Front Office Fantasies

The Rise of Managerial Sports Media

Branden Buehler

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Paperback

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English

University of Illinois Press
05 December 2023

Communication studies; Media studies; Service industries; Press & journalism

Series: Studies in Sports Media

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: Branden Buehler
Imprint: University of Illinois Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm, Spine: 18mm
ISBN: 9780252087745
ISBN 10: 0252087747
Series: Studies in Sports Media
Pages: 256
Publication Date: 05 December 2023
Audience: College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , Further / Higher Education , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
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

“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