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. 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.

Dr. Gerald Early delivered the 2024 Frank Deford Lecture in Sports Journalism on March 27. Dr. Early is the Merle Kling Professor of Modern Letters in the African and African American Studies Department at Washington University in St. Louis, where he has taught since 1982. He is a noted essayist and American culture critic. His collections of essays include Tuxedo Junction: Essays on American Culture (1989); The Culture of Bruising: Essays on Prizefighting, Literature, and Modern American Culture, which won the 1994 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism; This is Where I Came In: Essays on Black America in the 1960s (2003), and, most recently, A Level-Playing Field: African American Athletes and the Republic of Sports (2011). Dr. Early’s remarks reflected on the history of Black baseball in the United States and its representation in the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. As a consultant to the Hall of Fame, his expertise helped shaped the new exhibit, “The Souls of the Game: Voices of Black Baseball.”

Tom Junod, Paula Lavigne and William C. Rhoden were named winners of the seventh annual Dan Jenkins Medal for Excellence in Sportswriting. Junod and Lavigne won the Jenkins Medal for Best Sportswriting (of 2022) for their ESPN article "Untold". Rhoden wons for his body of work (spanning over 50 years) as an author, "Sports of the Times" columnist for The New York Times and currently as columnist and editor-at-large for Andscape (formerly The Undefeated). All were be honored at the Jenkins Medal award ceremony in Austin. Click through for more information on the 2023 nominees and a video of the awards dinner.

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.

Christine Brennan delivered the 2023 Frank Deford Lecture in Sports Journalism on March 1, 2023 on the campus of UT-Austin.
Brennan is an award-winning national sports columnist for USA Today, a commentator for CNN, ABC News, PBS NewsHour and National Public Radio, a best-selling author and a nationally-known speaker. Named one of the country's top 10 sports columnists by the Associated Press Sports Editors multiple times, she has covered the last 20 Olympic Games, summer and winter.
In March 2020, Brennan was named the winner of the prestigious Red Smith Award, presented annually to a person who has made “major contributions to sports journalism.”
Brennan was the first woman sports writer at The Miami Herald in 1981 and the first woman to cover the Washington Football Team as a staff writer at The Washington Post in 1985. She was the first president of the Association for Women in Sports Media (AWSM) and started an internship-scholarship program that has supported 200 female students over the past two decades.
Brennan is the author of seven books. Her 2006 sports memoir, Best Seat in the House, is the only father-daughter memoir written by a sports journalist. Her 1996 national best-seller, Inside Edge, was named one of the top 100 sports books of all-time by Sports Illustrated.

CSCM hosted a screening of the ESPN documentary Giant Killer: The Story of the Lady Longhorns. Moody College alum Frank Harris, who was a member of the undefeated 1986 women's basketball team, moderated a panel discussion that included Jody Conradt, Chris Plonsky, Reth Swindell and Eric Routt, reflecting on their participation in UT-Austin's women's athletics program. Giant Killers was one of ESPN's Fifty50 films, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the passage of Title IX legislation, which mandated funding parity between men's and women's intercollegiate athletic programs. See our YouTube channel for the panel discussion

The Dan Jenkins Medal for Excellence in Sportswriting jury has named Jeff Passan winner of the 2022 Jenkins Medal for Best Sportswriting and Sally Jenkins winner of the 2022 Jenkins Medal for Lifetime Achievement. CSCM will host a dinner for the presentation of the awards on September 23 at the Headliner's Club in Austin. Passan and Jenkins will receive their medals with recipients for the 2020 and 2021 awards, whose ceremonies were postponed due to the corona virus pandemic. NFL Hall of Famer Charles "Mean Joe" Greene will receive the 2022 Jenkins Medal Sports Legend award. For more information see www.jenkinsmedal.com.

Howard Bryant, author and ESPN Senior Writer, will deliver the 2022 Frank Deford Lecture in Sports Journalism in an address titled “The Anti-Heroes: Sports in the COVID Era”. Bryant is a Senior Writer for ESPN, sports correspondent for NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday and the author of nine books, many of them about baseball. Rickey: The Life and Legend of an American Original (about Rickey Henderson) will be published in May. Bryant's Deford Lecture, which is supported by the McGarr Symposium on Sports and Society, was recording. View the talk on our YouTube channel.

