian J IrBlack/African-American J Yes No Yes No If % f % Q. 13. In 2007. did your high school win a conference/ I 3 43 4 57 league Championship? Q. 14. In 2007, did your high school winadivision I ‘1 14I 6| 86' I 0| (1 OI (1 Championship? Q. 15. In 2007, did your high school winaregional [ 1I 14I 6[86I L 0| 0| of C] Championship? Q. 16. In 2007, did your high school make the I 3I 43I 4| 57I I OI OI OI OI state playoffs? Q. 17. In 2007, did your high school win the state I 1I MI :I 86' I OI OI OI OI competitive class (i.e., A, B, C, d) 7 ' 7 7 Championship? Q.13a. Have you ever won a conference/league I 3I 43 3I 43' I OI j OI 4 Championship. nr= 14 7 7 7 7 Q.14a. Have you ever won a division Championship? I 2I 29I 4I 57I I OI OI OI OI nr= 14 7 7 7 77 7 0.153. Have you ever won a regional Championship? I OI 0| 6| 86I I 0| 0| 0| 0| nr= 7 14 77 7 7 7 77 Q. 16a. Have you ever made the state playoffs? I 3I 43I 3I 43I I (J OI OI OI 7nr =1 147 7 7 7 7 7 Q.17a. Have you ever won the ' state competitive class I OI OI 7| 1OOI I OI OI 0| 0| (i.e.,A,B,C,D) Championship? 213 Table 4.11 - continued Ethnic/Racial and Geographic Comparison of interviewed Coaches Championship Records n = 8 n = 1 N = 9 RURAL IWhite/Caucasian j Black/African-American | r % 7 Yes No Yes |No f % f % If % I Q. 13. In 2007, did your 0 1 100 high school win a conference/ 2 25 6 75 O league Championship? 5I 62I I 0| 0| 1| 1OOI (i.e., A, B, C, d) Championship? Q.13a. Have you ever won a conference/league Championship. Q. 14. In 2007, did your high school win a division Championship? high school win a regional Championship? Q. 16. In 2007, did your high school make the state playoffs? Q. 17. In 2007, did your high school win the state Q. 15. In 2007, did your I competitive class I Q.14a. Have wu ever won a division Championship? regional Championship? $1 01 O h _l 01 & l—l O _l O ‘— A — —L o & 0. 16a. Have you ever made the state playoffs? 1 $ é Q.17a. Have you ever won the state competitive class Q.15a. Have you ever won a I (i.e.,A,B,C,D) Championship? I #1 co ‘—‘ IA‘ 1— g‘ ‘ A (A — — — N — l N (I! O * O l—‘ A l— A O 1&1 214 Ethnic/Racial Comparison of 2007 win-loss record of high school head football coaches Only White/Caucasian (n=19) and Black/African-American high school head football coaches were represented in the interviews (N=25). In the 2007 playing season, ten (10) of the nineteen (19) or fifty-three percent (53%) of the White/Caucasian coaches posted a winning season, at .501 or above. During the same period, three (3) of six (6) or fifty percent (50%) of the Black/African- American coaches posted a winning season, at .501 or above (See Table 4.12). Therefore, White/Caucasian and Black/Afiican American coaches both enjoyed an equally comparative rate of success, at 53% and 50%, respectively during the 2007 season. Table 4.12 Ethnic/Racial Comparison of 2007 Win-Loss Record of High School Head Football_ _C_0_aLc_h_e_§ Below .500 Above .501 W/C B/AA W/C B/AA 9 (.47) 3 (.50) n=11 10 (.53) 3 (.50) n =14 KEY: W/C = White/Caucasian; B/AA = Black/Afiican-American 215 Comparison of 2007 High School Win-Loss Records by Geographic Locations and Ethnic/Racial Identities of the Head Football Coaches Interviewed The urban areas provided both the White/Caucasian and Black/Afiican- American groups of interviewed coaches with winning records in the 2007 high school football season (See Table 4.13). Three of four or seventy-five percent (75%) of White/Caucasian respondent coaches in urban areas reported a winning record. The one reported losing coached made no report of a total/end season record. Three of five or sixty percent (60%) of the Black/Afiican-American coaches in urban areas reported a winning record. Suburban White/Caucasian high school head football coaches reported a more modest level of success with four of seven coaches or fifty-seven percent (57%) reporting a winning season. No Black/African-American coaches were represented in the suburban interview sample. Rural White/Caucasian high school head football coaches reported a lack of overall success with five of eight or sixty-two percent (62%) reporting a losing season. Two of the losing coaches made no report of a total/end season record. The one (1) Afi'ican-American coach in the rural districts, reported a losing season. 