Author: rlbeckn

RHBSSI Annual Seed Grant program fund projects

The recipients of the 2021-2022 Robert H. Brooks Sports Science Institute’s seed grants all seek to tackle scientific and social problems connected to a broad range of sports; each team taking a different approach to fulfill that mission. One set of researchers wants to help bull riders protect their heads with helmets designed specifically for them. Another group of researchers want to protect high school athletes by better understanding the injury risk factors that are specific to their sport.

This is the third year the Institute has awarded seed grants to Clemson researchers from the College of Business, College of Behavioral, Social and Health Sciences and the College of Agriculture and Forestry and Life Sciences. The Institute has funded researchers’ proposals in each of the colleges over the years. The seed grant program supports collaborations that accelerate Clemson faculty members’ ability to address significant scientific and societal problems associated with, and improve the human condition through sports, broadly defined.

The Robert H. Brooks Sports Science Institute calls for seed grant proposals in January of each year. The submission deadline is typically in mid-March. Awardees receive their funding in July of each year and have two years to complete the work.

“This is the third year of the seed grant program and we have had faculty teams from all seven colleges funded,” said Director Brett Wright. “The Robert H. Brooks Sports Science Institute is very pleased to help jump start faculty research projects that have the potential to improve the performance of our student-athletes, or more importantly, enhance the health and well being of our students and members of our communities.”

The Institute awarded four seed grants for the 2021-2022 academic year, totaling $90,811. Learn more about each of the research projects below.

It’s no bull!

Bull riding is a dangerous sport, with 21 fatalities over two decades; More than half of all bull riders experience head trauma. Some riders started using hockey helmets to protect their noggins when that bull leaves the chute. But the evidence is out on how well, if at all, that helmet – designed for another sport – protects the riders’ heads. Some riders use a helmet specifically designed for bull riding, but research is not conclusive on its effectiveness either.

Clemson University professors Greg Batt and John DesJardins want to study the efficacy of the two types of helmets in hopes to help helmet manufacturers improve design; help inform riders’ decisions on which helmet to wear; and further our collective knowledge regarding protection from brain injuries.

“In recent years, bull riding has grown in popularity despite being called the most dangerous sport by one peer reviewed sports journal [1].  Currently, only a couple helmets are available on the market that are made specifically for bull riding, and none of the helmets have published research on their efficacy beyond proof of passing the rodeo headgear testing standard, ASTM F2530,” Batt explained. “This standard uses an impacting method which does not replicate or measure head rotation.  We saw an opportunity to improve current bull riding helmet testing by utilizing state-of-the-art head impact equipment and head response metrics capable of capturing head rotation forces.”

Batt is director of Clemson’s Package Dynamics Lab (PDL) and an associate professor for the Department of Food, Nutrition and Packaging Science. Dr. DesJardins is the director of the Laboratory of Orthopedic Design and Engineering (LODE) and is the Robert B. and Susan B. Hambright Leadership Professor in the Department of Bioengineering.

With their grant from the Institute, Batt and DesJardins will emulate a bull kicking a helmet with specially designed anvils.

Did you get a Peloton during the pandemic?

You’re not alone. In fact, the fitness company’s subscriptions increased by 94% over the last year. Fitness instructors have a significant impact on members’ motivation. Now that most people are working out virtually, how much more important is the instructor’s role? Two Clemson University Communication professors plan to find out.

Consumer spending experts reported that 59% of Americans don’t plan to return to the gym after the pandemic. Many Americans reported they preferred the online workouts at home. Kristen Okamoto and Brandon Boatwright, assistant professors in the Department of Communication, want to understand the motivation behind these changes to fitness routines and the impact it will have on the multi-billion fitness industry.

Okamoto has a research focus on health and organizational communication. Boatwright focuses on sports communication. Together, they want to crack this health phenomenon.

No, you are not color blind!

The Clemson University orange we all associate with the tiger paw may have appeared red on your TV screen. The purple looked blue. Clemson fans have noticed these color discrepancies on their screens over the years.

This problem isn’t limited to Clemson. This brand color discrepancy is also apparent with other teams, such as the Dallas Cowboys, where their silver pants appeared green during a broadcasted game.

For many teams, the brand identity is based on the team colors, which is why correcting this problem is critical to sports franchises. Unfortunately, correcting the brand colors also affects the other colors in the frame. Environmental lighting and post-production color adjustments affect the entire frame of the broadcast feed. So, while the brand color would appear correct, the rest of the frame would alter as well, ruining other colors at the expense of fixing the brand color.

Dr. Erica Walker, Dr. Hudson Smith and a Creative Inquiry class have created an AI program, ColorNet, to address this color confusion. ColorNet ingests live video and adjusts each frame pixel-by-pixel targeting the brand color regions, then outputs color corrected video in real-time. This ensures accurate brand colors without negatively impacting other areas of the frame. The program was tested on PawVision in 2019 and it successfully corrected Clemson’s orange on screen.

Walker, an assistant professor in Graphic Communications, Smith, a research data scientist at the Watt Family Center for Innovation, also received a RHBSSI Seed Grant to further their work.

“With further development of Color Net, we plan to integrate our AI-based color management solution with Clemson Athletics through a hardware and a software solution,” Walker said. “This technology will help athletic content creators ensure that Clemson Orange and Clemson Purple consistently look like fans expect on the screens in the stadium and in Clemson Athletics social media posts.”

Determining injury risk factors in high school sports

An active lifestyle in high school is a good indicator of a healthy lifestyle as an adult. For most adolescents that physical activity comes from organized sports. Two local professors are partnering with a local non-profit organization to better understand the injury risk factors related in specific sports – specifically volleyball, cross-country, and football.