CSCM welcomed Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Gay and Fox Sports host Charlotte Wilder to the 2021 McGarr Symposium on Sports and Society. This year’s panel, “Playing for Laughs: Sports and Humor,” assessed how humor is deployed in sports and sports media in increase fan engagement and underscore it's cultural importance. Cappy McGarr, the Symposium creator and author of The Man Who Made Mark Twain Famous, moderated the conversation. To view the Symposium recording, visit our YouTube channel.

The Dan Jenkins Medal for Excellence in Sportswriting jury has named Mitchell S. Jackson winner of the 2021 Jenkins Medal for Best Sportswriting and Roger Angell winner of the 2021 Jenkins Medal for Lifetime Achievement. With a formal awards presentation ceremony postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic, CSCM produced a pair of video to recognize the 2021 winners. For more information see www.jenkinsmedal.com.

In collaboration with Longhorn Gaming and Mainline, CSCM will host the UT-Austin League of Legends Challenge, esports tournament for all University of Texas students. Five-person teams will face off in a single elimination tournament on March 6, 2021. Registration will be open from Feb. 15 to Mar. 5. The top three teams will receive amazon gift cards, worth $250, $150 and $75. For more information, see cscm.mainline.gg.

Kevin Robbins, CSCM Associate Director and Professor in the School of Journalism and Media, led a roundtable discussion with five recent graduates of the Moody College of Communication who are working in various capacity in sports journalism and sports media.

ESPN NFL Analyst, Senior Writer, Podcast Host and Television Contributor Min Kimes sat in conversation with Dr. Michael Butterworth for the presentation of the 2021 Frank Deford Lecture in Sports Journalism. The event was presented virtually over Zoom on April 15, 2021. The Frank Deford Lecture in Sports Journalism is a part of the McGarr Sympposium on Sports and Society. Kimes is an award-winning journalist, NFL analyst, senior writer, podcast host and television contributor for ESPN. Since joining ESPN The Magazine in 2014, her profile has grown steadily across the company’s multimedia platforms, spanning digital and print, television, radio and podcasting.

CSCM convened a panel of scholars, that included Dr. Maryam Aziz, Postdoctoral Scholar, Africana Research Center, Penn State University, Dr. Michael Butterworth, Professor, Communication Studies, Dr. Madhavi Mallapragada, Associate Professor, Department of Radio-Television-Film and Dr. Travis Vogan, Associate Professor, University of Iowa, to discuss Fighting Visibility, a new book by Dr. Jennifer McClearen, Assistant Professor in the Moody College's Department of Radio-Television-Film.

UT-Austin's Department of Radio-Television-Film hosted Dr. Samantha Sheppard in a discussion of her new book, Sporting Blackness: Race, Embodiment, and Critical Muscle Memory on Screen (University of California Press), as a part of it's Media Studies Colloquium. RTF professor JDr. ennifer McClearn moderated the dialogue with discussants Dr. Adrien Sebro, Brett Siegel, Dr. Michael Butterworth, all of whom have affiliations within the Moody College of Communication. The event, co-sponsored by CSCM, was live streamed on September 24, 2020.

CSCM affiliate faculty member Dr. Jennifer McClearen, speaks with Kavitha Davidson and CSCM Fellow Jessica Luther, authors of Loving Sports When They Don't Love You Back: Dilemmas of the Modern Fan. The panelists speak about what it means to be a fan, even as moral and ethical dilemmas - from doping to domestic violence - complicate the games *we* love. The event was live streamed on September 30, 2020.

The 2020 Jenkins Medal jury has named Elizabeth Merrill winner of the 2020 Jenkins Medal for Best Sportswriting and Rick Telander winner of the 2020 Jenkins Medal for Lifetime Achievement. NFL Hall of Famer Earl Campbell will be acknowledged with the Jenkins Medal Sports Legend award. With a formal awards presentation ceremony postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic, CSCM produced videos to recognize the 2020 winners. For more information see www.jenkinsmedal.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.
With that context, CSCM hosted the 2020 McGarr Symposium on Sports and Society: The Future of Sports Radio and Podcasting. The symposium was held as a Zoom webinar on October 22. This discussion featured five professional (sports) "radio" hosts in dialogue with Eric Ferguson, longtime morning show headliner on Chicago's 101.9 The Mix. Panelists included:
• David Kaplan, host of Kap and J. Hood on ESPN 1000 in Chicago
• Sarah Spain, host of Spain and Company on ESPN Radio and ESPN's ‘That's What She Said’ podcast
• 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

