Sports and Politics: Commodification, Capitalist Exploitation, and Political Agency ed. by Frank Jacob (review)

Not since the 1960s have sports and politics been so intertwined in the public consciousness. Protests connected to the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement and the horrifying revelations within women's gymnastics, to name just two, have advanced the profile of athletes and the causes they represent like never before. As such, this is a propitious time for the publication of Frank Jacob's edited volume Sports and Politics: Commodification, Capitalist Exploitation, and Political Agency. The collection aims not only to show the intersection of sports and politics but also to highlight the ways that exploitation and corruption have shaped sports both past and present.

Section I focuses on the role of political corruption in sports. In his essay, Steven Riess details political corruption in Illinois connected to the horse-racing industry (notably harness racing). He finds that those politically connected advanced their interests in sports and that, oftentimes, prominent politicians pushed through bills creating new race tracks and parimutuel betting in exchange for stock ownership in the tracks. Tom Heenan examines the city of Melbourne, Australia, and what he sees as its false claims to being a global sporting capital. This image, according to Heenan, enabled crony capitalists to enrich themselves through the building up of sports infrastructure at the expense of public funds. They succeeded because people wanted to believe in Melbourne as a sporting mecca rather than confront the city's deeper economic and social inequalities.

Section II explores racism and its linkage to sports and politics. Thomas Aiello considers the evolution of tennis in New Orleans from 1876 to1976 and how the sport became more accessible to the masses over that time, but in different ways for whites and African Americans. He finds that "Black tennis … democratized from the top down [while] … White tennis, meanwhile, democratized from the bottom up" (70). Both Nicole Hirschfelder and Steve Marston analyze athlete activism in support of the BLM movement. Hirschfelder contrasts media coverage of Colin Kaepernick with that of the WNBA. She finds that the liberal media placed significant emphasis on Kaepernick as a lone figure, feeding into older tropes of the single warrior crusader while largely ignoring the protests of other football players. The same liberal media tended to ignore or downplay the collective protests of WNBA teams. She asserts that despite being well-intentioned this coverage reinforces larger structures of power in society. Marston compares and contrasts the activism of LeBron James and Colin Kaepernick as a way of getting at what he sees as two strands of athlete activism. One strand, represented by James, embedded itself within the tradition of racial liberalism, while the other, embodied by Kaepernick, is connected to a tradition of racial radicalism. He finds that these strands of liberalism and radicalism, though different, ultimately intersect and help shape each other.

The third section shifts to sexual abuse and homophobia and their connection to sports and politics. Kathleen Bachynski writes on the Larry Nasser sexual-abuse case and its role in the larger #Metoo movement. One of her notable findings is that reporting on sexual abuse in the twenty-first century has moved away from just focusing on the individual perpetrators to the larger role that institutions play in fostering such environments and condoning them. Nasser's case showed the ways that larger political/social/cultural changes have created an environment where more victims feel comfortable coming forward. This, in turn, has forced some institutions to rethink policies surrounding sexual assault. And yet, she soberly concludes, the saga over Brett Kavanaugh's Supreme Court nomination has shown there are limits to the #Metoo movement. Lastly, Francesco Collura writes on homophobia in sports and how heteronormative masculinity has constructed a culture that remains challenging for LGBTQ+ athletes. Some attempts have been made, like in hockey, to create more welcoming and tolerant environments, but the author sees more needing to be done because "the NHL's heteronormative patriarchal environment has...