Currently here at the annual conference for the North American Society for Sport Management, at Cornell University. I have to say that the quality has been mixed thus far, though have seen some good stuff from the Canadian theorists here. Most of all, I have to marvel at the beauty of the Cornell campus, here in Ithaca, New York — absolutely stunning.

Personally speaking, I presented on corporate social responsibility in sport management this morning, and will discuss prosumerism in sport management tomorrow afternoon.

smithers:

[Aside] One of the problems with the corporation is that it absolves humans from any liability in its operation: it is its own entity, a fiction.

This is reflected in the singular pronoun that is used to describe the firm: "it".

Continuing to use the pronoun "it" to refer to a firm reinforces a structure that negates the essence of what the firm really is, which is the sum (and then some) of its people. There hasn't been a firm yet that has existed without people. To maintain a solidarity with all of these people that make up the world's firms, I must therefore use the plural pronoun "they".

[Exit]

The brilliant Sid Meier creates a golf environment to level the playing field between men and women, and virtual Annika Sorenstam kicks virtual Vijay Singh's ass.

Dewq over at Sport … mediated has explored the idea of sport as globalanguage, noting that "sport transcends cultures to the point that it can be viewed as a global form of communication … emerg[ing] as a 'glocal' form of interaction where identities of self and collective identities are (re)created".

Agreed, though I might suggest that it is a globalanguage with many dialects.

How about Latin as first globalanguage?

What, you ask? Latin only spread to certain cultures around the planet, and only exists today in a subset of the world's languages. There's no way that Latin could be considered a globalanguage.

But what about in the context of sport, I reply? Consider this: the Olympics, one of two truly global sporting events, boasts thousands of athletes from hundreds of countries around the world. And it also boasts hundreds of translators. Why? There is no one truly universal language that is spoken around the world, despite the ambitions of English. Yet every single athlete in that competition speaks and fully understands three Latin words, which form a sign so overpowering it totally consumes each of their lives: citius, altius, fortius.

Latin, then, is a globalanguage. Or at least it's a dialect of the sport globalanguage.

"First, for the people who say LeBron was LeBorn in hype, and this all reeks of public relations gimmick, like Annika Sorenstam at the Colonial reeks of public relations gimmick, hey, listen up. It's all a public relations gimmick, Jack. Getting you to come out to any stadium, stadium-seating multiplex, amusement park, arena or golf course venue to spend your loot on 'attractions' is a gimmick, so please, gimmick me a break. Spectacle is what we do around here." — Ralph Wiley

Well, I was wrong: LeBron James has agreed to a seven-year endorsement deal with Nike, the same company that launched Air Jordan into the global mediaspace and who no doubt will deify LeBron in much the same fashion. Since Nike is reportedly signing Kobe Bryant as well, the "Battles" should be memorable. Oh, and Vince? Your endorsement career has just been relegated to C-list status.

Here's how the markets reacted:

In other news, those efficient Germans offer us a guide to making clones.

Not to be outdone, Michael Lewis offers us a guide to create baseball cyborgs through the science of Sabermetrics.

Still on baseball, the 2525 edition of the Encyclopedia Legenda chronicles the sport's demise in two parts (one, two).

As our bodies are outered by electric technologies, we are coming to a reconsideration of what it means to be human, or at least what it means to have a human body. For some, this has forced an exaggeration of some element of the human body, in a process that might be termed highlighting the grotesque.

Basically speaking, we are composed in varying proportions of muscle, fat and bone. Any one of these elements may be exaggerated, by those in sport and in broader society; taken to grotesque proportions, we have hypermuscularization, obesity and anorexia, respectively. At the centre of this tripolar schema is the individual's perception of self, since most often one sees one's own actions as "normal". It is elsewhere in the schema that the other lies, which is the way that one believes he or she is perceived by other individuals. The closer these two points are to overlapping at the origin, the increased sense of self-adequacy an individual will possess.

This tripolarization effect is partly due to the Iron Curtain of Baudrillardian hyperreality. The star mechanism used by the sportocracy and the rest of the entertainment complex to sell products offers a very narrow range of body types from the spectrum that actually exists, presenting a cloning effect in the electric mediaspace. It is no coincidence that the latest instalments of both the Star Wars and Matrix epics feature battles against clones — they are meant partially as critiques of how the body is represented in postmodern society.

The grotesque exaggeration of bodily components can be seen as a response to these replicating clones: on the one hand, obesity is a rejection of this simulacra; on the other hand, hypermuscularization and anorexia are hyper-realizations of the simulacra, which tend toward a state of cyborgification.

McLuhan's work on postliterate society, while in my opinion underrated as a roadmap of digital culture, sells itself somewhat short by examining electric media predominantly as a social and psychological issue without a full consideration of the implications for the physical body. To his credit, however, these bodily implications are only becoming apparent decades after his passing, and require further consideration as we progress on our posthuman evolution.

While visiting Vancouver's spectacular Stanley Park recently, I chanced upon a beautiful statue of Harry Jerome, British Columbia's Athlete of the Century. In 1960, Jerome set a world record in the 100 metres of 10.0 seconds. He sprinted for Canada in the 1960, 1964, and 1968 Summer Olympics, earning 100 metre bronze in Tokyo. He also won the gold medals in the 1966 Commonwealth Games and the 1967 Pan-American Games. For these athletic accomplishments and his service to the community, Harry Jerome received the Order of Canada, our highest civilian honour.

A year after Jerome's setting of the world record in the 100 metres, a boy named Ben Johnson was born in Jamaica. After emigrating to Canada in 1976, Johnson went on to star as a sprinter on the National team, winning gold in the 100 metres at the 1987 World Championships in a world record time of 9.83 seconds. A year later, in a magnificent race against U.S. archrival Carl Lewis at the Seoul Olympics, Johnson again took the gold medal, trimming the world record to 9.79 seconds.

