Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection

For decades, women in the field of sports media have battled for equality with their male counterparts. In 1972, Title IX was passed, stating that “no person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subject to discrimination under any educational program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.” In 1978, the iconic court case, Melissa Ludtke and Time Inc., v. Bowie Kuhn, Commissioner of Baseball, confirmed that the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees that women should be given the same rights as men, specifically in regards to locker room access. Today, legally women and men in the field of sports media have the same rights. But many people would argue that is not the case. In the five decades succeeding these milestones, women have continued their fight for a more level playing field. Women in sports media are largely stereotyped, they are often judged based on their looks not their knowledge, they are underrepresented in a field that is male dominated. It could be assumed most women working in sports media have at least one instance where they have been judged on the basis of sex. And in 2021, sexual harassment allegations are still being made in the industry.. How will the events of this decade shape the future for women in this field? What strides are left to be made and how will they be achieved?

This thesis examines the differences in how professional male and female athletes and teams are portrayed in the media. Specifically, I analyze the ways female professional athletes and teams are typically not marketed as elite and are usually portrayed as lesser than their male colleagues. Given the scholarly literature on the disparity between how male and female athletes are portrayed in sports media,, we might expect that news sources will diminish the accomplishments of female athletes through less coverage. Similarly, we might also expect that the themes covered in articles about female athletes and teams differ greatly from the themes that are covered with male athletes and teams. Through a quantitative analysis of media exposure and a qualitative analysis of radio articles from Arizona Sports 98.7FM from September of 2014, 2018, and 2020, we see that, while most news sources do write about female athletes and teams on a semi-regular basis, the themes explored do not always focus on the athletes but ten to emphasize their lives outside of the game. We are left with an understanding that female athletes and women’s professional sports teams are portrayed in a different light than male athletes and men’s professional sports teams. While female athletes are increasingly recognized in the media, men are still thought of as premier athletes while women are simply good among other women

Home advantage affects the game in almost all team sports across the world. Due to<br/>COVID and all of the precautions being taken to keep games played, more extensive research is able to be conducted about what factors truly go into creating a home advantage. Some common factors of home advantage include the crowd, facility familiarity, and travel. In the English Premier League, there are no fans allowed at any of the games; furthermore, in the NBA, a bubble was created at one neutral venue with no fans in attendance. Even with the NBA being at a neutral site, there was still a “home team” at every game. The sports betting industry struggled due to failing to shift betting lines in accordance with this decreased home advantage. With these leagues removing some of the factors that are frequently associated with home advantage, analysts are able to better see what the results would be of removing these variables. The purpose of this research is to determine if these adjustments made due to COVID had an impact on the home advantage in different leagues around the world, and if they did, to what extent. Individual game data from the past 10 seasons were used for analysis of both the NBA and the Premier League. The results show that there is a significant difference in win percentage between prior seasons and seasons behind closed doors. In addition to win percentage, many other game statistics see a significant shift as well. Overall, the significance of being the home team disappears in games following the COVID-19 break.

What if I told you that a few photos of a sweatshirt, delivered at the perfect time, cracked a case that had stumped some of the world’s greatest marketing minds for more than twenty years? What if I told you that a dismissed lawsuit played an integral part in this? One made possible by a rainy night in Couva, Trinidad? Or that all of this, hundreds of years in the making, could aid a wrongfully incarcerated man in being freed after spending twenty two years in prison, and pioneer one of the largest-scale social justice movements of the 21st century? All catalyzed by the effects of a global pandemic? If I told you, would you believe me? But let’s get back to that sweatshirt for now.<br/>In January 2020, the Coronavirus was a seemingly distant issue for another part of the world to most Americans. A generation that had seen the likes of H1N1 and Ebola come, cause irrational panic, and subsequently disappear had grown complacent with regard to unknown diseases. On March 9th, Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert took a defiant step in dispelling fears of COVID-19 by touching every microphone in the room at the end of an interview. Two days later, a test revealed that he had contracted the virus, the first professional athlete to do so. The NBA suspended all activities, and thus began the succession of sports leagues across the nation suspending their seasons as global infection numbers rose. But we humans are resilient. As weeks became months, the NBA and WNBA were able to engineer “bubbles” to play in: isolated areas with only the players and essential personnel to play the games, equipped with safety precautions and persistent testing. With no fans allowed inside, social media and media members provided the only glimpse into the “bubble” that ordairy fans would get.<br/>The mornings of July 25th and 26th, as the players arrived for the first games of the day and were snapped by photographers, many sported orange hoodies with the trademark white WNBA logo in the center, to promote the start of the WNBA’s “bubble” season that summer. This sent the internet into a frenzy. “#OrangeHoodie” was trending across all social media platforms, the item sold out on many websites, and more people than ever were talking about the WNBA online. That season, WNBA viewership spiked. More people watched the WNBA than ever before, even with the NBA’s playoffs taking place at the same time. How, then, did a single orange hoodie change the future of marketing the WNBA? What does that tell us about other women’s sports that have similarly struggled with attention and viewership? What role does media exposure play in all of this; do we perceive women differently in the media than we do men? Are these issues rooted in deeper societal prejudices, or are women’s sports simply quantifiably less entertaining?<br/>On a journey to find the answers to these questions, I learned a lot about the relationship of media and culture, about sport, and about the outstanding untold stories of American sportswomen. However, the most important thing I found was that women are marketable. After long being denied the opportunities and exposure they deserve, American culture has as a result pushed women to the background under the guise of them not being demanded or marketable. This could not be further from the truth. They are not demanded because they are not seen. Investing in sportswomen would not only create a better future for all women, but for all people. How, then, is this achievable? How will the powers that be allow for changes to be made? How can we as individuals be receptive to this change? In this thesis, I will take you on a journey where media is fun and fair, and where the future is female.

