Recent research indicates that the televised sports that U.S. boys watch most include pro basketball, pro football, pro baseball, Extreme sports, sports highlights shows, and the dramatic pseudosport of pro wrestling. Based on a textual analysis of these televised sports shows and their accompanying commercial advertisements, the authors identify 10 recurrent themes concerning gender, race, aggression, violence, militarism, and commercialism that, together, they call the Televised Sports Manhood Formula. This formula is a master ideological narrative that is well suited to discipline boys’ bodies, minds, and consumption choices in ways that construct a masculinity that is consistent with the entrenched interests of the sports/media/commercial complex. However, the authors note some discontinuities and contradictory moments within and between sports media texts and call for audience studies to explore the various ways that boys interpret, use, or negotiate the Televised Sports Manhood Formula.

This study examines sport as a source for youth popularity, and its variation by gender, race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status and grade level, using a nationally representative U.S. sample of 2,185 3rd—12th graders. Results indicate athletes are more likely than nonathletes to report self-perceived popularity equally across gender, socioeconomic status, and grade. Black athletes are less likely to report self-perceived popularity than Whites. When given a choice of popularity criteria, youth chose sport as the most important criterion for male, not female, popularity. Regarding male popularity, sport is chosen over other criteria by middle school youth more than elementary and high school youth. While sport is a status enhancer, there is variation by gender, ethnicity, and grade level.

Qualitative interviews explore the meanings increased female participation in basketball have for a sample of basketball players from three high schools. To what extent are post-Title IX female inroads into sport challenging and/or reproducing the gender order? How do girls and boys give meaning to the successes and failures of girls' and boys' basketball teams and athletics? The social processes reproducing a twotiered basketball institution at the high school level are illustrated (i.e., emphasis on playing differences, undervaluing of girls' contributions, policing of normative gender expectations). This research suggests that both girls and boys are complicit in supporting the gender order. It illustrates how challenges to the gender order signi ed by females' increased participation in "male-identi ed" sports are appropriated. Modi able social processes for gender equity education in sport are identi ed as important to support Title IX legal access.