Living Out of Bounds : The Male Athlete's Everyday Life

by Overman, Steven J.

• ISBN13: 9780803232877
• ISBN10: 080323287X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-03-01
• Publisher: Univ of Nebraska Pr

Summary

Despite enormous differences in pay among professional athletes, most aspects of their daily lives remain surprisingly constant across sports and income levels.Living Out of Boundsprovides answers to persistent questions about what it's really like to be an athlete and discusses the filtered image of the athlete that emerges through books and other media. Steven J. Overman mines a wide array of sports biographies, autobiographies, memoirs, and diaries to construct a representative picture of the athlete's life from the rise of American sport in the late nineteenth century to the present day. In so doing, he reveals the person behind the sports celebrity as he exists on a daily basis. Individual chapters cover topics such as college athletics, the pressure of celebrity, the difficulty of balancing sports and everyday life, sex and sexuality, race in sports, the obsession with the body, and the difficulties associated with retiring. In the course of the work, a portrait emerges that transcends individual lives. The shared experiences of devoted training, of travel and hotels, and of tension within and beyond the clubhouse or gym force us to appreciate the often oppressive reality of the sporting life; at the same time, individual lives provide a glimpse of the rewards that make sports so compelling to audiences and athletes across America.

Author Biography

Steven J. Overman is a freelance journalist and regularly contributes columns and op-ed pieces for newspapers. He is the author of The Influence of the Protestant Ethic on Sport and Recreation.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. xi
Introduction	p. xv
The Athlete's Family and Youth	p. 1
Roots	p. 1
Opening Rounds	p. 6
The Influence of Parents	p. 10
Coaches and Father Figures	p. 17
Looking Backward	p. 19
The Narrow World of Sports	p. 21
Sport as Sanctuary	p. 21
Home Away from Home	p. 22
Sanctum, Sanctorum	p. 28
Sport as Neverland	p. 30
From Peter Pan to Pete Rose	p. 30
Living in Neverland	p. 33
Coaching as Paternalism	p. 35
The Wider World	p. 38
Public Life, Private Space	p. 43
Introduction	p. 43
Coping with Celebrity	p. 44
In the Arena's Shadow	p. 59
Gladiator's Holiday	p. 59
Practice Time	p. 61
On the Road	p. 64
Hotel Living	p. 68
Time in; Time out	p. 70
Filling Leisure Time	p. 73
Playing Cards and Gambling	p. 75
Recreational Drugs	p. 78
Lifestyles of the Nouveau Riche and Famous	p. 80
Teammates and Buddies	p. 83
Revealing the Inner Man	p. 88
Sex and Sexuality	p. 91
Male Enclave	p. 93
Cheerleaders, Temptresses, and Centerfolds: Marginalizing Women	p. 96
Home and Away	p. 103
Sexual Athletes	p. 107
The Evolving Status of Gay Athletes	p. 109
Team Colors: Sport and Race	p. 111
A Century of Change	p. 111
The Athlete and His Body	p. 135
The Toll of Training	p. 138
Better Living through Chemistry	p. 143
Getting Hurt	p. 145
The Three R's of Injuries: Repair, Rehab, and Recovery	p. 152
No Pain, No Gain	p. 156
Retiring from Sport	p. 159
One Game at a Time	p. 161
"One-More-Year" Syndrome	p. 163
Transition and Adjustment	p. 166
The Ex-athlete in Search of Identity	p. 170
Representative Retirements	p. 172
Conclusions	p. 181
Notes	p. 185
Index	p. 215
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