UA19/2 Hoop Happenings on the Hill, Vol. I, Issue III

Newsletter published by the WKU Basketball office to promote the team and game attendance

Community at the Courts: Social and Community Interactions at Public Basketball Courts

Based on over 60 informal interviews conducted at two public basketball courts, this study utilizes grounded theory to trace class- and race-based differences in the social interactions occurring at both parks. By comparing social interactions between a white, middle class basketball court, and a black, lower class basketball court, I argue that social engagement is not be declining for all segments of society as some theorists suggest. Moreover, I argue that the relationships forged at the basketball court in a predominantly black, working-class neighborhood prove to be more meaningful and have deeper benefits than those forged at a basketball court in a white, middle-class neighborhood. I show that public places serve as a source of social status for participants of pick-up basketball and that social status stemming from pick-up basketball varies in importance based on the socioeconomic status of the participants. Further, I contend that public places in low-income neighborhoods can serve as a vehicle for establishing social networks in the surrounding community, affirming and maintaining status, and realizing personal fulfillment

UA19/5 Scrapbook

Scrapbook documenting the 1992-1993 WKU women\u27s basketball season

Is Self-Sufficiency for Womens Collegiate Athletics a Hoop Dream?: Willingness to Pay for Mens and Womens Basketball Tickets

Universities spend almost $2 billion subsidizing their collegiate sports programs.� Even the most popular women’s sport, basketball, fails to break even. An application of Becker’s theory of customer discrimination is used to calculate the relative preference for men’s basketball for both men and women. Median willingness to pay for men’s basketball relative to women’s basketball is 180% greater for men and 37% greater for women.� Pricing each sport at its revenue maximizing price, revenues from women’s basketball are only 43% of that for men, even at a school with historically strong demand for women’s sports.Basketball; Becker; reservation price; revenue; customer discrimination; cross marketing; NCAA

UA19/5 In the Huddle

Newsletter produced by WKU Women\u27s Basketball during the season 2003-2004. University Archives holds Volume I Nos. 1-4 and 6

Sacred Hoop Dreams: Basketball in the Work of Sherman Alexie

The game of basketball serves as a fitting metaphor for the conflicts and tensions of life. It involves both cooperation and competition, selflessness and ego. In the hands of a gifted writer like Sherman Alexie, those paradoxes become even deeper and more revealing. In his short story collections, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven and The Toughest Indian in the World, his debut novel, Reservation Blues, and his recent young adult novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Alexie uses basketball to explore the ironies of American Indian reservation life and the tensions between traditional lifeways and contemporary social realities. So central is basketball to the Lone Ranger and Tonto short story collection, in fact, that the paperback edition\u27s cover depicts a salmon - the Coeur d\u27Alene Indians are fishermen - flying over a basketball hoop

The Harmonization Game: What Basketball Can Teach About Intellectual Property and International Trade

In the recent World Men\u27s Basketball Championships in Indianapolis, Team USA found out painfully that the international game is very different from what they play at home and that the gap between USA Basketball and the rest of the world has been closing. While the United States\u27 losses might have a significant impact on how the country will prepare for the 2004 Olympics in Athens and on how Americans train youngsters to play basketball, their teachings go beyond basketball. The international harmonization process is a game with different rules, different officials, and players with different visions and mindsets. By watching how players interact with rules, officials, and other players, one therefore could gain insight into globalization and the international harmonization process. Team USA\u27s recent loss might be a painful lesson to Americans, but it provides a beneficial lesson to all of us who are involved in intellectual property and international trade

When Basketball was Jewish

Philosopher-novelist Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, writing in Jewish Jocks: An Unorthodox Hall of Fame, describes Barney Tiny Sedran, born Bernard Sedransky on the Lower East Side of New York, as a quintessential Jewish basketball player: manically energetic, compulsively alert, upending expectations, and compensating for short—really short—comings (17). Sedransky was the shortest player ever inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame, she writes, who excelled at a time when Jews ruled basketball — and lest you think those last three words are a misprint, let me repeat: Jews ruled basketball (17). Indeed, in the modern era it is easy to forget who the great boxers and basketball players were, for these city sports have changed, just like the neighborhoods that stimulated their growth. Previous books have explored the topic of Jewish exceptionalism in sport from a broad historical-sociological perspective. Peter Levine\u27s Ellis Island to Ebbets Field: Sport and the American Jewish Experience (1993) chronicles how sport helped transform Jewish immigrants into citizens in full. Allen Bodner\u27s When Boxing Was a Jewish Sport (1997) focuses on boxing\u27s golden era in the 1920s and 1930s, when Jewish fighters vied for ring dominance against Italian- and Irish-American opponents. Each of these writers provide a specific historic context for their subjects. The header of Goldstein\u27s essay, for instance, contains the title, the subject, and dates: Tiny Baller, Barney Sedran, (1891-1964) (17). [excerpt

1905 Press Releases

1905 Men\u27s Basketball Press Release, George Fox College