Dr. Joel Williams and Dr. Chris Hopkins will collaborate with PlaySafe, a non-profit organization based in the upstate of South Carolina who provides sports medicine care to athletes at over 70 high schools across South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama. PlaySafe’s mission is to keep young athletes safe by educating, promoting, supporting, and fostering healthy lifestyles, wellness, and safe athletic participation in active youth, young adults, and the community at large.

The PlaySafe injury surveillance and outreach model has caught the attention of the NFL through the National Athletic Trainer’s Association. Dr. Williams and Dr. Hopkins research proposal caught the eyes of the RHBSSI grant selection committee.

Williams is an associate professor of public health sciences; Hopkins is a Furman University associate professor of applied health research and evaluation.

The focus of their research project is to better estimate the injury risk in high school sports and identify injury risk factors, which may help develop future injury prevention strategies for young athletes. Previous injury risk research with these populations has generally used rudimentary measures of sport exposure that lack sport-specific detail. Improving the accuracy of injury surveillance and conducting pre-season screening will allow for the investigation of sport-specific injury risk factors.

By Kirsten Windbiel, a Master’s Student in Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management major

Clemson University Paralympic Soccer announces the signing of two additional Fall 2021 recruits, Kevin George McCandlish and Gavin Kohner, who will join Shea Hammond and Tim Huff with the Paralympic Soccer Residential Training Program (RTP). Clemson’s RTP is a unique opportunity for athletes with disabilities and allows players to continue playing collegiate soccer while earning their college degree. Players earn in-state tuition wa iver in the form of an athletic scholarship and will train weekly with the team. Players will seek to excel on the field with team training, personal development training and strength and conditioning, as the program seeks to prepare players for the US Para National team. This distinctive program, the only one in the country, is paving the way for soccer players with disabilities in the United States.

Signing Athlete Bios:

Kevin George McCandlish

Kevin comes to Clemson from Virginia and plans to pursue his degree in the Sports Management program. He started playing soccer when he was around 3 years old. In his early years, McCandlish simply enjoyed the sport for fun. He couldn’t imagine where it has led him today. By 9, McCandlish started to take soccer more seriously and joined his first travel team. In 2017, he got the chance to start playing for the U.S. Paralympic National Team (USPNT). Ever since 2017, McCandlish’s view of soccer and life dreams changed drastically. Kevin has Spastic Cerebral Palsy (CP), which affects the right side of his body. The CP affects his speed and ability to use both feet – obstacles McClandlish has overcome in his journey.

He is excited to play for Clemson with players who are similar to him.

“It’s nice to finally be able to train with them every day instead of only being able to for a week every now and then with the national team.,” McClandlish said. “This is going to help us build better chemistry on and off the field.”

Welcome to Clemson University, Kevin!

Gavin Kohner

Hailing from Phoenix, Arizona, Gavin Kohner plans to study Business Accounting at Clemson and later pursue law school. Joining Clemson is a childhood dream for Kohner.

“It has been my dream since 8th grade to attend Clemson and play soccer at the collegiate level through the parasoccer program,” Kohner said. “I am extremely grateful to receive the scholarship and have worked hard to get here. I am excited to join fellow teammates and get out on the field!”

Growing up, soccer was always something Kohner looked forward to playing at the end of the day. Soccer was great stress-relief for him. Kohner also has cerebral palsy, resulting in hemiparesis on his right side. One of the barriers Kohner has overcome — in both life and soccer — is increased injury and discomfort to his body compensating for his disability. As a result, he has dedicated more time and effort into stretching and taking care of his body. In addition, Kohner focuses on intentional training, recovery, and nutrition.

“My goals are to grow and excel both on and off the field and academically,” Kohner said. “One of my dreams is to join the USPNT as both a consistent and strong team player.”

Welcome to Clemson, Gavin!

For more information regarding the Clemson Paralympic Soccer Program, visit http://clemsonparalympicsoccer.org or follow the program on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter @cuparasoccer for updates.

By Marissa Kuula, a senior Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management major, focusing on Community Recreation, Sport and Camp Management

Clemson Paralympic Soccer is a program run through Clemson University to provide soccer programming for various populations with disabilities. Their programs seek to improve the quality of life through their Residential Training Program, VA Adaptive Soccer Camps, Tutor, Talk and Train Program, Additional Adaptive Sport Opportunities such as 5-a-side Blind Soccer, 7-a-side Para Soccer, and adaptive weight training sessions, and continuing research and education. One of the programs from which many of the others have grown from has been funded by the United States Department of Veteran Affairs the last 5 years and supports veterans with disabilities to experience adaptive Soccer.  In partnership with US Soccer, we are able to provide veteran participants with a US Soccer grassroots coaching certification, a mental health first aid certification and provide them with an overview of a number of the adaptive soccer programs growing around the country. We followed up with some of their past participants to see how this camp has impacted their life. 

Christian Gay: U.S. Army Veteran 

Residing in Colorado, Christian previously lived in Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia, Texas, Kuwait, and Iraq over the course of his service in the Army National Guard. Crossing paths with US Men’s Paralympic Soccer team coach, Stuart Sharp, at the Eastern and Southern Regional TOPSoccer Conference, he was told about Clemson Paralympic Soccer’s veteran

s soccer camps. In regard to his participation in camp, Christian expressed that “I loved learning about new ways to coach players with special needs and being with other veterans.” When asked what he took away from the camp experience, Christian stated, “there is always a way for everyone to be able to play and love soccer.” This sentiment was taken beyond camp. Christian then went on to coach in

his community, utilizing a U.S. Soccer Coaching Certification that is provided at camp. One of his astonishing accomplishments has been the role of the TOP Soccer program for Desoto Soccer Association. TOPSoccer is a community-based training program for athletes with intellectual, emotional, and or physical disabilities. The program strives to provide soccer opportunities for players to develop at their own pace in a safe, fun, and supportive/inclusive environment. While working as VP of TOPSoccer in the Desoto Soccer Association, Christian loves working with the kids in the program, stating that “being with the kids was more rewarding than I could have ever imagined.”

