By Alan Abrahamson
Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris – Nelson Mandela raising high soccer's golden World Cup trophy.
President Obama holding a Pittsburgh Steelers' jersey, number 44, with the name "Obama" in white across the back.
Jackie Robinson, his face radiant in the light of a flash, his uniform snowy white, posing in his major-league Brooklyn Dodger jersey.
Simple images, and yet complex messages -- and proof of the power of sport to communicate.
Sports, as USC Annenberg professors made clear at a special two-day conference in Paris, offer a way for people anywhere and everywhere to talk to and understand each other -- a universal narrative, and more.
"Outside of war and politics," said Daniel Durbin (pictured above), director of the Annenberg Institute of Sports, Media and Society, "sports is one of the most powerful industries in the world."
Underscoring the institute's growing reach -- with USC faculty joined by colleagues from the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris, the Center for Olympic Studies at the Autonomous University of Barcelona and elsewhere -- the conference explored a wide range of current issues.
Bill Morgan, USC professor of occupational science and occupational therapy, and an expert on the ethics of sports, explored at length the controversial topic of why much of sports coverage is -- to be blunt -- BS. It's the market talking, Morgan said. When people do business with each other, BS-ing can pay off handsomely. Truth isn't the goal, he explained -- selling one's self is.
Journalism professor Alan Abrahamson spoke on the challenges facing working reporters amid the changes re-shaping the journalism business in the United States.
Evan Brody, a Ph.D. student and Annenberg Fellow, noting a recent rash of gay slurs by American professional athletes, said the way many mainstream journalists frame such stories can perpetuate the idea that gay athletes need to come out to make change -- an idea that ignores the dominant narrative of what he called "compulsory heterosexuality."
Yann Descamps, a Sorbonne Nouvelle Ph.D. student who spent the 2009-10 academic year at USC, compared the way broadcasters in the two countries showed major events -- rugby (France) and football (U.S.).
Professor Miquel de Moragas, from Barcelona, in opening the program, said, "Sport is a producer of rituals." Look, for instance, at the arrow shot that opened the 1992 Summer Games. It's 20 years later and still, he said, we still tell each other the story of that shot. Why?
Because, Durbin said, "Everybody tells sports stories and sports exists in the stories we tell. The actual sport itself is less important than the story we tell out of the event."
