On the court and on the field they are the world?s winners, exhibiting a natural grace and prowess their adoring fans can only dream about. Yet so often, off the field our sports heroes lose their perspective, their balance, and ultimately their place. In a work as timely as the latest fracas on the basketball court or the most recent drug-induced scandal in the dugout, Stanley H. Teitelbaum looks into the circumstances behind many star athletes? precipitous fall from grace. ø In his psychotherapy practice, Teitelbaum has worked extensively with professional athletes and sports agents?work he draws on here for insight into the psyche of sports figures and the off-the-field challenges they face. Considering both historical and current cases, he shows how, in many instances, the very factors that elevate athletes to superstardom contribute to their downfall. An evenhanded and honest look at athletes who have faltered, Teitelbaum?s work helps us see past our sports stars? exalted images into what those images?and their frailty?say about our society and ourselves.

Sports have taken on tremendous importance in the world in which we live. Their social significance - economic, political, and personal - both nationally and internationally is unprecedented. What may not be so immediately obvious is the sociological nature of sports. Sport offers one of the most visible public arenas for understanding the role that 'immortality' plays in individual action, group dynamics, and with audiences and the media. Following a brief introduction to the sociology of sport, Leonard explores these dimensions of the sporting world through the idea of the 'post-self' - how individuals regard themselves and want to be remembered by the public. From the individual psyche to the global arena of sports, this book features vivid examples and quotations from star athletes, coaches, and the media, offering poignant insights into the sporting world and about individuals and society.

Do marketers need to adopt a stricter moral clause to police athlete behavior? To what degree do sports scandals reflect culture at large? How can athletes lead in combating homophobia? The informative edition tackles these questions and debates surrounding athletes as role models. Readers are offered a diverse set of perspectives on the topic through a variety of essays and articles.

A leading psychologist explores the phenomenon of athletes across the sports world who engage in high-risk behavior that often destroys lives, bodies, and reputations. From sex and drugs to violence, gambling, and wholesale conspiracies, scandals are everywhere in sports. Each of these problems is its own issue, and every case is separate, but taken as a whole this criminal pathology is indicative of a widespread problem with athletes and responsibility. In this wide-ranging and deep-seeking investigation, psychologist Stanley H. Teitelbaum asks why elite athletes take enormous risks with their lives and careers. Teitelbaum analyzes and diagnoses this culturally resonant set of problems with an honest, critical eye, looking at everything from baseball's steroid abusers to gambling scandals in the NBA to the steady stream of athletes arrested for domestic violence to the murder trials of O.J. Simpson and wrestler Chris Benoit. A concluding chapter holds sports commissioners and others to task for hiding behind a façade of ignorance and duplicitous naïveté in attempting to cover up or defuse brewing scandals.

At their basic level, sporting events are about numbers: wins and losses, percentages and points, shots and saves, clocks and countdowns. However, sports narratives quickly leave the realm of statistics. The stories we tell and retell, sometimes for decades, make sports dramatic and compelling. Just like any great drama, sports imply conflict, not just battles on the field of play, but clashes of personalities, goals, and strategies. In telling these stories, we create heroes, but we also create villains. This book is about the latter, those players who transgress norms and expectations and who we label the "bad boys" of sports. Using a variety of approaches, these 13 new essays examine the cultural, social, and rhetorical implications of sports villainy. Each chapter focuses on a different athlete and sport, questioning issues such as how notorious sports figures are defined to be "bad" within particular sports and within the larger culture, the role media play in creating antiheroes, fan reactions when players cross boundaries, and how those boundaries shift depending on the athlete's gender, sexuality, and race.

This timely book is the first to critically examine the doctrine of vicarious liability in the context of the sports industry. Drawing on theoretical, empirical and interdisciplinary research, the book focuses on the close connection test at stage two of vicarious liability, highlighting how vicarious liability could be used to hold sports employers strictly liable for a wide range of on-the-field and off-the-field harms committed by their athletes. It considers the extent to which vicarious liability might be applied to clubs and sporting organisations for personal injuries and racial abuse suffered by participants during competition, and examines whether employers in the sports industry ought to be held vicariously liable for the sexual assault of young athletes and women away from the field. This book is important reading for any student, researcher or practitioner interested in sports law, tort law, private law theory, socio-legal studies, jurisprudence, gender studies and sports ethics.

Elite level sport lends itself to a highly competitive environment that encourages players to seek a competitive advantage in order to win. Since competition is an inherent condition that is also considered desirable in this setting, it may at first glance seem as if cooperation does not have any room in elite level sports. Sustainable cooperation can be mutually advantageous for players, but it only has a chance of coming into fruition if it is also in line with individual players’ self-interests. In order for morality and self-interests to align with one another, investment in the conditions is required. Alicia Bockel analyzes ways that players can invest in the conditions of sustainable cooperation for a mutual advantage despite a highly competitive sports environment.