Stories of Sport and the Moral Order: Unraveling the Cultural Construction of Tiger Woods

Humorist Dave Barry (1997) has likened sports reporting to "try[ing] to get intelligible statements from large mumbling naked men surrounded by approximately the population of Sweden." As with much humor, the hyperbole rests on an underlying truth - in this case, a keen observation about the place of sports in the hierarchy of U.S. journalism. Traditionally, the sports department has been considered the kindergarten of the newsroom, and sports coverage an enterprise of a lower order. In recent decades, however, the notion of sports as frivolous and marginal to important human affairs has become hard to sustain. Many sports stories are no longer just sports stories; they may be labor, legal, or lifestyle stories as well. Major sports are big business and, when it comes to public investments in sports facilities, also public business. Sports have become an arena for scrutinizing larger social problems, including racial tensions and gender inequities. As Los Angeles Times media critic David Shaw (1989) observed a decade ago: "Clearly, big-time sports is increasingly moving from the sports page to the front page- and to the business, entertainment and life style pages as well ... newspaper editors, long accustomed to thinking of sports as the toy department of journalism - a veritable sandbox of scores and statistics - are struggling to figure out how best to cover this change." The roster of sports-related stories accorded broad attention in the mass media - in some cases, on the front pages of even the most serious newspapers -- seems to grow longer by the year. In the late 1990s, you did not have to follow heavyweight boxing to learn about Mike Tyson taking a bite out of Evander Hollyfield's ear, or men's basketball to know about Latrell Sprewell choking his coach, or even baseball to hear of Cal Ripkin's bad back. Neither did you need to be a golf aficionado to recognize the name Tiger Woods, the first player of color to win the Masters tournament, or to know about Casey Martin, with his withered leg, going to court for the right to ride a golf cart. Whether or not you paid attention, certain issues and events in sports, be they advances in women's athletic participation and prominence or culminating battles of the pro football and baseball seasons, would likely infiltrate your consciousness. Furthermore, these stories radiated and resonated with significance beyond sport; their subtexts were barely, if at all, veiled. Tyson had violated the decorum of the ring. Sprewell had violated a hierarchy of authority. Ripken, the "iron man," was soldiering on through his pain. Woods had achieved a stunning racial breakthrough. Martin was bringing the Americans with Disabilities Act to a novel arena. The growing popularity and commercial viability of women's basketball, with two professional leagues, illustrated how far the cause of gender equity had come. A Green Bay Packers Superbowl victory became instant legend, signifying the return of a once-- storied team - until the next year, when the underdog Denver Broncos rose up. The Florida Marlins' World Series win exemplified the upstart success that money could buy in baseball. Constructed by print and broadcast media as news subjects with multiple levels of meaning, such stories buttress the central premise of a growing body of scholarship in anthropology, sociology, political and social history, and media studies that more - much more - is going on in sports than fun and games. The sheer obviousness of this tenet makes it subject to easy dismissal, which we believe is a mistake and a missed opportunity. The prominence of mass media in the modern sporting experience is a key aspect of a burgeoning literature on the cultural meanings and representations of sport (e.g., Wenner, 1989; Barnett, 1990; Whannel, 1992; Creedon, 1994; Baughman, 1995; Rowe, 1995; Real, 1989, 1996; Baker and Boyd, 1997), and this monograph represents a contribution to these evolving discussions. …