Al Marconi: U.S. Naval Reserves Veteran 

Currently living in California, Al served in the U.S. Naval Reserves for six years and the U.S. Army Reserves for fourteen years. Over the course of his service, he lived all over the continental United States, in multiple Mediterranean Sea ports, and in parts of the Caribbean. Hearing about the Clemson veteran soccer camp program from the physical therapist at his VA hospital, Al enjoyed the “thoroughness of the content taught at camp and the friendly and non-stressful demeanor of the instructors.”

In addition to lessons regarding adaptive soccer coaching, participants also go through Mental Health

First Aid training, which teaches them how to identify, understand, and respond to signs of mental illness and substance abuse disorders. From this training, Al expressed that he “learned to be attuned to the feelings and emotional mind sets of those around me”. Al is now a volunteer with the Recreation Department of the Jerry Pettis memorial VA Medical Center in Loma Linda, California and is a player and coach of an all-veteran Power Soccer team in Hemet, California. In regard to the position of volunteer with the VA Recreation department, AL assists the staff of Recreation Therapists in providing daily activities and community re-entry opportunities for the veterans in the convalescent, rehabilitation, dementia, and palliative care units of the VA hospital. When acting as a player and a coach for the Power Soccer team, Al assists the head coach by helping structure team practices, utilizing knowledge gained from Clemson veteran camp participation to aid in gameplay and practice direction.

Paige McCune: Recreational Therapist, The Center

Paige McCune works at an adaptive recreation facility in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and attended Clemson Paralympic Soccer’s 4th virtual camp in 2020. Clemson Paralympic Soccer VA camps not only cater to veterans, but allow other adaptive recreation professionals that work with veterans to attend. Paige attended one of the recent Zoom online camps hosted by the program and stated that she enjoyed “learning about different styles of adaptive soccer, meeting other professionals in the field, and how that despite being online, the camp was still hands on and active.” Following camp, Paige expressed interest in expanding her facility’s current offering of Power Soccer to include blind and CP soccer. When asked what future goals she had in regard to the program she works with, Paige stated that “In the future I foresee that I will still be the coach (of the power soccer program), will lead practices, and will develop programming accordingly. The program also has goals of reaching out to and connecting with a handful of soccer communities in the area.” A major takeaway from camp for Paige was that “it doesn’t matter where we start, but that we started. Soccer can be for all levels and ages.”

Clemson Paralympic Soccer is so grateful for all of the amazing participants that they get the honor to work with and serve. Whether at an in-person camp or virtual, the camps offer a number of great opportunities and interactive sessions that they hope participants will be able to utilize back in their communities, whether that’s coaching on a soccer team or being an advocate for disability soccer. Clemson Paralympic Soccer will continue to host virtual camps for veterans and professionals through the Spring of 2021, and hope to be back out on the field shortly after!

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For more information regarding the Clemson Paralympic Soccer Program and VA Adaptive Soccer Camps, visit http://clemsonparalympicsoccer.org or follow the program on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter @cuparasoccer for updates.

By: Makenzie Camlin

This is it, your time to shine. You have never touched a soccer ball before but here you are staring at it head on hoping that your dribbling, shooting, and juggling are up to par with those right beside you on Zoom joining from all around the world. Then, you realize that being perfect does not matter at all. Not only are you in a free space where learning and growing is the most important thing, but those around you know exactly what you are going through. It does not matter whether you have never touched a soccer ball or if you have been playing since you were five. All that matters is that you are meeting new people, having a good time, and learning new skills.

This is the exact situation that was created for participants on October 4, 2020 during the World CP Day celebration. Regardless of whether participants were lifelong soccer players or had never touched a soccer ball, the program and sport gave them a way to unite with those who have the same disability, cerebral palsy. For these athletes, soccer continuously serves as a way to connect with others in different ways than their CP. Ashley Hammond, co-founder of CP Soccer and commentator of the World CP Day program stated, “being ‘different’ is handled by all of us in different ways – sometimes we choose to be different, but when you are disabled, you don’t get to choose that. This can lead to a sense of helplessness and anger among other things. Doing ‘normal’ things like other kids do is crucial to bridge that gap between doing and can’t or won’t.”

With the goal of giving these athletes access to this wonderful sport, Clemson University Paralympic Soccer, directed by Skye Arthur-Banning, a RHBSSI Faculty Fellow, partnered with the International Federation of CP Football (IFCPF), U.S. Soccer, and CP Soccer to host a World CP Day event for athletes with Cerebral Palsy (CP) from different countries. This national celebration began in 2012 and has continued to grow in its efforts to bring awareness to and celebrate those living with CP. This year, over 75 countries were involved with this worldwide celebration held to recognize and encourage the 17 million people living with cerebral palsy.

Clemson University Paralympic Soccer and partners not only brought more awareness to CP through the event, but to adaptive soccer. The event included many guest speakers, an international training session, and a time to come together with athletes with CP to prove they #CanPlay. There were over 200 participants from six different continents on the Zoom feed that followed along and over 7,000 hits on Facebook Live. To market the celebration, each organization that partnered together used their social media platforms to advertise the event internationally to worldwide CP soccer connections with the goal of unifying soccer players from around the world living with CP.

This event included competitions among the athletes that were skill based such as dribbling, shooting, juggling and passing. To make it more exciting, featured coaches from all over the world were on the feed watching participants complete these skills, and they chose players at every level to receive recognition. In addition to the physical training, participants received encouragement through interviews conducted with special guests who also have cerebral palsy. Some featured guests included: Bonner Paddock, Abbey Curran, Shea Hammond, Bryan Kilpatrick Elliot and Tommy Chasanoff. “Our guest speakers added a very special and inspirational element. The speakers were phenomenal an were able to support the athletes by giving them life advice and sharing part of their stories of growing up with CP,” said Kirsten Windbiel, a graduate student with Clemson Paralympic Soccer.