Unfortunately, the glory earned by Johnson and basked in by the rest of Canada would turn to ignominy only days later, when post-race urine samples indicated the presence of stanozolol, a performance-enhancing steroid. Johnson's gold medal and world record were stripped, and he departed South Korea under a cloud of controversy; later, his 1987 world record would be stripped, erasing Johnson's name for all-time from the pantheon of citius, altius, fortius.

Meanwhile, fans back home reacted with a uniquely Canadian mixture of shock, pride, anger, embarassment, and general teeth-gnashing, leading to a federal Commission of Inquiry into the Use of Drugs and Banned Practices Intended to Increase Athletic Performance, otherwise known as the Dubin Inquiry. The commission changed the face of high-performance sport in Canada, and was influential in the 1999 establishment of the World Anti-Doping Agency.

Johnson returned to world class sprinting drug-free in 1991, but showed the rust of his absence and performed poorly. Two years later, and obviously bulked up, he was banned for life by the IAAF after testing positive for steroids once again.

It would be tempting at this point to moralize about the respective values of Harry Jerome and Ben Johnson, but I'll refrain. Instead, I will offer the following question:

Point-two-one? Point-two-one?

Oh wait, that's not a question. Ummm … how about:

What the fuck?

Ben Johnson screwed his entire career for a measly 0.21 seconds, and that's just about the only way you can put it. To Johnson's credit, though, he did have a lot of help: advanced training methods, biomechanical analysis, peak nutritional information, videotape feedback, daily massage, cutting-edge rehabilitative technologies, sport psychology interventions, and, of course, the anabolic steroid stanozolol. Harry Jerome, on the other hand, was a pioneer of weight training in sprinting, and did some of his best running with a 30-centimetre scar on his left thigh after severing his quadriceps muscle. Even with this substantial cyborgian advantage, however, all Big Ben did was better the record by point-two-one.

That's 28 years and a hell of a lot of expense — for a return of 0.03 seconds per Olympiad.

Most industries wouldn't pay a dime for that kind of just noticeable difference. But the sportocracy does, despite the high K/L ratio of the cyborgian "laboratory sports".

Makes you kind of wonder what the return is for them, doesn't it?

Detroit, New Jersey, Dallas and San Antonio?

You were snickering, David Stern. You thought that it would be clear sailing ahead with the four dogs the NHL is trotting out this spring in quest of Stanley. But then Webber goes down, Shaq, Kobe and Iverson get ousted, and all of a sudden your most marketable player in the pro hoops final four is a domestic abuse felon. Ouch.

The all-Texas western final effectively cuts that audience in half, while those in the east will simply tune out Detroit. I mean, they try to compare these guys to the Piston teams of old, but come on. The yesteryear champs certainly were the Bad Boys, but with Isiah, Joe D., and the Microwave, they could also flat out score when need be.

Nota bene, Mr. Stern: you might be in even bigger economic trouble than Mr. Bettman. I hope at least that the lottery show proves profitable.

But between basketball and hockey, I bet Jersey people sure think that life is worthwhile right now though …

(ps. Go Stevie Nash, eh?)

fitness clubs: well-lit red light district?

fitness club cardio equipment: Foucaultian production of cyborg athletes?

front row of aerobics class: panopticism by choice?

treadmills: hamster wheel of the posthuman age?

Bally's, Nubody's, et al: soon to connect to the power grid?

New Jersey, Anaheim, Minnesota, and Ottawa?

Sorry, NHL, but you are in big trouble economically. But then again, you already knew that, didn't you?

FIRST WAR OF THE CYBORG

*** e y e s   o n l y ***

Drug Front

A New Mexican religious group sues the U.S. government for the right to take psychedelic drugs in search of self-transcendent spiritual experiences. The pharmaceutical military-industrial complex counters with a series of prominent talking heads "hired to appear in videos resembling newscasts that are actually paid for by drug makers and other health care companies, blurring the line between journalism and advertising".

Media Front

Farhad Manjoo of Salon Counterintelligence uncovers a plot to have your TV spy on you.

Body Movement Front

Megacorp, drawing upon the work of noted military historian John Bale, is having mixed results with the indoctrination of the human POWs.

"Reading Foucault's history of the prison, Discipline and Punish (1979), I was struck by the great similarity between the transition of punishment on the one hand, and of sport on the other, each being transformed from activities undertaken in corporal/public space to those found in carceral/private space. … Indeed, the stadium is regarded as such a secure form of containment that it is, intact, actually used as a prison in times of national security or repression" (Bale, 1994, p. 83).

The POWs respond with subversive body movements.

References:

Bale, J. (1994). Landscapes of modern sport. Leicester: Leicester University Press.

Ralph Wiley compares MJ and the Bambino at the end of their respective careers. Is this how the Second Golden Age of professional sport comes to a close?

"We live, love, learn. Even if we are athletes. Imagine that. To say athletes and sports are precluded from this process is, in fact, insulting, that a Tommie or a Toni Smith are like cattle and should just give their milk and moo and shut up and not have their own feelings." — Ralph Wiley

From The Sports Guy:

One Iverson note: Is anyone else excited to see what he's capable of in the celebration department as the playoffs drag along? In Game 1 of the Hornets series, he poured in 55, then pranced around during a stoppage in play — first, he pointed to the sky at one of the 25 dead friends, then he pounded his chest like he was giving himself CPR, then he pulled his jersey out and proudly displayed the letters, then he screamed happy expletives to the crowd, then he pointed at the sky again … the whole display lasted for about 25 seconds. He's completely insane. if they make the Finals, he might perform a strip tease like Ned in Slap Shot.