The Sport Star

Modern Sport and the Cultural Economy of Sporting Celebrity

Barry Smart

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2005
• Print ISBN: 9780761943518, 9780761943501
• eBook ISBN: 9781446236529
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Why are sport stars central to celebrity culture? What are the implications of their fame?

Proceeding from a broadly based discussion of heroism, fame and celebrity, Smart addresses a number of prominent modern sports and sport stars, including Michael Jordan (basketball), David Beckham (football), Tiger Woods (golf), Anna Kournikova and the Williams sisters (tennis).

He analyses the development of modern sport in the UK and USA, demonstrating the key economic and cultural factors that have contributed to the popularity of sport stars, while examining issues such as race and gender, the impact of professionalization, growing media coverage, the role of agents and the increasing presence of commercial corporations providing sponsorship and endorsement contracts.

This book situates the sport star as the embodiment of the various tensions of age, class, race, gender and culture. It argues that sporting figures possess an increasingly rare quality of authenticity that gives them the capacity to lift and inspire people. The book is a major contribution to the sociology and culture of sport and celebrity.

1

---

Heroism, Fame and Celebrity in the World of Sport

The popularity of sport

Sport is now at the heart of contemporary culture and in the words of one commercially interested observer seems destined to ‘define the culture of the world’ (Phil Knight, founder and chairman of Nike corporation, cited in Katz 1994: 199). The importance of sport has long been recognised. Early in the twentieth century, Walter Camp, widely acknowledged to be the father of American football, is reputed to have described sport as ‘“the broad folk highway” of the nation’ (Pope 1997: 3). Sport is recognised to be one of the key cultural institutions involved in the constitution of national identity. It is also of vital economic importance, sport-related economic activity in England being identified by Mass Observation in 1939 as ‘the biggest English industry’ and by the Henley Centre in 1985 as ‘the sixth largest employment sector’ (Mason 1989: 10; Kuper 2003: 147–148).

Sport is exceptionally popular around the world and sporting figures, sport teams and sport events are particularly prominent in the media. As one analyst has observed, sport is located in a ‘deep area of the collective sensibility’ (Eco 1987: 160), it is an activity whose popularity and appeal cuts across all manner of social and political divisions. High profile sporting figures are generally well known and popular across the social spectrum. Sportsmen and to a lesser extent sportswomen appear regularly on television, in magazines, and in the press, not solely because of their sporting prowess, but in addition because of their acquired fame, achieved ‘star’ quality and/or attributed ‘celebrity’ status.

The popularity and prominence of sporting figures is by no means a recent phenomenon. From the beginning of modern sport in the nineteenth century there have been numerous sporting heroes. A wide range of individuals by virtue of their skill, the quality of their technique and the manner of their performance in sporting competition have been accorded special recognition by both the public and the media (Huntington-Whitely 1999). Acknowledgement of the distinctiveness of individual players, of specific sportsmen and sportswomen, as well as of particular feats or performances, has been virtually synonymous with the emergence and development of modern sport. In 1865 in England a very young W. G. Grace (1848–1915) played cricket for the Gentlemen for the first time. In a subsequent series of matches against the Players beginning in 1871 he achieved totals of 217, 77, 112, 163, 158 and 70 in consecutive innings. Through his performances W. G. Grace transformed the game of cricket.

Reflecting on W. G. Grace’s contribution to the game as a whole the historian C. L. R. James observes that the ‘whole imposing structure and organisation of first-class cricket’ can be traced to him. He was a very popular figure, crowds of people went to see him play, ‘they cheered him on the field [and] they walked behind him in the street’ (James 1969: 180). W. G. Grace held a special place in the lives of people in Victorian England, he was a great popular hero who received ‘the spontaneous, unqualified … enthusiasm and goodwill of a whole community’ (James 1969: 182). Recalling the celebrations that followed W. G. Grace’s hundredth hundred, celebrations that exemplified the wider cultural significance of sport, James asks what other occasion could produce ‘such enthusiasm, such an unforced sense of community, of the universal merged in an individual?’ (1969: 182). W. G. Grace was not just a great cricket player he was also an historic figure, an individual who helped establish the game of cricket as a national institution in England. In short he was a British sporting hero (Holt 1999).

