Bad Refereeing in Pro Sports

Refs are humans, so they miss stuff, but even more than that, despite all efforts to not have biases, all humans do.

Electronic Refereeing (video replay) may seem fairer, but it still requires human interpretation.

Probably needs to be narrowed.

Qatar and the World Cup

Human rights abuses

Deaths in construction/Slave Labor

Suspicious Deaths

Cutting Weight in MMA (and wrestling, etc)

Health problems from excessive weight cutting can compound and become long-term problems, particularly if the weight cutting comes in the forms of medicine or extreme water-weight loss.

Kidneys and livers are particularly vulnerable to these kinds of problems.

Probably needs to be narrowed.

Sports and Brain Injuries

Contact sports (football, hockey, boxing, MMA, etc) have a huge problem with brain injuries.

Probably needs to be narrowed.

The Dangers of Football specifically

CTE is the big draw, but other injuries are calling more attention to themselves, ie Damar Hamlin's cardiac arrest

Probably needs to be narrowed.

Mental Health

More and more athletes are coming forward to discuss mental health issues, some caused by the sports directly, and some from the pressures and fan intrusions into their personal lives.

Probably needs to be narrowed.

Physical, Mental, and Sexual Abuses

Especially, but not exclusively, among minors and young adults

Probably needs to be narrowed.

Sports Gambling

To be clear, there always has been sports betting, for almost all of humanity. What's different in the USA right now is that it recently went from illegal to legal.

Probably needs to be narrowed.

E-sports and extremism

Repetitive motion injuries (carpal tunnel, etc)

Sleep deprivation

Sitting for long periods of time

Abandoning/procrastinating other life

Probably needs to be narrowed.

Betting on E-Sports

We talked about sports gambling earlier, but e-sports is also gaining steam in bad ways.

Probably needs to be narrowed.

So-called "Super Fans"

The story that brought this forward is extreme - a fan who robbed banks in order to pay for his trips to watch sporting events - but there are other examples of super fans who are potentially dangerous or unhinged in some fashion - stalkers, for instance.

If a specific fan is discussed, it could be narrow enough. If it's more general, then it probably needs to be narrowed.

Fútbol/Soccer hooligans

Extreme fans, which we just talked about, don't just come in ones and twos. Soccer in particular has a reputation for hooliganism, where team rivalries spill over into violence between people over sports teams. It's about tribalism, ultimately.

May be narrow enough if we focus on the "why."

Home field advantage

Despite the science showing that it's more of a coin-flip model than anything else, people still seem to believe in home-field advantage.

If the right studies are found and analyzed, it might be narrow enough.

Tonya Harding

It's fascinating to watch as people are "rehabilitated" in the public eye. I may or may not agree with it in specific cases (I think Pete Rose should be in the Hall of Fame, but I don't think Harding deserves much sympathy), but it's interesting to see the development over time.

Probably narrow enough.

Skateboarding and Inclusivity

Once the purview of disaffected white boys from moderately wealthy families, skateboarding has become more inclusive of race and gender and economic status.

Might need to be narrowed unless if focuses on specific segments of population or sports within the umbrella (vert vs street, for example).

Intra-Family Sports Conflicts

It wasn't directly commented as a topic by a student, but as a side note: families where one person is a hardcore fan of a team, and another is a hardcore fan of a direct rival. For example, my wife is from Maine and is a Patriots fan. I'm from (well, all over, but mostly North Jersey) so I'm a Giants fan. Made a few Super Bowls pretty interesting in my house as I couldn't cheer too loudly without potentially having to sleep on the couch.

Gendered Sports, Equity, Inclusion, and Financial Inequality

Although not specifically referenced, players on the US Women's Soccer Team make substantially less money than the men despite being more successful as a team.