Bonner Paddock was one of the keynote speakers, in which he encouraged the participants to, “love yourself exactly as you are. You’re perfect and you’re beautiful.” Abbey Curran was another guest speaker, who shared her experience in becoming the first contestant with a disability to win a major beauty pageant. After earning the title of Miss Iowa, she went on to compete in Miss USA and later on to write, “The Courage to Compete: Living with Cerebral Palsy and Following My Dreams.”

With the COVID-19 pandemic, many would think that this would stop the annual celebration, but Cerebral Palsy cannot stop these athletes, and neither can COVID-19. The online format of the program presented some challenges, such as the many different time zones and languages, as 31 different countries were represented. However, even with these obstacles, the online format allowed the program to continue. While this year’s participation was much higher than expected, Ashley Hammond says that the goal for next year is to have 50 countries represented. In his words, “Think big!”

By: Dr. Jasmine Townsend, CTRS, CARSS-I, Associate Professor, Clemson University

My introduction to adaptive sports occurred at the National Ability Center in Park City, Utah (www.discovernac.org). They are a community recreation organization that provides adaptive sports and recreation activities like mountain biking, sled hockey, river rafting, handcycling, and waterskiing, among others, to individuals with a variety of physical and cognitive disabilities. People come from all over the United States, at all times of the year, to participate in their programs. I spent my time helping kids and adults learn new skills, push the boundaries of their abilities, and generally just have a great time in the mountains, lakes, and deserts of the Mountain West. It was the best job ever. We had tons of fun, and I developed lasting friendships with many of my coworkers.

My work in adaptive sports over the last decade has continued through both direct service provision and research activities. In all my interactions with participants across these various experiences, I have heard statements like “Adaptive sports have changed my life” ;or “My son/daughter has changed so much since they started playing wheelchair basketball”; or “I’m more confident in my abilities, and I have a sense of purpose now.” It was quite fulfilling as a health and recreation professional to know that what we were doing had such impact. I absolutely believe it changed lives, because I saw it happen. However, the researcher in me wanted to know more.

The Clemson Adaptive Sports and Recreation lab aims to provide evidence that informs decisions about adaptive sport programming and enhance outcomes associated with involvement in those programs. This mission is perfectly geared to examine the transformative nature of adaptive sports for individuals with disabilities. Recent research (Duerden, et al., 2018) has provided definitions of a continuum of general experience types ranging from ordinary, to memorable, meaningful, and finally transformative. Other research has also identified adaptive sport participation as transformational to participants’ self-identity (Lundberg, Taniguchi, McCormick, & Tibbs, 2011).

No research, however, has used a reliable measure to gauge the impact of adaptive sport experiences. Furthermore, no research has connected program characteristics to the experience types, leaving program administrators with little systematic and reliable information with which to intentionally design programs to facilitate growth and development among individuals with disabilities participating in adaptive sport.

In January 2021, and in collaboration with colleagues at Brigham Young University, my students and I will embark on a study to determine the impact of adaptive sport experiences using the Experience Impact Measure (EIM). This will be the first study to use this measure in an adaptive sport context and will contribute to validation of the instrument. We will also explore a variety of program characteristics that may prove important for each type of experience (ordinary to transformative). Such information will be useful to various stakeholders in their efforts to understand the impact of adaptive sport programs but will also help in efforts to refine the design and implementation of these programs.

While anecdotal evidence from participants is meaningful in the moment and powerful as a testimonial, a systematic and data-driven understanding of the impact of adaptive sport participation is needed. This project will provide that understanding, and we feel it perfectly complements the aims of the Robert H. Brooks Sport Science Institute.

References:

Duerden, M. D., Lundberg, N. R., Ward, P., Taniguchi, S. T, Hill, B., Widmer, M. A., & Zabriskie, R. (2018). From ordinary to extraordinary: A framework of experience types. Journal of Leisure Research, 49(3-5) 196-216.

Lundberg, N. R., Taniguchi, S., McCormick, B., & Tibbs, C. (2011). Identity negotiating: Redefining stigmatized identities through adaptive sports and recreation participation among individuals with a disability. Journal of Leisure Research, 43(2), 205-225.

By: Dr. Virginia S. Harrison, Assistant Professor, Clemson University

Christen Buckley, Ph.D. Candidate, Pennsylvania State University

On October 18, 2019, the New York Times released a list of 42 minor league baseball teams across the United States that were slated for elimination by Major League Baseball (MLB) after the 2020 season. The news shocked minor league team officials (Sanchez, 2020), who launched communications campaigns aimed at showing the importance of the teams to their local communities. One such campaign included the Save Our Spikes campaign in State College, PA, pictured here. Through tactics like holding local rallies with media or displaying signage, teams encouraged fan advocacy as critical parts of their campaigns. The outlook turned particularly bleak when COVID-19 shut down the minor league baseball season for all of 2020, leaving the 42 teams in limbo.

Our study seeks to understand the dynamics of the fan advocacy and team communication efforts behind the Save Our Spikes campaign and those like it across the minor leagues. Given the unprecedented nature of this announcement coupled with COVID-19, we want to know how fans engage in and view advocacy as part of their fandom. Additionally, how are teams’ strategic communications departments motivating fan advocacy? Advocacy literature typically focuses on nonprofit actions and work toward a specific cause (e.g., Corning & Myers, 2002), and our study takes a new direction with scholarship by applying these nonprofit principles to sport.

We also want to understand how fans feel about their local minor league teams. Unlike relationships with major professional teams, minor league fan affiliations are unique and often tied to community identity (Wear & Heere, 2019; Wegner, Delia & Baker, 2018). While research exists on the impacts of professional sports teams moving to new towns (Mitrano, 1999), little research focuses on this connection for minor league professional teams. The current situation is a unique opportunity to look at the ways that fans show support for their teams when their existence is threatened.

