Concise, convincing book emphasizes relationship between Greek and Roman athletics and religion, art, and education. Colorful descriptions of the pentathlon, foot-race, wrestling, boxing, ball playing, and more. 137 black-and-white illustrations.

Sports are an integral part of American society. Millions of dollars are spent every year on professional, collegiate, and youth athletics, and participation in and viewing of these sports both alter and reflect how one perceives the world. Beamon and Messer deftly explore sports as a social construction, and more significantly, the large role race and ethnicity play in sports and consequently sports’ influence on modern race relations. This text is ideal for courses on Sport and Society as well as Race and Ethnicity.

British athletics in the era of Chariots of Fire is explored through the rediscovered life of amateur and professional runner and leading British coach, Alec Nelson. Though necessary for competitive success, professional coaches were kept firmly in their place by the socially elite athletes and administrators of the sport. The contradictions and hypocrisy within athletics, and the class-based antagonism between amateurism and professionalism, are central themes of this book. The relationship between professional trainers and amateur athletes and clubs is examined, and the resistance to change while British Olympic performances increasingly fell behind. The sporting world and its main personalities are brought to life through exploring the clubs Nelson coached (Cambridge University, the Army, the Achilles Club and various Olympic teams), the athletes he trained (Harold Abrahams, Douglas Lowe and Bob Tisdall among them) and the controversies over the methods and role of coaches. The book also brings to light a remarkable partnership which crossed the lines of social class, between Nelson and his mentor, Philip Noel-Baker, a prominent Olympian and politician who attempted to modernise British athletics.

Stress in College Athletics: Causes, Consequences, Coping addresses the causes and consequences of stress in college sports and offers effective coping mechanisms that will help individuals understand and control stressors and emotions in their environment. Athletic administrators, coaches, student athletes, parents of athletes, educators, and social and behavioral science researchers will benefit from this examination of what stress is, the different types of stress, and what factors can contribute to anxiety. Containing insight from hundreds of student athletes, coaches, and administrators, this vital book offers you proven research, clear explanations, and recommended suggestions that will enable you to cope with stress and not let it affect your job or your game. Examining how both males and females perceive stress, Stress in College Athletics explores developmental differences between the genders to explain the ways in which the two groups react to and deal with stress. Discussing the challenges that you deal with every day, this valuable book offers you several proven suggestions and methods to help reduce stress, including: Using coping techniques, such as physical exercise (other than the sport you play), recreational activities, muscle relaxation, biofeedback, and meditation Doing things for others and looking to your own spirituality in order to alleviate anxiety Eliminating factors such as fatigue and inferior health in order to avoid the negative emotions of jealousy, fear, and anger that can lead to tension and anxiety Learning how to relieve stress in your immediate environment (on the sidelines, in the audience, or during a test) through simple, effective, and inconspicuous exercises Adapting procedures for self-modification of behavior, such as identifying a behavior you want to change, thinking about the result of that behavior and how often it occurs, and reforming that conduct Through practical research, theories about stress and its causes and effects, and insight from peers, this excellent resource offers suggestions for further inquiry in the field of college athletics and stress. Complete and thorough, Stress in College Athletics will provide you with the necessary tools to help you create a personal stress management system that will improve your well-being in and out of the athletic forum.

Intercollegiate Athletics, Inc. examines the corrupting influence and damaging financial effects of big-time intercollegiate athletics, especially football and to a lesser extent basketball, on American higher education. Including historical and contemporary perspectives, the book traces the growth of intercollegiate sports from largely student-run activities supervised by faculty to the gargantuan, taxpayer-supported spectacles that now dominate many public universities. It investigates the regressive student fees that have helped subsidize big-time sports at public universities and prop up chronically unprofitable athletic departments, as well as the corrosive effects of athletics on the university’s academic enterprise. A review of the alleged salutary effects of massive sports programs, such as spurring alumni donations and student applications, reveals that such benefits are largely illusory, more myth than real. The book also pays special attention to the often prescient, if largely unsuccessful, opponents of these developments, and considers the alternatives to big-time athletics, from abolition to professionalization to club sports. Students, scholars, sports fans, and those interested in learning how big-time football and basketball have cast such an enormous—and often baleful—shadow upon American colleges and universities will profit from this provocative and engagingly written book.

Pick up some tips and take your game or coaching to the next level with this collection of articles on various sports by successful athletes and coaches. The Book of Athletics opens with an introductory chapter written by the editor, accomplished amateur athlete and Harvard scholar Paul Withington, in which the he details the essentials of an athlete and the place of athletics in high schools and colleges. It becomes clear from the introduction that this is a book intended for coaches and teachers working with athletes of a high proficiency. In all, thirteen sports are profiled, including football, baseball, athletics, hockey, wrestling, basketball, golf, and several others. The sections on football, athletics, and baseball are afforded the most space, with football alone receiving fifteen distinct articles written by various authors. The Book of Athletics is a detailed book and one that will appeal to those interested in high performance sport. Athletics historians or anybody interested in the evolution of sports will also certainly find this to be a meaningful book, full of useful information and interesting training techniques. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.