The achievement of popularity through sporting prowess was not peculiar to cricket or confined to W. G. Grace as the comments of an observer of late-nineteenth-century ‘football mania’ in England reveal. Charles Edwardes writing in 1892 describes how professional football players in the North of England became ‘the objects of adoration’ in their neighbourhoods. Supporters regularly went to train stations to see their teams leave for away matches as well as to welcome them back on their return. They expressed their adoration by being ready to ‘cheer them with affectionate heartiness, or condole with them and solace them with as much beer as … their trainer will allow them to accommodate’ (Edwardes 1992: 8). At the close of the nineteenth century, professional footballers were already better known than local MPs, their photographs were displayed in shops, and it was said that ‘they cannot move in their native streets without receiving ovations enough to turn the head of a Prime Minister’ (1992: 8). Even at this relatively early stage in the development of the professional game it was recognised that professional footballers were becoming ‘marketable goods’, that their wages would rise ‘much higher than they are at present’ (1992: 9) and that there would be increasing scope for agents to act as mediators between players and club committees.

There are many other examples of individual sports men and women receiving wide public acclaim for their performances in sports competition. In American sport in the 1920s a number of individuals came to the fore. ‘Babe’ Ruth (1895–1948) was enthusiastically acclaimed for his baseball feats, Red Grange (1904–1991), an American footballer, was hailed as the ‘Galloping Ghost of the Grid-iron’, and Jack Dempsey (1895–1983) acquired a heroic status for his fighting skills in the boxing ring (Rader 1983a). In Europe and America a young French female tennis player, Suzanne Lenglen (1899–1938), became a celebrated figure, but not only for ability expressed on the court, which allowed her to dominate the Wimbledon tournament from 1919 to 1926. She was reputed to hit the ball very hard, ‘like a man’, and was regarded as very fit. It was also alleged that she was ‘high-strung, hot-tempered and imperial in manner’ and that she led a ‘racy private life’ (Bouchier and Findling 1983: 230–231). But there was something else, an early trace of the baggage associated with appearance that subsequently many women in sport have had to carry with them. Suzanne Lenglen was considered to be the first female tennis player to wear a tennis costume that was not full in length and her clothing has been described as ‘colorful and sensual’ (Bouchier and Findling 1983). Being French, wearing a skirt that ended just below the knee, and achieving success in tennis by playing the game in a manner that set her apart from most other women of the time ensured that she would be a well-known, if controversial figure (Inglis 1977; Cashmore 2000).

Heroism in sport

In a number of respects another tennis player of the era, the American Helen Wills (1905–98), represents a comparable figure to Suzanne Lenglen. Wills based her game on hard serves and powerful ground strokes. Her preference was to practice by playing against male players. Her reputation and stature soared when at the age of seventeen she won her first US women’s singles title (1923) and began to be regarded by sport writers as the ‘great American hope’, the one who might ‘dethrone Suzanne Lenglen’ (Bouchier and Findling (1983: 230). In 1926 Lenglen played Wills in a winter tennis tournament held on the French Riviera. In the match Lenglen won 6–3, 8–6 and then later in the year turned professional leaving Wills to become the ‘unchallenged champion’ of the women’s game for a number of years (1927–33). Helen Wills has been described as an ‘authentic American sports heroine’, an individual who was not only a winner but a player with style, someone who came to prominence in an era in which organised sports were coming to the fore in America (Bouchier and Findling 1983: 233).

In the period following the First World War there was an unusually high level of hero-worship in America. It has been suggested that this reflected not only the celebrity-fabricating impact of the new media of popular culture (film, radio and mass-circulation magazines) but also the responses of people seeking escape from the forms of disillusionment and disorganisation that followed the end of the war. American soldiers returning from the First World War were disillusioned with the people and culture of Europe and there was a marked increase in nationalistic fervour. Heroic figures, seemingly representing simpler virtues, provided solace for a people whose faith had been shaken by the passage of events and whose lives had been disturbed by rapid economic and technological changes. In this period organised sport became a significant cultural phenomenon. During the First World War increased emphasis was placed on the military benefits of sport. There was also a significant growth in college sports and in the aftermath of the war there was a marked increase in leisure activities and the pursuit of pleasure. These changes coupled with a commensurate expansion of sport journalism led inexorably to unprecedented attention being devoted to sport personalities. This was the context in which Helen Wills came to prominence as a cultural hero and leading sporting figures as a whole grew in stature and cultural significance.

Between 1923 and 1938 Helen Wills won eight Wimbledon singles and three doubles titles, seven US National singles and four doubles championships, as well as four French National tournaments, plus numerous other less prestigious tournament titles, as well as gold medals for singles and doubles at the 1924 Olympics. On court Wills dressed modestly, played a ‘power game’, displayed intense concentration, and appeared impassive and imperturbable, hence her nickname, ‘Little Miss Poker Face’. Off court she was described as ‘pleasant, articulate and interested in the world around her’ and as ‘unostentatious’ (Bouchier and Findling 1983). In the 1920s tennis was the most international of organised sports and the successes achieved by Wills were major events in America. By 1938, when she retired, Wills’ fame had begun to decline, her ‘star qualities had faded’ and she became a forgotten hero (Bouchier and Findling 1983: 239).

