Tag: Fred Mason
Managers – the new heroes of sports
Front office executives have become high-profile commentators, movie and video game protagonists, and role models in the world of contemporary sports. In Front Office Fantasies: The Rise of Managerial Sports Media (University of Illinois Press) Branden Buehler examines the media transformation of management figures into esteemed experts and sporting idols. Fred Mason writes a knowledgeable and very appreciative review of Buehler’s book, highlighting the author’s acute observation that managerial sports media collectively repositions White, hegemonic masculinity at the centre of sports.
All you ever wanted to know about parkrun but didn’t know whom to ask
David Hindley’s Parkrun: An Organised Running Revolution (Routledge) is the first book to take an in-depth look at parkrun – the free, weekly, timed 5km run on a Saturday morning – and to examine why its participants love it so much and why it has been such an astonishing success. Fred Mason is our reviewer and he finds that Hindley explores the parkrun phenomenon deeply and critically, and covers ideas of community, identity, volunteering, and public health interventions.
An ambitious introduction to the wide-ranging field of sport management
For her edited volume Contemporary Issues in Sport Management: A Critical Introduction (Sage Publications), Terri Byers have engaged a large number of contributing scholars of sport management, probing central issues in the field. Søren Bennie is our reviewer, and while pointing to a few weak points, his balanced assessment is that it’s a valuable and useful contribution to this research field.
