group. As gratification research points out, we use media to serve both cognitive and affective needs. Sports fans identify with “their” teams or stars and, through media, acquire information and understanding about them and feel emotional identification with them.Media sports center attention on specific individuals, who through this process, become larger-than-life heroes and models for successful conduct. Sports today in our mass-mediated culture provide superstar archetypes to spur the imagination and dominate the ideals of youth and adult alike. Sport lefts fans see not only great deeds but also the deflation of heroes in their bad moments, the failure of authority in crisis – a reassuring experience for common people all too aware of their own limitations. Subconsciously we may reflect, “ If Mike Tyson or Wade Boggs or Pete Pose cannot control his personal life, perhaps my life is not so bad. Sports pages today examine the heroes in details, warts and all, outlining details of greedy contracts, after-hours drug abuse, and sex lives, but sports heroes and their motivating power over others live on. Binary OppositionsThe influential French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss (1967) argued for the importance of identifying the fundamental two-sided conflicts, or binary oppositions in sports.One of such two-sided conflicts is a distinction between individual and team sports and typical gender patterns in sport. Female sports have traditionally been individual. Tennis, swimming, ice-skating, golf, and gymnastics come to mind. But the dominant media sports have been team sports - baseball, basketball, football, and hockey, among others. Women participate in individual sports, which are less dominant in male-managed media.Another binary distinction is the conflict between sport players and investors. Who should receive the greater rewards, those who invest the capital in the business side of sports or those who i...