We are conducting a three-pronged methodology to tackle this issue: interviews with fans and team officials, fan survey, and social media content analysis. We are still looking for interview participants and would love to hear from you if you are a fan of a minor league baseball team or employee of a minor league baseball team. Please reach out to Dr. Virginia Harrison, vsharri@clemson.edu, or Christen Buckley, clb5344@psu.edu, to see if you are eligible for the study. We look forward to sharing the results of our work with you in a future post!

References

Corning, A. F. & Myers, D. J. (2002). Individual orientation toward engagement in social action. Political Psychology, 23(4), 703-729. DOI: www.jstor.org/stable/3792364.

Mitrano, J. R. (1999). The “sudden death” of hockey in Hartford: Sports fans and franchise relocation. Sociology of Sport Journal, 16, 134-154.

Sanchez, R. (2020, May 19). “Minor league baseball in crisis.” Sports Illustrated. Accessed https://www.si.com/mlb/2020/05/19/minor-league-baseball-is-in-crisis.

Wear, H. & Heere, B. (2019). Brand New: A Longitudinal Investigation of Brand Associations as Drivers of Team Identity Among Fans of a New Sport Team. Journal of Sport Management. Advanced publication doi: 10.1123/jsm.2018-0204.

Wegner, C. E., Delia, E. B., & Baker, B. J. (2018). Fan response to the identity threat of potential team relocation. Sport Management Review. Advanced publication doi: 10.1016/j.smr.2019.01.001

Meet the Prof: Bryan Denham, Campbell Professorship in Sports Communication

Dr. Bryan Denham holds the Charlie Campbell Professorship in Sports Communication at Clemson, where he is currently in his 22^nd year of teaching. Dr. Denham received the 2019-2020 award for Excellence in Research – Senior Scholar in the College of Behavioral, Social and Health Sciences. He has published approximately 70 refereed journal articles and book chapters and also served for three years as Chair of the Department of Communication.

1. What part of your sports communication research are you most excited about?

Much of my scholarship has focused on the media, policy and health dimensions of substance use in sport and society. I published a study in Communication and Sport two years ago addressing the doping scandal at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, focusing specifically on how news of the scandal unfolded in the United States. The New York Times has long been considered a “legitimator” of news in the U.S., and sure enough, little coverage of the situation appeared prior to the point at which Grigory Rodchenkov, head of the Russian Anti-Doping Agency, fled Russia. As shown in the documentary Icarus, he spoke to the New York Times in May 2016, shortly after arriving in the U.S. Although there had been some excellent documentaries produced in Europe, featuring whistleblowers Vitaly Stepanov and Yuliya Stepanova, U.S. news media did not get involved until the “newspaper of record” did so. The revelations proved embarrassing for Russia, and in fact a report from the U.S. National Intelligence Council stated that Russia had launched cyberattacks during the 2016 election year partially as a retaliatory action for high-profile doping allegations. I had the opportunity in 2019 to attend a conference in Colorado called Play the Game. It was the first time the group had met in the U.S., and it featured the Stepanovs, Bryan Fogel, who directed Icarus, representatives from the World Anti-Doping Agency and U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, and many other prominent people in sport. There was a lot of discussion of doping, match fixing and others issues in sport. The conference was a great experience.

I also study issues involving race and ethnicity in sport and recently published a study in the Sociology of Sport Journal addressing the capacity of sports participation to heighten awareness of racial issues in society. In 1954, a scholar named Gordon Allport argued that superficial approaches to reducing racial prejudice often failed due to an absence of contact among people. He suggested that sports participation stood to reduce prejudice, notably when members of differing races and ethnicities were members of a team pursuing a collective goal. There needed to be contact among people and something for which the members of a team could collectively strive. I analyzed data gathered from 12^th-grade students as part of the annual Monitoring the Future study, conducted by researchers at the University of Michigan, and found some support for the contact hypothesis. On the whole, White participants in sports in which members of racial minorities also competed seemed to have heightened awareness of issues involving race and ethnicity. Athletes in sports with less diversity – baseball, for example – did not show such patterns. To some extent, one can observe support for the contact hypothesis in many of the athletic programs at Clemson.

2. Discuss the development of sports communication at Clemson.

Clemson has been a leader in the development of sports communication curricula. When I came on board in 1999, I taught a sports communication class as a special topics course. That class became COMM325, Sports Communication, and the department gradually began to add courses such as Public Relations in Sports and Sports Media Criticism. We added a minor and then one of the few majors in the nation. Additional classes addressing topics such as sport in society, social media, and athlete-coach communication have also become part of the curriculum. When I started teaching at Clemson, studies about issues in sports communication had been published in scholarly journals, but few schools had developed coursework for undergraduates. We began teaching our courses, as did a limited number of other schools, and now such classes have become popular nationwide. We also offer a sports media course in the department MA program. The Robert H. Brooks Sports Science Institute has been able to fund two graduate students with sports communication interests each year.

3. What is your personal connection/passion to sports?

I grew up playing all kinds of sports – baseball, basketball, indoor soccer, outdoor soccer. We lived across the street from a school with soccer fields, baseball diamonds and a basketball court. We were also near St. Louis, which is one of best sports towns in the nation, especially in baseball. Checking box scores and reading sports pages was a daily ritual. The Major Indoor Soccer League had also emerged in those days, and the St. Louis Steamers drew large crowds at the old Arena. Those games were fun to attend. Fast paced with quite a few players from the St. Louis area. Sports were certainly a major presence, and there were lots of athletes to emulate.

