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Front Office Fantasies

The Rise of Managerial Sports Media

Branden Buehler

$251

Hardback

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English
University of Illinois Press
05 December 2023
The new sports frontier that turns fans into would-be execs—and transforms the suits into superstars

Front office executives have become high-profile commentators, movie and video game protagonists, and role models for a generation raised in the data-driven, financialized world of contemporary sports. Branden Buehler examines the media transformation of these once obscure management figures into esteemed experts and sporting idols.

Moving from Moneyball and Football Manager to coverage of analytics gurus like Daryl Morey, Buehler shows how a fixation on managerial moves has taken hold across the entire sports media landscape. Buehler’s chapter-by-chapter look at specific media forms illustrates different facets of the managerial craze while analyzing the related effects on what fans see, hear, and play. Throughout, Buehler explores the unsettling implications of exalting the management class and its logics, in the process arguing that sports media’s managerial lionization serves as one of the clearest reflections of major material and ideological changes taking place across culture and society.

Insightful and timely, Front Office Fantasies reveals how sports media moved the action from the field to the executive suite.
By:  
Imprint:   University of Illinois Press
Country of Publication:   United States
Dimensions:   Height: 229mm,  Width: 152mm,  Spine: 20mm
Weight:   513g
ISBN:   9780252045622
ISBN 10:   0252045629
Series:   Studies in Sports Media
Pages:   256
Publication Date:  
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Further / Higher Education ,  Undergraduate
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Preface: Sporting Fantasies Acknowledgments Introduction: “The Age of the General Manager” The Managerial American Dream: The Administrative Fantasies of Managerial Sports Films “He’s looking like a depressed asset”: The Financial Logics of Managerial Sports Talk Datavisuality: The Quantified Aesthetic of Managerial Sports Television White-Collar Play: Managerial Sports Games and the Modeling of Neoliberal Capitalism Conclusion: The Banality of Managerial Sports Media Notes Bibliography Index

Branden Buehler is assistant professor of visual and sound media at Seton Hall University.

Reviews for Front Office Fantasies: The Rise of Managerial Sports Media

"""Buehler's book is well written and extremely thorough in its overall review of managerial sports media, but more important, it may surprise readers by providing a much deeper dive into overall conversations about what it means to be human in the 21st century."" --International Journal of Sport Communication “In this sharply written and impressive book, Branden Buehler provides compelling new insights into the social, cultural, and visual consequences of sports media’s preoccupation with managerialism, financialization, and quantification. A vital and necessary work, this sophisticated account of managerial sports media is a must-read for all sports, film, and media scholars.”--Samantha N. Sheppard, author of Sporting Blackness: Race, Embodiment, and Critical Muscle Memory on Screen"


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