Football and Status in U.S. Colleges

The first SSIG meeting of the fall 2012 semester will consider an overlooked aspect of the popularity of intercollegiate football—that it functions as a national status system. Michael Saunder, Associate Professor in Sociology at the UI, argues that the formal structuring of intercollegiate play through athletic conferences creates a national matrix of organizational identities and prestige, coalescing schools into status clubs whose members ritually reciprocate each other’s status positions. 

Dr. Saunder will present his findings Wednesday, September 26, at noon at a brown bag lunch in The Commons (302) Schaeffer Hall.

The University of Iowa Social Science Interdisciplinary Group (SSIG) is intended to stimulate conversation and collaboration among social scientists on campus. The SSIG currently sponsors a colloquium each month featuring a speaker from one of the social science disciplines around campus.