At the Buzzer: Parting Shots on Communication and Sport

Abstract

In his final editorial essay, founding Editor-in-Chief Lawrence Wenner speaks to the successes of the Communication & Sport project as a disciplinary endeavor over its first 10 years. In handing over the editor’s baton to Andrew Billings and Marie Hardin, Communication & Sport is in good hands with the continued support of SAGE Publishing, the sponsorship of a set of scholarly societies, and a growing global scholarly community. Still, communication and sport, as an interdisciplinary scholarly endeavor, has been challenged by competing epistemological perspectives from pragmatic to critical. There is much evidence of implicit and explicit endorsement of a “received” view of sport in line with Coakley’s notion of the “Great Sports Myth.” Caution is advised as research from this vantage point often too eagerly receives sport as a naturalized state-of-affairs worthy of supporting and growing in an agenda focused on advancing the effectiveness and reception of sport communication in the marketplace. The essay closes with the need for a reckoning about the objectives of communication and sport as a scholarly space by reiterating reminder that today’s mediated world is ultimately “all about power.”