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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Patricia Coen 609/258-5764
Date: August 6, 1997
Book by Princeton Professor Looks at
Political Impact of Sports Teams
on their "Home" CitiesPrinceton, N.J. -- From Monday Night Football to Saturday afternoon Little League baseball, sports -- both professional and amateur -- play a major role in American life. Loyal fans, cheering on their favorite teams to victory, cannot be expected to consider the larger sociopolitical issues that surround these favorite pastimes. But such issues, such as changes in a team's environment, affect our teams significantly.
The connections between professional team sports in North America and the places where the teams play is the subject of a new book, Home Team: Professional Sports and the American Metropolis (Princeton University Press, 1997) by Michael N. Danielson, the B. C. Forbes Professor of Public Affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.
Danielson examines professional baseball, basketball, football, and hockey in relation to the cities that attach their names, their loyalties, and their tax dollars to big-league teams. He is particularly interested in the political aspects of these connections and discusses how local and state governments compete for franchises and provide lavish facilities, using public funds, for these private business ventures. Consequently, professional sports teams have become powerful political players, looking for additional benefits from government and frequently playing one city against another.
Home Team provides much difficult-to-find data, including information on the relocation of franchises, expansion teams, new leagues, and stadium development. Reviewers predict that Home Team "will be the authority on the subject for a long time coming" (Newsweek ) and describe Danielson's analysis as "first-rate" (Steve Riess, author of City Games ).
Danielson, who directs the Woodrow Wilson School's Center for Domestic and Comparative Policy Studies, is also the author of Federal-Metropolitan Politics and the Commuter Crisis ; The Politics of Exclusion ; and Profits and Politics in Paradise. He is the co-author of The Politics of Rapid Urbanization ; New York: The Politics of Urban Regional Development ; and One Nation, So Many Governments . His areas of expertise include urban politics and urban development, both in the United States and abroad. His current research deals with housing and school segregation in urban areas, and he is also examining current efforts to reinvent central cities as tourist and entertainment centers. He has advised state and federal agencies, elected officials, and private foundations.