But I also had orthopedic issues from the start, with quite a few shoulder dislocations and finally surgery on both. Like many people, I started lifting weights through rehabilitation and found a few lifts that I could do pretty well. I competed in a few meets – one at the famous Muscle Beach in California. I was able to parlay the weightlifting experiences into some training articles for popular magazines, getting involved with the industry side of sports communication. I still study magazines, although they have become thinner and thinner in recent years. Some have gone entirely online.

4. What lessons/advice do you give to students you teach/mentor?

In graduate school I took a sport psychology course as an elective and learned a great deal. Athletes who find success often immerse themselves in the training process by establishing a series of short-term attainable goals; this allows them to avoid anxiety associated with broad unwieldy goals that invariably involve factors beyond their control. Learning to focus on the pursuit of personal excellence instead of broad outcomes usually results in better sport performance. John Wooden, the legendary basketball coach at UCLA, was a proponent of these ideas, as was Pat Summitt, the highly successful coach of the Lady Vols at Tennessee. As Coach Wooden wrote, “Success is peace of mind, which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to become the best of which you are capable.” Coach Summitt added that “Hard work breeds self-respect.”

For graduate students and budding academicians, lessons in sport psychology can prove valuable. As an example, one can worry a great deal about publishing scholarly journal articles – achieving outcomes – that are sometimes beyond the control of the scholar. One does not know who the referees for an article will be, nor does one know whether an editor will make a favorable decision. If one sets small attainable goals throughout the process of researching, writing and then submitting a research project, then he or she will be more apt to experience success. No one likes to experience rejection, of course, but it often presents an opportunity to improve a project based on constructive feedback.

For undergraduate students, many of whom aspire to work in creative fields, my advice is to seek out as many different experiences as possible – and read and write as much as possible. I was fortunate to attend a great journalism school at Indiana University in Bloomington. I then headed for Southern California and eventually enrolled in an MA program at Cal State Fullerton. That was a great experience. I had the chance to spend some time in the Little Saigon area of Westminster as part of a journalism practicum and interviewed a gentleman named Yen Ngoc Do, founder of the Nguoi Viet Daily News. He had been a correspondent during the Vietnam War and had seen a lot. But on the lighter side, I also enjoyed being a tourist in Hollywood and Beverly Hills and would sometimes venture down Sunset Boulevard to the research library at UCLA. After graduating from Cal State Fullerton, I traveled back across the country and completed my doctorate at the University of Tennessee. I am thankful for all of those opportunities and the diverse and enriching experiences they provided. Traveling to Europe was also an enlightening experience, and a highly recommend students take advantage of study-abroad programs. The Department of Communication at Clemson offers some excellent programs, although the Covid pandemic resulted in some cancellations.

5. How has Covid impacted sports/sports communication? 

I actually believe sports may have impacted Covid as much as Covid has impacted sports. The U.S. has not performed well in this pandemic, and our demand for nonstop entertainment and immediate gratification bears some responsibility. People in other nations have made the sacrifices necessary to get the pandemic under control, and for several weeks we were headed in that direction. Then came increases in the politicization of what is fundamentally a public health issue. Masks and personal protective equipment became politicized, and disinformation took hold.

In college and professional sports, the pandemic has shown that decisions based on science and careful reasoning may be overruled by shouting and demands that teams take the field. Yet, the recent World Series and NBA Championships saw some of their lowest television ratings ever. At the college level, one major conference returned just in time for the recent surge in Covid cases. The U.S. accounts for about 4 percent of the world’s population but 20 percent of Covid cases as well as 20 percent of Covid deaths. We should be doing much better. It will be interesting to see how – or if – 2021 shapes up.

To learn more about Dr. Denham’s  research projects, check out these Clemson University Newsstand pieces.

Patent Medicines

Anabolic Steroid Hazards

Sochi Winter Olympics Scandal

Dietary Supplement Issues

This is the first in a series of posts to introduce our legacy professors. We interviewed Angeline Close Scheinbaum for our first installment. She is our newest legacy professor, joining Clemson University in August 2019. Scheinbaum holds the Dan Duncan Professorship in Sports Marketing and is an Associate Professor of Marketing at Clemson University. She was a former Associate Director of Research for the Center for Sports Communication & Media at the University of Texas at Austin.

What area of sport marketing research are you most excited about lately?

The most exciting aspect of the sport industry to me lately is corporate social responsibility and advocacy through sport. It is a hot topic for sport marketers, fans, industry partners, venues, and for social justice at large. I think this is a really important topic for scholarship and industry studies alike. It is also of importance to collegiate athletics and professional sports. We are continuing to see sport used as a communication platform for advocacy on the importance of unity, anti-racism, love, education reform, and other important topics for our society. At a local level, here at Clemson, I am proud of our student athletes and support their Unity campaign.

I also publish on the intersection of corporate social responsibility and sport. My favorite paper I have done in sports marketing is broadly in the area of corporate social responsibility and sport. It is called “Social responsibility and event-sponsor portfolio fit” in European Journal of Marketing (2019) by myself, Russell Lacey (Xavier) and Meme Drumright (Texas). The study context was professional cycling at The Tour of Utah.

The reason I love this paper is because unlike the majority of my work that solves sport marketers’ or brand managers problems, this one takes a societal lens. Sport marketers must play a role in addressing concerns of marketing and society. A way sports marketers can contribute is by holding or sponsoring sporting events with a socially responsible dimension. We came up with the term “event social responsibility” (ESR), which is defined as “consumers’ perceptions that an event gives back to the community in which it takes place in a manner that is socially responsible”.