216 Table 4.13 Ethnic/Racial Comparison of 2007 High School Head Football Coaches’ Records by Geographic Location and Ethnic/Racial Identities. White/Caucasian Coaches Black/Afiican-American Coaches Urban Win (+501) Win (+501) 1. 13-1 1. 8-4 2. 11-1 2. 7-2 3. 9-4 3. 5—4 Loss (—.500) Loss {-500} n=4 4. No report x 1 4. 4-5 n= 5 5. 2-7 Suburban Win (+501) Win (+501) 1. 9-0 NO 2. 8-3 BLACK/AFRICAN- 3. 6-4 AMERICAN COACHES 4. 5-4 IN SUBURBAN SCHOOL Loss {-500} DISTRICTS. 5. 4-5 n= 0 6. 3-6 n=7 7. 3-6 Rural Win (+501) Loss {-500} 1.13-1 n=1 1.Noreportx1 2. 10-3 3. 7-3 Loss {-500} 4. 3-6 5. 2-7 6. 2-7 7. No report x1. 8. No report x l. n = 8 N=19 N = 6 N = 25 KEY: W/C = White Caucasian; B/AA = Black/African-American 217 B. Research Question 2: What are the demographic descriptions of the high school football programs represented in the study? What can be said about the high school football programs represented by the head coaches who participated in the study? In what high school competitive classes are the schools members? How many student-athletes are active in the program? What is the most recent history of success enjoyed by the team, within one year? Demographic findings related to the high school programs will be presented around: (1) High school competitive class represented by coaches interviewed; (2) Football program size represented by coaches interviewed; and, (3) Program success. I. High School Competitive Class Represented by Coaches Interviewed The State High School Athletic Association (SHSAA) groups high schools by student enrollment into competitive classes, to help ensure competitive equity. The enrollment breaks, at the time of this study, by classes (Johnson & Frushour, 2006) were: Class A, 1,055 or more students; Class B, up to 1,054 students; Class C, up to 506 students; and Class D, 248 or fewer students (See Table 4.14). 218 oow mm 3 mm o\o o : :83”. 00—. o 3. mv mv o\o m : :meanzw 00? o 3 I. an o\o x. : :25 cor w VN mm 0v o\o mm or 2 56... u 2 $8. 5 9N0 o 68 - meNv 0 $8. 739 m 229: 5 08.: < 36.0 6528800 $32295 8680 =m£oom one: .025 :9... __< S umEmmmamm mmflo m>==ooEoo 60:5 :6 03m... 219 The twenty-five (25) high school head football coaches who were interviewed represented the following competitive classes: Class A schools totaled ten (10) coaches interviewed, with seven (7) located in urban areas, and three (3) in suburban areas. None were located in rural locales. Class B schools totaled seven (7) coaches interviewed, with one (1) located in an urban area, three (3) in suburban areas, and three (3) in a rural location. Class C schools totaled six (6) coaches interviewed, with one (1) located in an urban area, one (1) in a suburban area, and four (4) being located in rural areas. Class D schools totaled two (2) coaches interviewed with both located in rural areas. No class D schools were located in urban or suburban areas. 2. Football Program Sigg Represented by Coaches Interviewed Two thousand, one hundred and eighty three (2,183) student athletes were represented by the coaches who participated in the interviews. In the 2007 state high school football season forty six thousand, three hundred and ninety-five (46, 395) students participated in the sport (Johnson & Frushour, 2008a). (See Table 4.15) These coaches were usually the designated administrator of the entire football program, including varsity, junior varsity and freshman teams. Other assistants might hold the title of Head Junior Varsity, or Head Freshman coach, but the final authority for the program rested with the head varsity coach. 