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Analysis: Brian Flores faces hurdles in NFL case but may create transparency in NFL hiring theathletic.com February 2, 2022

“I have said, especially after the last hiring season and in the midst of this one, that it is going to take a lawsuit or legislative action to change things,” said Kenneth Shropshire, CEO of the Global Sport Institute at Arizona State University and an attorney. “I had no optimism about either happening. For the individual who brings the lawsuit, it could potentially be career ending. I also don’t know how you legislate around this. ”

Russia Faces Global Sports Crackdown After Invasion of Ukraine nytimes.com February 28, 2022

“This will continue to be a contest of two different visions of what sport is and who is allowed to participate in and control sport,” said Andrés Martinez, a research scholar at Arizona State University’s Global Sport Institute. “I think this is a bit of a reset, though, in that it does set an important precedent and a standard that sporting federations cannot continue to act with impunity and just let the highest bidder dictate what happens in sport, oblivious to other considerations, including the behavior of those highest bidders. ”

White interviewees had 3x better odds of being hired as NFL head coaches, new data show miamiherald.com March 4, 2022

Looking at win-loss record alone can be misleading, said Kenneth Shropshire, a consultant for the NFL and professor at Arizona State who heads the Global Sport Institute. Although most coaches are hired to take over bad teams, Black coaches often aren’t given enough time to turn things around before they are fired, Shropshire said. And sometimes they were fired despite achieving success.

“Look at the success [Flores] had and was about to have,” Shropshire said. “He got fired with a winning record. Lovie Smith got fired [from the Chicago Bears] with a winning record. ”

Basketball Africa League’s 2nd Season Begins allafrica.com March 6, 2022

Scott N. Brooks, PhD, a sociologist and associate director of Arizona State University’s Global Sport Institute, said he sees efforts such as the BAL [Basketball Africa League] as a form of cultural diplomacy. “This is a global kind of community when you’re talking about basketball,” he said.

Brooks praised programs such as Basketball Without Borders, the NBA and FIBA’s global community development and outreach program to nurture young players -- not only in the sport but also in academics, health and values.

“It’s not just building athletes, it is building leaders in Africa,” said Brooks, who also lauded the BAL’s president, Amadou Gallo Fall, for playing an instrumental role in such development. “His vision is not just that they play basketball,” Brooks said, but that “they learn servantship ... and they come back to the continent and help him build it. ”

Projected NBA draft picks get ‘Business of Basketball’ course from ASU bizjournals.com March 23, 2022

When Shareef Abdur-Rahim, a former NBA player and a longtime friend of Ken Shropshire, the CEO of the Global Sport Institute, took over as president of the G League in 2019, he reached out to Shropshire and asked how they could get more value out of

the deal with ASU. They decided to add an education element to the G League’s Ignite team.

Ignite is a developmental basketball team affiliated with the NBA G League. The team is based out of Walnut Creek, California and the team was designed to be a oneyear development program for NBA prospects. The program — an alternative path to the NBA other than playing college ball — started in 2020.

Cleveland’s baseball team takes the field as “Guardians” marketplace.org April 7, 2022

“I think we can say conclusively in the end it’s money,” said Kenneth Shropshire, CEO of the Global Sport Institute at Arizona State University. In the wake of George Floyd’s murder in 2020, he said, there was a national push to retire racist branding. That put a spotlight on the Washington, D.C., football team.

“And that motivated a couple of key sponsors — FedEx and Nike — to say, ‘You gotta change the name,’” Shropshire said. And the team did, rather than lose those sponsorship deals.

What Happens When You Cancel The Youth Olympic Games? FiveThirtyEight.com June 28, 2022

Eric Legg, a professor at Arizona State University who studies community sport experiences, told FiveThirtyEight that the event’s postponement will certainly be a “big disappointment” for all athletes who were looking to go to Dakar this year. However, broadly speaking, the YOG has not increased sports participation around the world as much as its creators had hoped.

Without an event in this cycle, the empty space could give sport organizations the chance to look at the overall landscape and make adjustments needed to fill the void more comprehensively to help foster a supportive and robust environment for youth athletes — that is, if those organizations choose to invest the resources. Also, promoting goals and accomplishments that athletes can reach below the YOG will make both the YOG and the Olympics more attainable and help athletes stay involved in sports longer, so they aren’t discouraged by not being on the elite athlete pipeline.

Black coaches

Hired

8 18

Not Hired

59 49

Coaches who are not black

Hired

48 38

Not Hired

93 103 Fewer black coaches hired than would be expected with equal opportunity

A statistical model run by professor Alexis Piquero from the University of Miami show that fewer Black head coaches were hired since 2015 than would be expected given the pool of candidates. This disparity in expected vs. actual outcomes is statistically significant, meaning it can’t be explained by random chance.

Actual number What the number should be, according to the model

Source: Miami Herald