Eligibility
The sports media concentration is open to students enrolled in any of the six undergraduate majors in the School of Journalism and Mass Communications.
Careers
If you’d like to learn more about careers in sports media, check out these profiles of J-school alumni working in the field.
Classes
The Sports Media Concentration is a targeted way to use your journalism electives in your major. Here are some of the courses you can take as part of the concentration:
This course covers the relationships between the sports industry, athletes, media and the audience. It discusses the evolution of sports media from the early sportswriters to athletes and teams controlling their own message on social media. We won’t ask, “What do you think of ESPN?” We will ask, “What is ESPN’s impact on how we watch games today?” We will cover the various mediums — newspapers, magazines, books, radio, TV, online, blogs, social media — in terms of history, function, impact, and ethical implications.
This course covers effective social media use in the world of the sports media. Topics relating to advertising, journalism, public relations, visual communications, and mass communications will be discussed. Provides contextual background on various social media and uses exercises to develop best practices.
Sports media coverage includes much more than box scores and championships. Prominent athletes have utilized sport as a platform for social and political influence. How journalists have portrayed athlete activism has shaped public perception. In this course, students will analyze media coverage of prominent sports activism cases. By examining these events through the lens of popular news and sports television programs, newspapers, magazines and digital publications, students will explore issues of access, economics, race, religion, gender, culture and nationality.
The Super Bowl is the most watched, most anticipated, most expensive and most influential arena for advertising. Now you can be a part of this phenomenon. This course explores how Super Bowl commercials reflect our society. Topics include the way different groups are portrayed, the strategy behind the commercials and how creative tactics have evolved.
This course introduces students to the core principles, values, and practicum that guide the work of professional sports journalists. In short, students will develop skills that are necessary to function as sports journalists in today’s media environment. This class is an intensive multimedia skills course and students will have the opportunity to develop sports content for a number of important platforms including the web, social media, video, and mobile.
This course is designed to introduce students to various aspects of live sports broadcasting. Students will learn skills and techniques that will prepare them to perform live on-air duties including game play-by-play and color analyst.
This course will analyze and evaluate media coverage of significant sports figures and issues of race, with a focus on the representation of people of color (especially African Americans), the forces that affect the representation and changes over time.
This course will analyze how the sports media culture helps create, maintain and challenge inequalities based on gender and sexual identity. Students will learn how gender and sexuality are constructed through sports media, and how they intersect with race, class, able-bodiedness and nationality.