With the regular programming of the spring semester interrupted by the corona virus pandemic, CSCM will present a series of virtual town hall events on the various subjects of sports and culture in this pandemic moment. The series wil feature journalists, academics and industry professionals addressing a wide range of topics:
• How Do We Communicate about Sports When There Are No Sports?
• Women in Sports Media during the COVID 19 Crisis
• Sports History and Memory as a Resource during Crisis
• Pandemic Politics on the Playing Field
• Organizational Crisis and Brand Management during COVID-19
• Youth Sports and Family Communication under Quarantine

Dr. Abraham I. Khan is the Laurence and Lynne Brown – McCourtney Early Career Professor in the College of Liberal Arts at Penn State where he is also an Assistant Professor in the Departments of African American Studies and Communication Arts & Sciences. His work exists at the intersection of sport, the politics of racial justice in the US, and theories of civic engagement. Khan’s broad interest in public narratives surrounding Black athletes has taken shape in scholarly essays on individuals like Jackie Robinson, Michael Sam, and Richard Sherman, in addition to a book on baseball player Curt Flood and the history of Black political culture. His current interests center on the “renaissance of the activist athlete,” defined by both a resurgence in the number of Black athletes engaging in political speech and the emergence of a sophisticated media discourse dedicated to narrating it.
Dr. Khan's lecture is open to the university community and will be at 3:30 pm in BMC 5.208 on March 10.

Author, director and professor David Shields speaks to a Moody College of Communication audience about his 2019 documentary "Lynch: A History" (about NFL running back Marshawn Lynch) with Jennifer McClearen, a professor in UT-Austin's Department of Radio, Television and Film. Shields is a professor of english at the University of Washington. He is internationally bestselling author of twenty books, including Reality Hunger, The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead, Black Planet .
The event is open to the university community and will be held in BMC 5.202 at 2 pm on January 31.

Fort Worth's Colonial Country Club, the longtime home course of Dan Jenkins, will host the 2019 Jenkins Medal Award dinner, honoring sporstwriters Gary Smith, Sarah Spain and Dave Sheinin on October 25. This year's event will feature a discussion with golfing legend Jack Nicklaus, who will receive the inaugural Jenkins Medal Sports Legend award.
A VIP reception for the evening will begin at 6:00, with dinner at 7:00. NBC Sportscaster Jimmy Roberts is the emcee for the evening.

Current Moody College students are invited to participate in the second (annual) sports broadcast bootcamp on September 12 and 13 in BMC 3.208. The sessions will be facilitated by the broadcast professionals at VYPE Media, the leading high school sports broadcast production company in Texas. The event is free to attend with advanced registration and is sponsored by CSCM and the School of Journalism.
Participants will receive group and one-on-one coaching, hands-on technical instruction and "live" play-calling experience as a part of the bootcamp. The highest-performing student will receive an opportunity for an in-season, play-calling assignment with VYPE.
The sessions will run from 12 pm to 4 pm on September 12 and 10:00 am to 3:00 pm on September 13. Lunch will be provided on both days. To register, contact Dr. Kathleen McElroy.

ESPN College GameDay reporter Maria Taylor will meet with Moody College students and have a discussion with CSCM Esecutive Director Michael Butterworth about her professional path from a scholarship volleyball player at the University of Georgia to her high profile assignment on one of ESPN most highly featured shows. The event will be on September 5 from 2-3 pm in CMB 3.110

NBC Sports reporter and host Andrea Joyce will deliver the 2019 Frank Deford Lecture in Sports Journalism on the UT-Austin campus April 3. Joyce joined NBC in 2000 and has worked a variety of roles at 14 Olympic Games, including the past ten with NBC.
Joyce’s reporting portfolio includes figure skating and short track speed skating at the 2014 Sochi Winter Games; gymnastics at the 2012 London Olympic Games; figure skating and short track during the 2012 Vancouver Winter Games; gymnastics and rhythmic gymnastics at the 2008 Beijing Summer Games; figure skating and short track from the 2006 Torino Winter Games. A member of the Women’s Sports Foundation, Joyce served as a reporter for NBA on NBC and WNBA on NBC broadcasts in addition to covering a wide variety of sports, including figure skating, boxing and dog shows.
The Frank Deford Lecture in Sports Journalism was held on April 3, 2019 on the UT-Austin campus.

