Week 10 Readings

"A Perfect Baseball Day"
By: Brian Carroll

In the 1930's the joined owners in building up the sport. In the 1940's owners became very greedy and sportswriters distances themselves from ownership and focused on the games along with integration. In the 1950's integration moved into the major leagues, fans became stewards of the game and the papers joined the fans in covering the players breaking into the major leagues. This left little coverage for the Negro Leagues and its yearly celebration of the East vs. West game. Again, the sportswriters left their focus of Negro leagues and shifted it onto the black stars that came from those leagues.
The primary evidence supporting integration's potential economic benefits was the East-West Classic. It was the biggest sporting event in Black America next to Joe Louis' fights. Although newspapers wouldn't reproduce the partnership with the Negro National League they did come together to make the Classic possible.
The Negro League allowed their fans to choose the heroes and allowed them to vote for their favorite and best, unlike the Major Leagues. It was originally about racial pride and it owed its existence to the black press. The black press was relentless in its promotion all over the country.
"East-West All-Star game accomplished what the colored World Series could not."
It attracted positive attention from mainstream society, including white media and MLB leadership. It was also very successful in a business aspect and for positive press by white mainstream media.
Again in 1936 the Classic attracted roughly 30,000 fans and remained a huge financial success. !937 another huge success, attracting nearly 60,000 fans. This was significantly more than the MLB could do, further pushing the idea of integration of blacks into the major leagues. The Classic continued to grow, in 1941 the fans that attended reached 50,000 and brought in over 49,000 in gate receipts alone.
Even with the war in the 1940's, causing major concern for both black and white leagues, the Classic proved otherwise. 1943, 51,723 came to Comiskey Park for the celebration.
When there was word of blacks in the major leagues the Classic lost fans and the attention shifted towards the integration. Black baseball began to lose at the gates because its fans had heroes on major league teams.
Black league coverage began to become a mere footnote. In 1949 the Courier did not even cover the Negro League's annual conference. Black team owners went into debt with more and more black ball players joining the major leagues.
1953 only 10,000 fans attended the East-West Classic.
1954 The Classic's last year because of declining coverage and fans and overall money and revenue.
"All that remained for black baseball was barnstorming and clown acts."
1955 there was no Classic. John Johnson declared, "Negro baseball has served its purpose." "A relic of a Jim crow period."

"The Relationship of Fantasy Football Participation with NFL Television Ratings"
By: John A. Fortunato

In 2009 an estimated thirty million people participated in fantasy football. There has been little research conducted on this growing phenomenon. The purpose of the study is to find out if fantasy football participants are motivated to watch the NFL on television more.
Rubin identified two media-use orientations towards a medium that are based on audience motives, attitudes and behaviors: (1) Ritualized media use, and (2) Instrumental media use. The ritualized orientation focuses on how people use leisure time and the instrumental orientation focuses on purposive exposure to specific content and is more intentional and selective.
Sport audience has been described as very loyal and watching sports has been proven to satisfy emotional needs. Participation in fantasy sports is motivated by internal psychological variables and external psychological variables. Internal are the ability to exert control as owner of a team, the desire to escape reality and the feeling of achievement obtained by being successful. The external are being a part of a community and the opportunity to socialize with family, friends and colleagues.
Research question: Does having more players start in a fantasy league cause an increase in the televisions rating for that game? Four more questions are asked along with this most important one.
Two versions of fantasy player measures were used for the analysis: (1) the number of NFL players starting in greater than fifty percent of fantasy leagues and (2) the number of NFL players starting in greater than ninety percent of fantasy leagues. A third measure was used and it was the teams winning percentage at game time. And a final measure was the margin of victory.
Correlations- For question one, there was a significant correlation between ratings and players starting in greater than ninety percent of leagues for both NBC and ESPN. No so much for players starting in greater than fifty percent of leagues.
Discussion- Purpose of the study was to see if participating in fantasy football can be a motivating factor in watching NFL games on T.V. more often and if it can help the NFL schedule games better. The evidence provided does show that it can. Not entirely but it does help the ratings extremely when there are high numbers of players starting against each other. But there are several factors behind the ratings of each game so this study does not prove that fantasy football is the sole motivator. No matter what the NFL has outstanding ratings but evidence shows that they can have greater ratings during these instances of fantasy football players being played.
Implications- The NFL should use the attraction of fantasy football as another variable in scheduling games. The broadcasters of the NFL could also cater their telecasts more to the fantasy football audience, (which they have, 2013).

Mark Valeriano