There are many ways to do this. One example is to have or sponsor professional sporting events with educational health and wellness initiatives, such as encouraging bike safety and wearing helmets when biking. Another example is to do sun cancer screenings at sporting events and educate attendees about skin health while playing or attending sports events. A more common example of event social responsibility is to have an event beneficiary that is prosocial in nature. For instance, one event I measured gave a donation to the Georgia Cancer Coalition and also promoted that nonprofit at the event. Our research finds that event sponsorship provides an important opportunity for brands to demonstrate their corporate citizenship. Hosting or sponsoring events can make advancements to solving social problems while creating marketing benefits for both events and sponsors. Event social responsibility integrates two key integrated brand communication aspects—experiential marketing communication and corporate social responsibility. A takeaway for sport marketing managers that they can “do well by doing good” with integration of a socially responsible dimension to a sponsored sporting event. We provided and empirically tested a model involving event social responsibility and how it brings outcomes important to marketers, such as word of mouth.

 How is sports a part of your life and how does this motivate your sport marketing research?

To have intrinsic motivation in a career, having a passion for the context as well as authenticity with it is paramount. I have always had passion for sports and marketing/advertising, so combining them seemed natural. Sports remain a defining part of my personal and professional life. I grew up playing softball and tennis and to this day am an athlete competing on United States Tennis Association teams. In addition to running consumer behavior studies in the context of sports and mentoring graduate students in sports marketing, I support student athletes and my children in sports. Sports is a passion for my family; my husband Benjamin was drafted by the Yankees and pitched in their minor leagues and is a graduate manager for Clemson baseball. Our sons play soccer, basketball and little league. I have consulted and run studies with USA Cycling, PGA events, and pro tennis events. So, I spend a lot of time at sporting events in many roles—a businesswoman measuring the sporting events for managers, an athlete, a professor of student athletes, and mother/wife of athletes. This inspires my research in consumer behavior, branding, and sports marketing because I observe many facets of the experience from different lenses. Having this level of personal as well as professional involvement brings authenticity.

 How do you incorporate industry in your sport marketing research?

Most of my research in sport sponsorship is grounded in working with industry. My first real world experience in helping measure sport events and sponsorships was in 2005-2006 with professional cycling—at the Tour of Georgia. The first brands I examined in a sports marketing context were Dodge, followed by Ford and AT&T. Those brands were early sponsors of the Tour de Georgia cycling race. Many sport sponsors are in the automobile branding sector, so over the years work with Toyota (auto racing), Mazda (auto-racing), and Suzuki (motorbike) ensued. Other brands include Shell (PGA), Lexus (tennis), and Volkswagen (cycling). Another event I have enjoyed working with multiple years is the Tour of Utah and the USA Cycling National Championships. Thus, my sports marketing industry experience does largely overlap with automotive branding. Further, the sports contexts vary. Some photos show the past partnerships with Road Atlanta and in Professional Cycling.

Based on your work experience, how have sport sponsorships changed over the last decade?

 Much of the basics remain the same, while the technology and brand integration have rapidly advanced. The first sports sponsorship partnerships I was a part of was with Dodge, in about 2005 while still a doctoral student and then again with Ford in 2006. They were the title sponsors of a professional cycling event, The Tour de Georgia, which was a premier warm up to the Tour de France at the time. The key differences to the current times was the lack of integrated brand promotion with social media. Social media and the digital integration of sport sponsorships was not a concern—it was before the social media revolution. It was more about integration with advertising campaigns, which is still huge. But today, sports marketers are keenly interested in the leveraging of the sports events and sponsorships with digital communication including social media. The current and future challenge remains with the blending of digital, and how to manage or handle sponsorships for any sport events that have no live fans or limited in-person fans due to the pandemic. Today, adaptability and flexibility is especially crucial in sport marketing. For example, bravo to whoever thought of putting pictures of fans in the stands and marketing that opportunity in these uncertain times in professional sport.

What is the next step for your sport marketing research?

Broadly, I am continuing the research portfolio of consumer behavior research in the contexts of sport sponsorship and integrated brand promotion including social media integration. I have goals to further publish models of sport sponsorship success based on existing data and new data collections. While most of my work is in field studies, I am now moving work to include lab settings to get another look at these topics in a more controlled environment and to make deeper theoretical contributions to the marketing literature.

 What are the key components of your mentoring and teaching at Clemson?

I think the key to graduate student mentoring and teaching for me lately is in “teaching marketing to transform”. This entails that marketing, future marketing professionals (current students), and future professors (current graduate students) have a role in expanding successful marketing to not just be business/profits minded but in making social advances as well. Marketing/advertising has a huge impact on society and vice-versa and can help with prosocial initiatives and making for a more inclusive marketplace. Currently, I am working with a graduate student at Clemson who is from applied statistics, and she is interested in merging that with sport research. I also co-mentored a dissertation this year that examines CSR and sport sponsorship.

In addition, I teach service marketing to undergraduate students at Clemson which includes the sport and experiential context. A final rewarding way to help with education of sports marketing is in writing a textbook “Advertising & Integrated Brand Promotion” (2019) that is coauthored with Tom O’Quinn, Rich Semenik and Chris Allen. We have a helpful chapter or two that takes an experiential marketing/sponsorship/sport marketing focus that helps get undergraduate advertising and marketing students excited about careers or future study in these topics. It is important to integrate teaching/mentoring with research and real-world experiences. At Clemson, I am looking forward to teaching undergraduate sports marketing in the Spring of 2021. Teaching and mentoring is the most important thing we do here at Clemson.

What advice do you have for students aiming for careers or higher education in sport marketing ?