For the Love of the Game is a 15-minute documentary highlighting what the culture of soccer is like in Spain. Filmed completely in Valencia, Spain, this short film shows the actual atmosphere of everyday soccer. People of all ages and backgrounds give depth into what it's like to grow up in Spain with and fall in love with the game.

The sports universe has been around for over a century and yet the at home sports viewing experience has seen little change. Even though our society has seen monumental innovative, technological advances, watching sports at home has not undergone any changes and may soon find itself a thing of the past unless something changes. When the COVID-19 pandemic arose, a problem surfaced of revenue loss and decreasing fan retention leaving teams and leagues stumbling for solutions. RYZE offers a never before seen product that can revolutionize how sports fans watch and engage in sporting events. By taking the lucrative concept of “battle passes” from the video game industry and placing it in the sports industry, RYZE hopes to increase overall fan revenue, retention, and engagement. A clear market size and wide range of potential customers, RYZE looks to help fans stay engaged while also earning prizes. With competition ranging from fantasy sports to virtual reality, RYZE has competitive advantages that give it potential to become a sports fan’s go to product when thinking about their favorite team. RYZE has gone from a propelling question to a bright idea and then to a prototype along with a full pitch deck and hopes to engrain itself in college athletics, MLB, and other professional sports leagues.

The sports universe has been around for over a century and yet the at home sports viewing experience has seen little change. Even though our society has seen monumental innovative, technological advances, watching sports at home has not undergone any changes and may soon find itself a thing of the past unless something changes. When the COVID-19 pandemic arose, a problem surfaced of revenue loss and decreasing fan retention leaving teams and leagues stumbling for solutions. RYZE offers a never before seen product that can revolutionize how sports fans watch and engage in sporting events. By taking the lucrative concept of “battle passes” from the video game industry and placing it in the sports industry, RYZE hopes to increase overall fan revenue, retention, and engagement. A clear market size and wide range of potential customers, RYZE looks to help fans stay engaged while also earning prizes. With competition ranging from fantasy sports to virtual reality, RYZE has competitive advantages that give it potential to become a sports fan’s go to product when thinking about their favorite team. RYZE has gone from a propelling question to a bright idea and then to a prototype along with a full pitch deck and hopes to engrain itself in college athletics, MLB, and other professional sports leagues.

The NBA yields billions of dollars each year and serves as a pastime and hobby for millions of Americans. However, many people do not have the time to watch several 2-hour games every week, especially when only a fraction of the game is actually exciting footage. The goal of Sports Summary is to take the ``fluff'' out of these games and create a distilled summary that includes only the most exciting and relevant events. The Sports Summary model records visual and auditory data, camera angles, and game clock readings and correlates it with the game's play-by-play data. On average, a game of more than 2 hours long is shortened to a summary of less than 20 minutes. This summary is then uploaded to the Sports Summary website, where users can filter by the type of event, giving more autonomy and a more comprehensive viewing experience than highlight reels. Additionally, the website allows for users to submit footage they would like to watch for processing and later viewing. Sports Summary creates an enjoyable and accessible way to watch games.

Perfection is extremely difficult to achieve when playing team sports. This is especially true for lacrosse, a sport where dropped passes, missed shots and turnovers are prevalent even at the college and professional levels of the game. In order to improve on mistakes, teams must first recognize where the errors are being made. The purpose of this project is to implement the DMAIC process improvement method into lacrosse, with the goal of identifying and implementing improvements, leading to a more successful team.
In order to use DMAIC, lacrosse was expressed as a process that included five phases: offense, defense, riding, clearing and faceoffs. Data was gathered for each phase using game film from the Arizona State Men’s Club Lacrosse Team over the course of the 2019 and 2020 seasons. The data was then analyzed by comparing the output statistics of each phase to the goal differential, number of goals scored, and number of goals against. Once the areas of improvement were determined, additional analysis was done to determine why these certain areas needed improvement. The results provided what changes needed to be made in order to improve the team. In order to ensure the team sustained their success, control measures were put in place to determine what action needs to be taken and when.