Introduction to the Sports Studies DepartmentThis mini-

Introduction to the Sports Studies Department
   Good morning and welcome to the University’s Open Day and to our mini-lecture from the Sports Studies Dapartment. Every year we give such a lecture to introduce students to comes offered by our department concerning sports, and we find that people usually respond with great interest to thee courses. So as usual, the purpose of this lecture today is twofold: one--we want you to experience a university lecture, to give you a taste of what listening to a university lecture is like, and two--we want you to find out something about the Sports Studies program at this university. So feel free to ask any questions during the talk and I’ll do my best to answer them.
   Right--so what does a course in Sports Studies involve? Well, you wouldn’t be blamed for not knowing the answer to this question because Sports Studies as a discipline is still comparatively new, just as our department was established only five years ago. But sports is a growing area and one which is now firmly established at our university.
   To give you a general idea first, I would say that there are three distinct strands to Sports Studies and you would need to choose fairly early on just which direction you wanted to follow. And I’ll just run over these before telling you further information about each of them. Firstly, we’ve got the Sports Psychology strand, secondly, we’ve got the Sports Management strand, and last, but not least, there’s the Sports Physiology strand. So just to remember there’s Sports Psychology, Sports Management, and Sports Physiology.
   Let’s look first at Sports Psychology. Now the people who study Sports Psychology want to work with top athletes, and they’re looking at what will take those athletes that one percent extra. What makes them win? When all other things are equal, when physically all other things are equal, they want to know what are the mental factors involved? The Sports Psychologist works closely with the athletes through his or her training program and becomes an integral part of the team. In fact you could say that they play just as important a role as the coach. They can not only encourage athletes to perform better and better, but also help them recover from failures, which are a natural part of any athlete’s career. Personally, I think the latter role is even more important. So if you’re interested in what makes people win, this could be the area for you.
   Now secondly, we’ve got the strand which I referred to as Sports Management and this goes hand in hand with the area of Sports Marketing. So you might like to think of this area as having two branches: Management and Marketing. On the Management side we look at issues relating to the running of sports clubs, management of athletes, that sort of thing. This mainly focuses on the smooth running of sports bodies. But then on the other side, we’ve got Sports Marketing. And this is the side that interests me more because here we will look at the market forces behind sport. Questions like: why do people spend their money on a football match, or a tennis game, rather than, say, on buying a CD or going to the cinema? What are those market forces?
   Sport used to just compete with sport. Nowadays it competes with other lei sure activities as well The spectators go to sport to be entertained rather than out of loyalty to a team. They want to have an evening out and they don’t want the cheap seats any more, though they did not mind that very much in, the past; they want good seats, and they want entertainment. Besides, the professional sports men and women obviously respond to this change without question. They’re there to give a performance, and to provide the entertainment for the spectators. So in the marketing course we address all these commercial issues and we look at how this hooks back into the Management of sport.
   Now the third branch of Sports Studies sometimes comes under another name and is also known as Exercise Science. And again here we find that there are two distinct types of exercise science. The first is working very much at the macro level. So this looks at the overall influence of sports on human body, such as fitness testing, body measurements, all that sort of things. But the more interesting side of sports physiology, at least in my view, is the side that looks at the micro-level, looking at cellular change. This term may sound new to you, but in reality, they’re doing cellular research, looking at changes in body cells when the body is under stress. So that just about brings us to the end of our mini-lecture for today. I hope by now you’ve got a general idea of the three strands of studies in our department, and found it interesting. I look forward to seeing you all on our course next year. Feel free to come and talk to me if you want any more information. I’ll be over at that notice board near the main entrance.