1) Jeffrey Montez de Oca is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs.
Vision for NASSS: My vision for NASSS is rooted in its past and future. NASSS has always striven to support excellent sport scholarship, to foster diversity and inclusiveness, to be open and transparent, and to nurture future generations of sport scholars. These are admirable goals that demonstrate our organizational values, and the primary reasons for my ongoing membership. However, as the organization grows and the scholarship develops, NASSS often struggles to realize its own goals and values. It is vital that the organization constantly reflects upon itself and works to achieve its goals. The office of Secretary is crucial to keeping the organization vibrant and true to its values since the Secretary communicates decisions of the Executive Board to the membership and holds the Board to its guiding documents, especially the bylaws. I am currently working with University Counsel at UCCS to revise the bylaws of a University-level committee that I chair and support our Faculty Assembly as it goes through the same process. Moreover, I have a depth of experience working through organizational process as a student activist, a community volunteer, and a labor organizer. My personal concern with making NASSS more open and less fractured as well as a history of supporting younger scholars will make me a valuable member of the NASSS Executive Board.
Qualifications for Office: I have been a member of NASSS and have attended the annual meetings since 2001 – presenting annually, organizing over a dozen sessions, and mentoring numerous graduate students. I have served on several NASSS committees since 2001: the Conference Planning Committee, the NASSS Service Excellence Award Committee, and I was an inaugural member of the Diversity and Conference Climate Committee. I have served as a member of the editorial board of the Sociology of Sport Journal. I also participated in a special panel titled “NASSS Reflects” in 2011 that created a space for older and younger scholars to discuss and debate the history, strengths, and limits of our organization.
Summary of Publications: My scholarship critically interrogates how politics and identity unfold across cultural institutions. My book Discipline & Indulgence: College Football, Media, and the American Way of Life During the Cold War (2013, Rutgers University Press) takes a historical approach to problems of media, sport, and political economy by looking at college football in the United States during the early Cold War (1947-1964) through the lens of cultural citizenship. This allows me to explore intersections of white manhood and nationalism in the context of military Keynesianism. In addition to writing on sport films, my current research looks at contemporary NFL marketing strategies across media and in schools. I particularly focus on how the NFL uses identity to manage crises and grow its market. My sport-related research has appeared in Sociology of Sport Journal, Signs, Blackwell Companion to Sport, Cinematic Sociology: Social Life in Film, East Plays West: Essays on Sport and the Cold War, Journal of Historical Sociology, and American Studies.
2) Ryan King-White is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Kinesiology at Towson University in Towson, Maryland.
Vision for NASSS: My vision for NASSS is to build on the past successes of the group, whilst pushing forward in a more organized and efficient manner. More specifically, while I think connecting with outside groups and making our research relevant to the general public is absolutely useful and necessary, I believe that it is important to create an annual conference that brings the academic community together in a more structured manner than it has in the recent past. With a strong, organized, efficient group the NASSS community can better achieve the broader ends of expanding the general public’s knowledge through our work.
Qualifications for Office: I have been a member of NASSS since 2002 and have attended the NASSS conference annually since 2004 – presenting, organizing sessions, participating in workshops for grad students. I have served on a number of NASSS committees over the years: the Barbara Brown Outstanding Paper Award Committee once, and the NASSS Book of the Year Committee twice. I am the Chair of Towson University’s College of Health Professions Diversity Committee and have helped organize a number of initiatives and events promoting inclusion at the school and in the community. I am also the Sport Management Program’s Alumni Coordinator, have created two fund raising event initiatives, and am responsible for maintaining the accounts.
Summary of Publications: I am a graduate from the University of Maryland’s Physical Cultural Studies program, and I have 12 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters in a variety of publications. Notably I was presented with the 2011 NASSS Award for Journal Article of the Year, and, in 2012, had another publication in the Sociology of Sport Journal designated under the For the Sociology of Sport series. To date, I remain the only non-Full Professor to have an article published in that series. Besides the Sociology of Sport Journal I have been published in the Review for Education Pedagogy and Cultural Studies, International Journal for Media and Cultural Politics, and Sport, Education & Society.