1. Get inspired. Have some expertise or familiarity with sports- play them, attend sport events, be around sports as much as possible in order to inspire your studies and career in sport marketing.
2. Stay current. Read and subscribe to Sports Business Digest and Sport Marketing Quarterly in addition to following traditional sport media and social media outlets devoted to sport.
3. Get involved. Volunteer. Intern. Attend conferences. Join sport related organizations in your field. In marketing, you can join the Sport Marketing Association and the American Marketing Associations sport and sponsorship-linked marketing special interest group (@AMASportSIG). In communications, you can join the sports communication interest group of International Communication Association and follow them on Twitter at @ICASportComm. There is also an International Association for Communication and Sport. Another option is the Communication and Sport Division of the NCA. For sport management, there is a North American Society for Sport Management.
4. Seek mentors. Reach out to professors who are doing work in this area and centers, such as the  Robert H. Brooks Sports Science Institute professors here at Clemson.
5. Continue your education. Consider graduate school in a variety of areas that transcend sport; a beauty of sports research is that sport permeates many scholarly areas including but not limited to communications, marketing, sociology, management, sport medicine, kinesiology, and health. Even if this is not an option for now, consider the industry and coming back to graduate school or bringing your experience back to the classroom after an industry career.
6. Consider the media market. There are certain major media markets with larger populations that correlate with the most opportunities to work in professional sport. Certain media markets such as New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, Miami, San Francisco, Boston are examples of cities that have more opportunity due to the presence of multiple professional teams there.
7. Consider related careers. I think this tip is the most timely, given the status of the market and hiring freezes in some areas. There are related careers that may not have “sport marketing” in the title, but instead are in advertising, branding, promotion, social media, marketing analytics, sales, database management, and even relationship marketing. Each of those facets of marketing can overlap with sport depending on the client and their media and creative needs.
8. Remain flexible. Your first job may not be your “forever job”; stay flexible, gain broader marketing or agency experience and develop relationships. It may take a few jobs to find your zone in sport marketing.

The Saturday before Thanksgiving in 2018, my family and I settle into our living room to watch the Clemson Tigers play the Duke Blue Devils. I was lucky to be able to fly home a little before the break began and was thrilled to be able to watch the football game with my family. My mom prepared for the occasion, filling the coffee table with snacks usually reserved for our Super Bowl watch party. As the camera pans to the Tigers making their run down the Hill as part of the most exciting 25 seconds in college football, my brother only makes one comment: “Oh, Duke is running down the Hill!”

Of course, it wasn’t Duke. There is no way an opponent would run down the Hill at a Clemson home game. But lo and behold, it appeared that way. Clemson’s purple jerseys donned to celebrate Clemson’s “Purple Out” football game in honor of its Military Appreciation Day, appeared navy blue on the screen, a similar shade to Duke’s team colors. And it wasn’t just our TV; Clemson looked to be wearing navy blue across broadcast footage and television screens. My dad and brother had a field day, cracking jokes about how Duke was playing themselves in Death Valley.

This is not a problem limited to Clemson. This brand color discrepancy is also apparent with other teams when they play, such as the Dallas Cowboys, where their silver pants appeared green during a broadcasted game. And what is a sports team without their team colors? Unfortunately, trying to correct the brand colors means all the colors in the frame would suffer. Environmental lighting and post-production color adjustments affect the entire frame of the broadcast feed. So, while the brand color could be adjusted to appear correct, the rest of the frame would be adjusted as well, ruining other colors at the expense of fixing one.

Enter Dr. Erica Walker, a Graphic Communications professor at Clemson University, who brought together a team that asked whether the frame could be adjusted so these colors appear to brand specification, but not at the cost of the rest of the frame being adjusted as well. She partnered with the Watson in the Watt Creative Inquiry run by Dr. Hudson Smith and Dr. Carl Ehrett to work with undergraduate students to develop an AI-based solution. I ended up being one of those undergraduate students. I was thrilled to get involved with research about AI but was even more excited by this problem we would be solving, remembering that this was something my own family had commented on weeks before.

Once a week, as the ColorNet research team settles into their meeting room in the Watt Family Innovation Center and exchanges what their week looks like, Dr. Walker comes into the team room with a big smile on her face. “Hey y’all, how’s it going?” she says as she sets down her bag. It always starts the weekly meetings on a good note and the team can’t help but be excited about what they will accomplish that day.

And accomplish great things we did. With the efforts of Dr. Walker, ColorNet was developed, a patent-pending artificial intelligence (AI) technology that takes a live video feed and adjusts it frame-by-frame, pixel-by-pixel, in real-time to ensure brand color accuracy. This convolutional neural network, a type of machine learning model, was trained on numerous clips from Clemson’s football games that were manually color corrected using Adobe Premiere Pro. ColorNet learns what areas of the frame are considered brand colors and how to shift those pixels so that they appear to visually match Clemson’s brand colors without losing the distinctions between highlights and shadows and without changing the non-brand color areas.

After training the model to color correct Clemson’s orange, Pantone 165, it was time to test it. All testing took place in Littlejohn Coliseum, allowing the technology to be tested on a standard jumbotron and within the current infrastructure of a live event. The alpha test involved streaming one of Clemson’s home football games into Littlejohn and onto the jumbotron to determine if ColorNet would catch the various spots of Clemson orange in each frame and adjust these areas to be the recognizable color fans know and love. With some adjustments to the program and support provided via pizza from Dr. Walker, the alpha test proved to be a success.

The beta test took place during a live women’s basketball game, where we ran ColorNet on the jumbotron feed during the basketball game in front of a live audience of fans. The goal was to determine if ColorNet was truly targeting areas of brand color and was able to be extended to other sports or broadcast arenas. The technology proved itself once again! It correctly picked out the women’s jerseys and the splashes of Clemson orange found on the spectators in the arena. I remember walking the arena with Dr. Walker, both of us looking up at the jumbotron in wonder at what we had accomplished with ColorNet.

Our work is by no means over. The goal is to make it where we can color correct any team’s colors, not just Clemson’s. While we were able to expand ColorNet’s capabilities so it can also color correct Clemson purple along with orange, the goal is to generalize the application of the model so that it can color correct to a given color based on user input. Are we playing Alabama? Let’s correct for Crimson Tide red as well. LSU? Let’s adjust for their purple and gold. While COVID-19 makes it hard to meet and collaborate in person towards this development, the meetings are still opened the same. And the same excitement for where ColorNet will go next is tangible even through the screen, thanks to the passion of Dr. Walker.