CSCM will convene a broad-based discussion on the dynamics of power, responsibility and fair play amongst athletes and those in positions of authority, ostensibly to support their development and achievement. The CSCM event will focus specifically on the experiences of women competing at the elite level in Olympic sports, a topic clearly recognized as being vital in light of recent scandals and increased visibility of movements such as #MeToo. With CSCM's interests in communication and media, this panel discussion will include discussion on matters of voice, representation, and symbolism.
The event will be held on the UT-Austin campus on February 28, 2019.

Head Trauma and the Future of Football

CSCM will provide a platform for a meaningful discussion of football, its effects on the human brain, and the symbolic importance of the sport in American life. Given football’s popularity and its significance to individual and community identities, how might it be possible to reconcile the sport’s strengths with growing concerns about head trauma? In other words, can we fashion a future for football that preserves the hallmarks of the sport while also attending to legitimate health concerns? This forum will facilitate realistic conversations about the sport and its future in light of growing medical evidence.
The event will be held in the AT&T Conference Center auditorium on the UT-Austin campus on January 31 from 12:30 to 4:30 pm.

UT-Austin's Black Student-Athlete Summit, hosted by the Division for Diversity and Community Engagement and co-sponsored by CSCM, will be held at the univeristy's AT&T Conference Center from January 9-11, 2019. Speaking proposals will be accepted until October 31, 2018. Early bird registration for undergraduates, graduate students and professionals runs until December 1, 2018. Information on the conference, including previous Summit programs and videos are available at the website above.

Join CSCM supporters in celebrating the work of Dave Kindred and Chris Ballard, winners of the 2018 Dan Jenkins Medal for Excellence in Sportswriting at an award dinner on September 21 in the Carpenter-Winkel Centennial Room at DKR Texas Memorial Stadium. A VIP reception with Mr. Jenkins will begin at 5:30. The public reception starts at 6:30. Dinner will be served at 7. The awards presentation will begin at 7:45.
Mary Carillo of NBC Sports will emcee the event. Sportswriters Michael MacCambridge, Sally Jenkins, Wright Thompson and Kirk Bohls will be part of the program, celebrating the second annual Jenkins Medal presentation.

Join the LBJ Presidential Library, Center for Sports Leadership & Innovation, and Center for Sports Communication & Media for an evening with Olympic fencer Ibtihaj Muhammad; Nate Boyer, a former active-duty Green Beret and NFL player; and, Daron K. Roberts, the founding director of The University of Texas at Austin's Center for Sports Leadership & Innovation. The program is free and open to the public. Eventbrite registration required. Dr. Michael Butterworth, director of The University of Texas at Austin's Center for Sports Communication & Media, will offer introductory remarks. The conversation will be moderated by Mark K. Updegrove, president and CEO of the LBJ Foundation.

CSCM is a co-sponsor of the Flow 2018 Conference hosted by the Department of Radio-Television-Film on the UT-Austin campus. This biennial gathering will be held September 27-29, featuring 31 roundtable panels and other receptions and special events.
Flow is an online journal of television and media studies launched in October 2004, and since then, we have published 1400+ columns by over 700 authors from around the U.S. and the world. Flow‘s mission is to provide a critical forum where scholars, teachers, students, and the general public can read about and discuss the changing landscape of contemporary media at the speed that media moves.

Current Moody College students are invited to participate in the first (annual) sports broadcast bootcamp on August 27 and 28 in BMC 3.208. The sessions will be facilitated by the broadcast professionals at VYPE Media, the leading high school sports broadcast production company in Texas. The event is free to attend with advanced registration and is sponsored by CSCM and the School of Journalism.
Participants will receive group and one-on-one coaching, hands-on technical instruction and "live" play-calling experience as a part of the bootcamp. The highest-performing student will receive an opportunity for an in-season, play-calling assignment with VYPE.
The sessions will run from 12 pm to 5 pm on August 27 and 11:45 am to 6:30 pm on August 28. Lunch will be provided on both days. To register, contact Dr. Kathleen McElroy.

Iconic sports broadcaster Bob Costas will deliver the 2018 Frank Deford Lecture in Sports Journalism. The lecture will be held on April 30 from 1:30 to 3:00 pm in BMC 2.106. The event is free and open to the university community.

