2024 McGarr Symposium
The late South African leader Nelson Mandela famously said that sport "has the power to inspire. It has the power to unite people in a way that little else does. Sport can create hope where once there was only despair." These sentiments are echoed by leaders of the Olympic Games and the hosts of other global events that, we are told, can fuel economic development, transcend social divisions, and ameliorate violence. Yet, sport also relies on economic and political structures that can stress the environment, exploit workers, and provoke violent political divisions. Thus, the use of sport to obscure political corruption or ethical failures ("sportswashing") is of growing concern.
The 2024 McGarr Symposium on Sports and Society addressed all of these issues, and more, on February 22, 2024. Panelists for this year’s symposium included Dr. Jules Boykoff (Pacific University), Amira Rose Davis (UT-Austin), Dr. Tommy Hunt (UT-Austin), Dr. Lindsay Krasnoff (Global Sports Diplomacy Consultant), and Dr. Neftalie Williams (San Diego State University), and was moderated by Center Director Dr. Michael Butterworth.
Cappy McGarr
Cappy McGarr is a co-creator of the Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, and the Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song. For his work producing the Mark Twain Prize, he has been nominated for a Primetime Emmy and an NAACP Image Award.
He is one of very few people to be appointed by two different presidents to the Kennedy Center. His essays about comedy and politics have been published in The New York Times, Politico, and USA Today. And in 2021, he published a book about his life and the Mark Twain Prize entitled The Man Who Made Mark Twain Famous: Stories from the Kennedy Center, the White House, and Other Comedy Venues.
McGarr is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. He serves on the board of trustees of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. He also serves on the MD Anderson Cancer Center Board of Visitors, the Lyndon Baines Johnson Foundation, and Ken Burns’s Better Angels Society. He is a former chair of the Development Board of the University of Texas at Austin. He is the founder of the Texas Program in Sports and Media and the annual McGarr Symposium on Sports and Society at the College of Communication at the University of Texas at Austin.
McGarr has been married to Janie Strauss McGarr for 44 years. He has two daughters and two grandchildren. Follow him on Twitter @CappyMcGarr.
The McGarr Symposium on Sports and Society presents Playing for Laughs: Sports and Humor. The panel discussion will feature Charlotte Wilder, reporter and host for FOX Sports, and Jason Gay, sports columnist for the Wall Street Journal. The program will be moderated by Symposium namesake Cappy McGarr, author of The Man Who Made Mark Twain Famous: Stories from the Kennedy Center, the White House and Other Comedy Venues. The McGarr Symposium will explore the cultural intersections of sports and humor; on the field, off the field and as a mediated entertainment product. Humor in sport may be viewed as a playfully complex communication, integrating and promoting superiority and disparagement. This event sees humor This event as a means of examining the social problems that exist in modern sport. This event was recorded on April 12, 2022 in the Dealey Center for New Media auditorium on the UT-Austin campus.
This discussion featured five professional sports radio hosts in dialogue with Eric Ferguson, longtime morning show host on Chicago's 101.9 The Mix. Panelists include: • Sarah Spain, host of Spain and Company on ESPN Radio and ESPN's ‘That's What She Said’ podcast • David Kaplan, host of Kap and J. Hood on ESPN 1000 in Chicago • Raheel Ramzanali, sports contributor to ABC13 in Houston and host of the 'No Layups' podcast • Tamryn Spruill, host of ‘The Hard Screen’ podcast • Jeff Ward, host of The Jeff Ward Show on the new streaming news radio station statesmannewsnetwork.com Since the 1987 launch of WFAN in New York as the first all-sports radio station, sports radio has been a vital part of the sports media landscape. In recent years, changes in the industry, the emergence of new technologies, and the expansion audiences have redefined how we think of the synergy between radio and sports. This symposium will assess the future of sports radio through a discussion of station formats, networks and conglomeration, the growth of podcasting, relationships between hosts and audiences, and questions of identity, culture, and representation. This year's symposium was held as a Zoom webinar on October 22, 2020.
The 2023 McGarr Symposium on Sports and Society hosted celebrated author and Nation magazine sports editor Dave Zirin for a screening and back talk of his film Behind The Shield: The Power and Politics of the NFL.
In Behind the Shield, Zirin tackles the myth that the NFL was somehow free of politics before Colin Kaepernick and other Black NFL players took a knee. Digging deep into the history of the league and navigating a stunning excavation of decades of archival footage and news media, Zirin traces how the NFL, under the guise of “sticking to sports,” has promoted wars, militarism, and nationalism; glorified reactionary ideas about manhood and gender roles; normalized systemic racism, corporate greed, and crony capitalism; and helped vilify challenges to the dominant order as “unpatriotic” and inappropriately “political.” The result is a case study not only in the power of big-time sports to disseminate stealth propaganda and reinforce an increasingly authoritarian status quo, but also the power of activist athletes to challenge this unjust status quo and model a different, more democratic vision of America.
Behind the Shield was produced by The Media Education Foundation, produces and distributes documentary films and other educational resources to inspire critical thinking about the social, political, and cultural impact of American mass media. More information is available at www.behindtheshield.com.