In discussions of heroism in sport and the respects in which sport may replenish the moral spirit, without which community risks becoming merely a hollow abstraction, the contribution of American golfer Bobby Jones (1902–71), ‘the immortal amateur’, is frequently acknowledged to be of significance (Ford 1977: 51; Porter 1983). In an obituary broadcast in one of his Letters from America in 1972 Alistair Cooke remarked that ‘the twenties were the last decade when the idea of style was essential to the conception of a sporting hero’ (quoted in Inglis 1977: 83). For Cooke ‘style’ was exemplified by the ‘effortless grace’ of the golfer Bobby Jones who won the British and American Open Championships as well as the British and American Amateur tournaments in the same year (1930) and then retired from tournament play. Cooke comments that long before his ‘Grand Slam’ achievement Bobby Jones was well known in America and Britain, not simply for his golfing ability but for the way in which he conducted himself. Describing Jones as an easy-going and modest individual, who had ‘great grace and … remained an amateur’ throughout his career, Cooke adds that he was one of the few sporting heroes who became ‘famous even to people who knew and cared little about golf’ (quoted in Inglis 1977: 84–85).

Bobby Jones was certainly a famous figure and his fame has endured. However, while Jones’s achievements on the golf course and his reputation for ‘unfailing sportsmanship’ are legendary, Cooke’s celebration of Jones’s sporting style and prowess omits any mention of the fact that Jones was also ‘known for being a racist’ (Billings 2000: 418). It is now acknowledged that until relatively recently overt racism has been a prominent feature of golf in America (Sinnette 1998). Indeed from 1934 to 1961 the constitution of the Professional Golfers Association ‘explicitly limited that organization’s membership to “Professional golfers of the Caucasian race”’ (Owen 2001: 179). It took the emergence of golfing phenomenon Tiger Woods and in particular a Nike advertising campaign in 1996 that deliberately emphasised the issue of race to draw public attention to the history of discrimination in the sport (Goldman and Papson 1998; Sinnette 1998; Rosaforte 2002).

There is a strong sense in Alastair Cooke’s remarks about Bobby Jones that sport, for a time at least, has constituted a repository of concepts and ideas ‘which have been central to our morality’ (Inglis 1977: 85). Sport has been accorded a special moral quality, has been credited with a potential capacity for nurturing ‘the natural impulses of generosity, elation, heroism, grace, [and] decorum’ (Inglis 1977: 35). However the impression has also been conveyed that the influences to which sport and sporting figures became increasingly subject in the course of the twentieth century eroded, if they did not undermine completely, the moral value of sport and the prospect of genuine sporting ‘heroism’ (Hoch 1972). Certainly the mythology of the sporting hero exemplified by Neville Cardus’s narratives on early-twentieth-century cricket and the heroic feats of aristocratic gentlemen and yeoman peasants seem to have little relevance to the professional, media-savvy world of contemporary sport. The ‘casual’ heroism considered to be exemplified by Bobby Jones and his achievement of the Grand Slam are described by Alistair Cooke as unlikely to be repeated ‘because today golf … has turned into a money-making industry and the smart young amateurs go at it like navvies’ (quoted in Inglis 1977: 84).

Questioning whether there can be any place for ‘effortless grace’ in a world of sport that has been radically transformed by increasing professionalism, heightened competition and a dramatic rise in the level of direct and indirect financial reward is justified. Contemporary sportsmen and sportswomen do need to apply themselves to their increasingly competitive sporting endeavours with diligence, maximum effort and unremitting discipline. While there may still be elegance and beauty of movement or expression in sport, as competition has increased in intensity there has been a marked reduction in goodwill shown towards opponents. Displays of propriety and consideration for others are now more the exception than the rule. With increasing professionalism and growing commercialism sport has indeed become more serious (Huizinga 1949). It has become an industry, a business, and sportsmen and sportswomen are in consequence required to be more businesslike in their approach to preparation, practice and performance. Making money is now an important part of sport and professional participants have to work hard at their games because it is their job to do so.