220 Table 4.15 Football Team Size Represented by Coaches Interviewed Interviews: N = 25 TOTAL RPRSNTED URBAN SBRBAN RURAL VARSITY 954 383 305 266 Mean 38.96 43 44 30 Range of Team size: H 60 60 60 37 L 17 34 27 17 J. V. 772 3.19 246 207 Mean 30.83 35 35 23 Range of Team size: H 55 50 55 35 L 0 24 20 0 FRSHMN 457 210 187 607 Mean 20 23 27 7 Range of Team size: H 55 50 55 35 L 0 0 0 0 TOTAL 2, 183 912 738 533 Mean 87 101 105 59 Range of Team size: H 157 150 157 90 L 22 58 70 22 URBAN SBRBAN RURAL Interviews: N = 25 n = 9 n = 7 n = 221 Varsity Football Team Players Represented by Coaches Interviewed. Varsity football players represented by the coaches who participated in the interviews totaled nine hundred and fifiy four (954) with a mean team membership size of 39, and a range of 17 to 60 players (See Table 4.15). Urban varsity football players represented by the coaches who participated in the interviews equaled three hundred and eighty three (3 83) players with a mean team membership of 43, and a range of 34 to 60 players. Suburban varsity football players represented by the coaches who participated in the interviews equaled three hundred and five (305) players with a mean team membership of 44, median of 38, mode of 60, and a range of 27 to 60 players. Rural varsity football players represented by the coaches who participated in the interviews equaled two hundred and sixty-six (266) players with a mean team membership of 30, and range of 17 to 37 players. Therefore, varsity teams in urban and suburban locations tended to have larger teams than rural areas since they have a larger population base from which to draw football players. Junior Varsity Football Team Players Represented by Coaches Interviewed. Junior Varsity football players represented by the head football coaches who participated in the interviews totaled seven hundred and seventy-two (772) players with a mean team membership size of 31, and a range of 0 to 50 players. Some rural high schools did not field a junior varsity team. 222 Urban junior varsity football players represented by the head football coaches who participated in the interviews equaled three hundred and nineteen (319) players with a mean team membership of 35, and a range of 24 to 50 players. Suburban junior varsity football players represented by the head football coaches who participated in the interviews equaled two hundred and forty-six (246) players with a mean team membership of 35, and a range of 20 to 55 players. Rural junior varsity football players represented by the coaches who participated in the interviews equaled two hundred and seven (207) players with a mean team membership of 23, and a range of 0 to 35 players. Freshmen Football Team Players Represented by Coaches Interviewed. Freshmen players represented by the head football coaches who participated in the interviews totaled four hundred and fifiy seven (457) with a mean team membership size of 20, and a range of 0 to 55 players. Some high schools in urban, suburban and rural areas did not field freshman teams. Urban freshmen football team members represented by the head football coaches who participated in the interviews equaled two hundred and ten (210) players with a mean team membership of 23, and a range of 0 to 50 players. Suburban fieshmen football team members represented by the head football coaches who participated in the interviews equaled one hundred and eighty seven (187) players with a mean team membership of 27, and a range of 0 to 55 players. Rural freshmen football team members represented by the head football coaches who participated in the interviews equaled sixty (60) players with a mean team membership of seven (7), and a range of 0 to 35 players. Five of the seven high 223 school football programs in the rural areas did not field or report a freshman football team. 3. Program Success 2007 High School Win-Loss record (i. e., total season outcomes, regular season plus post season record). For the purpose of this study, program success is defined by having an end season winning record of .501 or better. A record of .500 is difficult, though not impossible, since the regular season has a nine game schedule, and ties have been eliminated statewide in Michigan high school football since 1998 (Johnson & Clifford, 1998; Pesch, 2008). In 2007 of the schools represented by coaches in the interviews twenty-five (n=25), fourteen (n=l4) teams or fifty-six percent (56%) finished their season at .501 or better, a winning season. Eleven (11) teams or forty-four percent (44%) finished below .500, for a losing record (See Table 4.16). Table 4.16 Total season outcomes of teams represented by coaches interviewed 2007 Win-Loss record N % At or Above .501 14 56 At or Below .500 1 1 44 Total = 25 100 224 2007 High School Football Program Championships In 2007, of the schools participating in the interviews (n=25), nine (9) or 36% won a conference or league championship, sixteen (16) or 64% did not (See Table 17). In 2007, eight (8) or 32% of the schools participating in the interviews won a division championship; seventeen (17) or 68% did not. In 2007, five (5) or 20% of the schools participating in the interviews won a regional championship; twenty (20) or 80% did not. In 2007, thirteen (13) or 52% of the high schools participating in the interviews made the state playoffs; twelve (12) or 48% did not. In 2007, two (2) or 8% of the high schools participating in the interviews won their competitive class championship; twenty-three (23) or 92%. did not. Table 4.17 2007 @h School Football Progam Championships Championship Titles Won N % Conference/League 9 36 Championship Division 8 32 Championship Regional 5 20 Championship State Playoff 13 52 Participation State Competitive 2 8 Level Championship TOTAL = 25 225 Summary of Football Program Success Of the twenty five (25) football programs represented in the interview, fourteen (14) or 56% had posted winning records during the 2007 season. Eleven (1 l) or 44% had not. This indicates a fair distribution of current winning and loosing programs within the sample. D. Summary of the demographic characteristics and descriptions of high school head football coaches and programs studied. The summary will be presented in two parts: Research Question 1, the demographics of the head coaches studied; and Research Question 2, the demographics of the high schools represented in the study. Research Question 1 will be summarized around Personal-professional, cultural, and football categorical data. Research Question 2 will be summarized around high school competitive class membership, program size, and most recent program success records. Research Question 1: What are the demographic descriptions of the high school head football coaches studied as research participants? Personal-professional demographic descriptions. Personal professional data will be presented around the areas of professional background, age and education. All participants (N=25), male high school head football coaches, were interviewed. The study participants represented a diverse group of educators and non-educators, ranging from those involved in full time school administration and teaching, to part-time coaches who were employed on a fulltime basis as state utility workers, fire and police officers, and security guards. The interview participants ranged in age from twenty eight (28) to sixty (60) years. 226 The mean age of the interview participants was 41.33 years. The highest level of education completed among those interviewed included one (1) Educational Specialist (Ed.S). Cultural demographic descriptions Ethnicity/Race Nineteen (19) of those interviewed were White/Caucasian, six (6) were Black/African-American, Non-Hispanic. Geographic regions Interview respondents totaled nine (9) from urban areas; nine (9) from rural areas; and seven (7) in suburban areas. Football demographic descriptions Coaches ’ career stability and service The head coaches who participated in the interviews (n=25) had held that position for a mean of 5.76 years. The coaches exhibited some stability with interview coaches having served at a mean of 1.84 high schools, and having been at their current high school for a mean of 4.6 years. Seventy-six (.76) percent of interview head coaches had been at one school only as head coach. Coaches’ Lifetime Win-Loss & Championship Records Two interview participant head coaches have won a state competitive class championship. Additionally, high school football championship information follows: a. More state competitive level championships (3) were won by suburban area high school coaches, followed by rural area high school coaches (2), and then urban high school coaches (1 ). 227 b. One (1) White/Caucasian rural interviewed coached has won a state competitive level championship. No urban or suburban interviewed coach has won a state competitive level championship. 228 M'illlllllilljfilll[lilllllzllllllsllliglllll . s