The Center for Sports Communication and Media will screen the 2017 documentary, Tainted Blood (www.taintedbloodfilm.com), about the previous unspoken blood doping scheme among US cyclists at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. The film will show at 6 pm with a panel discussion to follow. Director Jill Yesko will participate, as will film subjects Inga Thompson and Dr. John Hoberman. Journalist and CSCM Fellow Patrick Hruby will moderate the conversation.

Just ahead of the NCAA Men’s Final Four in San Antonio, the Center for Sports Communication & Media, with support from the Stan Richards School of Advertising & Public Relations, will sponsor the University of Texas Intercollegiate Athletics Media Forum. The program is organized into three core panels—one focusing on the perspective of conference commissioners, one on athletics directors, and one on the media industry. Confirmed guests include University of Texas Athletic Director Chris del Conte, University of Alabama Athletic Director Greg Byrne, Big 12 Commissioner Bob Bowlsby, Big East Commissioner Val Ackerman and IMG College President Tim Pernetti. Joining them in conversation will be New York Times Deputy Sports Editor Matthew Futterman, consultant Dan Beebe and UT-Austin Lecturer Joel Lulla, who has helped to organize the symposium.

Everyone knows the triumphant story of Jesse Owens and his accomplishments in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, winning four gold medals. The little-known story is how he, along with eight other track and field medalists, ushered in the era of African Americans in sports. At those games, USA athletes won every sprint event from the 100-800 meters along with two jumping events – 15 medals in all. This documentary should serve to inspire our collegiate student-athletes, who, like these competitors of the 1930s, face their own set of challenges amid evolving technologies in an ever-changing global environment.

From the fanatic to the casual spectator, people watch sports and become sports fans for a variety reasons. Whether its a lifetime commitment to a particular athlete, team or sport--or a brief encounter with a particular sporting event--we watch and become fans because sports fill a need. Dr. Adam Earnheardt has spent 20 years unpacking the motivations of sports fandom, and in this talk he explores the functions of being a sports fan at home, at work, in school, and in society--including the number one motivation--a desire to feel connected with family, friends, and other like-minded fans. Dr. Earnheardt examines the social utility to being sports fans, how people gather as spectators to be connected in disparate spaces, such as the stadium with tens of thousands of other fans, or on social media with seemingly millions of fellow fans separated by mountains and oceans.

The fourth annual Black Student-Athlete Summit will take place at the AT&T Executive Education and Conference Center in Austin, TX, January 17-19, 2018. Early bird registration ends December 8, so register soon for discounted rates. 2018 Keynotes include four-time Olympic gold medalist Sanya Richards-Ross, NFL veteran Tommie Harris, WNBA player Imani McGee-Stafford. and Rhodes Scholar Caylin Moore.

The Center for Sports Leadership and Innovation, The Center for Sports Communication & Media and Distinguished Speakers hosted "Trust Your Jounery" with NFL Films Producer, Courtland Bragg on November 14, 2017, in BMC 1.202

Bragg started as an intern at NFL Films and worked his way up to seasonal employee. Through hard work he was promoted to be the youngest full time employee at NFL Films, and quickly went on to win an Emmy for the production of "Hard Knocks" with the Houston Texans. Bragg discussed his journey from internship to seasonal employee to full time employee to Emmy-winning associate producer.

Join CSCM supporters in celebrating the work of Frank Deford and Wright Thompson, winners of the inaugural Dan Jenkins Medal for Excellence in Sportswriting. The reception and seated dinner will by on October 13 at The Pecan Room in Dallas' Old Parkland Hospital development.
Heralded writer Roy Blount Jr. will emcee the event, which will feature the debut of By Dan Jenkins, a short film on the career and impact of Dan Jenkins. Sportswriters and editors Michael MacCambridge, Sally Jenkins, Joe Posnanski and John Walsh will be part of the program, celebrating the first annual Jenkins Medal presentation.

The Steve Hicks School of Social Work, the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement, the Center for Sports Leadership & Innovation, and the Center for Sports Communication & Media presented The NFL Protests, Social Justice and Social Work on October 10, 2017, in SSW's Utopia Theater. The panel discussion included Daron K. Roberts, director of the Center for Sports Leadership & Innovation, Cullen Loeffler, former UT Austin and NFL athlete, Octavious Bishop, former UT Austin and NFL athlete, and Michael Butterworth, director of the Center for Sports Communication and Media. Emmett L. Gill, Steve Hicks School of Social Work, moderated the forum.
Update: Watch program video