However, the idea that epic sporting achievements are unlikely to be repeated is very controversial and in respect of golf, as well as a number of other popular sports such as basketball, football and tennis, contemporary evidence suggests the contrary may well be the case. Certainly there are a good many analysts who consider the feats in 2000/2001 of the American professional golfer Tiger Woods to be ‘heroic’ and more than comparable to the achievements of Bobby Jones in 1930. Winning the US Open, the US Amateur, the British Open and the British Amateur tournaments in 1930 Bobby Jones achieved the ‘Grand Slam’, golf’s ‘Impregnable Quadrilateral’ (Rosaforte 2002: 167). In 2001 Woods became the first ever to hold all four professional major championships at the same time. Woods won the PGA, as well as the US and British Open Championships in 2000 and while still holding these he won the Masters tournament in 2001, achieving what has been called the ‘Tiger Slam’. Comparison of the achievements of the two players is made difficult by the fact that the four major golf championships won by Jones in 1930 are ‘not the same four that are considered to be the majors today’ (Owen 2001: 197). Nevertheless, comparisons have been made and Sports Illustrated has described Tiger Woods’s feat as ‘the greatest stretch of dominance in golf history’ (Rosaforte 2002: 369).

Making comparisons over time between competitors from different eras, who are in many respects playing a different game, if developments in technique, technology and terrain, not to mention increased pressure of competition are taken into account, has been described as a potentially ‘treacherous’ yet ‘irresistible’ practice (Owen 2001). Is it appropriate to make comparisons that cannot effectively take historical and cultural differences into account? How would Bobby Jones have fared in match play with Tiger Woods? As one analyst has noted,

Equipment evolves, playing conditions change, and the ambitions and expectations of the players themselves cannot be extricated from the times in which they live. In Jones’s day, no golfer made a living from tournament purses; all the great players, whether amateurs … or professionals … necessarily spent most of their time and energy doing something else – going to school and practising law in Jones’s case. (Owen 2001: 197)

Had Jones been born later he might, as Owen suggests, have applied himself exclusively to the game and reached even greater heights, then again he might have ‘been overwhelmed by the depth of talent in the modern professional tour and given up’ (Owen 2001: 197). We will never know.

Recognition of the different historical and cultural circumstances in which sporting figures performed and the impossibility of determining the effect of differences on performances has not brought an end to comparisons. To the contrary the growing cultural prominence of sport has led to a proliferation of comparative narratives on sporting performances and sporting heroes. Undoubtedly an important part of the appeal of sport, a significant part of its cultural popularity, is that it licenses nostalgic narratives recalling heroes of the past and outstanding performances. Sport is a powerful source of vivid images and compelling narratives about heroes and heroic deeds that provide a ‘scrapbook of memories that define a life’ (Inglis 1977: 2) and constitute a history that contributes to our sense community. If heroes are ‘the products of their period’ (Holt and Mangan 1996: 5), the narratives on heroic sporting figures are no less products of their time.

Undoubtedly a great deal has changed in the world of sport as professionalism, commerce, sponsorship and the increasing prominence of the media, and television in particular, have made a significant impact on sporting figures and events. The ways in which sport is played, and its social and cultural status and significance have been dramatically transformed. The profile of sport has been raised considerably. Sport is now an increasingly prominent feature on the news agenda. No longer confined to the back pages of the press, sport-related stories appear throughout newspapers and in special inserts and magazines devoted entirely to the subject and associated issues. On radio and television sport occupies a prominent, in some instances pivotal position in programming schedules. Sport is now a business and in many respects it is almost indistinguishable from show business. Sport has become an integral part of the entertainment industry and high profile sporting figures have acquired fame and are accorded the status of stars and celebrities.

On fame and its acquisition

The state of being widely known was very different before the twentieth century and the development of mass circulation means of communication. The advent of mass circulation newspapers followed by radio and then, perhaps most significantly, television had a major impact on the acquisition and attribution of fame. Before the ‘graphic revolution’, that is the ‘ability to make, preserve, transmit and disseminate precise images’ (Boorstin 1963: 24), to become well known it was generally necessary to have demonstrated greatness in deed or action. With the development of mechanical means of image production and dissemination fame began to be manufactured as the media fabricated ‘well-knownness’. The ‘electronic revolution’ (McLuhan 19...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Heroism, Fame and Celebrity in the World of Sport
• 2 The Development of Modern Sport in Britain and America
• 3 The Professionalisation of Modern Sport
• 4 Media, Sponsorship and Sport Stardom
• 5 Corporate Culture and the Branding of the Sport Star: Nike, Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods
• 6 Cultures of Sport Stardom: David Beckham and Anna Kournikova
• 7 Concluding Remarks: Sport Stars, Authenticity and Charisma
• References
• Index