David Nylund 
Beer, Babes, and Balls 
Masculinity and Sports Talk Radio

Beer, Babes, and Balls explores the increasingly popular genre of sports talk radio and how it relates to contemporary ideas of masculinity. Popular culture plays a significant role in fashioning identities, and sports talk radio both reflects and inspires cultural shifts in masculinity. Through analysis of the content of sports talk radio as well as interviews with radio production staff and audience members, scholar and avid sports talk radio listener David Nylund sheds light on certain aspects of contemporary masculinity and recent shifts in gender and sexual politics. He finds that although sports talk radio reproduces many aspects of traditional masculinity, sexism, racism, and heterosexism, there are exceptions in these discourses. For instance, the most popular national host, Jim Rome, is against homophobia and racism in sport, which indicates that the medium may be a place for male sports fans to discuss gender, race, and sexuality in consequential ways. Nylund concludes that sports talk radio creates a male bonding community that has genuine moments of intimacy and connection, signifying the potential for new forms of masculinity to emerge, while simultaneously reproducing traditional forms of masculinity.

Table of Content

Foreword by Eric Anderson

Acknowledgments



1. Opening Pitch: Thinking about Sports Talk Radio



Sports Talk Radio

Theorizing Masculinities

Development of Manhood in Twentieth-Century United States

Masculinity and the Sports Media

Media and Cultural Studies

Critical Radio Studies

Outline of the Book




Part I THE CLIMATE FOR SPORTS TALK RADIO



2. The Sports Talk Radio Industry: From Rush to Rome



Radio Deregulation and Talk Radio

Sports Talk Radio: An Extension of Political Talk Radio?



3. Inside the Sports Radio Industry: Ads and Lads



Influence of Advertising, Ratings, and Corporate Radio

Sports Radio and Public Discourse

Romantic Belief in Sports

Hanging Out at the Station




Part II READING SPORTS TALK RADIO



4.
The Jim Rome Show: “Myspace.Com” For Men



Jim Rome: Hip Sports Talk Radio Host

Speech Codes and Themes: Learning How to Survive in the Jungle

The “Jungle”: A Site for the Performance of Masculinity

Male Rite of Passage on
The Jim Rome Show

In-Group Humor on
The Jim Rome Show

The Contradictions of Masculinity



5. Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Jungle



Gender: Competing Masculinities

Gender: Women in the Jungle

Queer Eye for the Sports Guy

The Race Card

Rome Has No Class

Jungle Nationalism

Hegemony or Hope? Sports Talk Radio’s Potential




Part III THE AUDIENCE OF SPORTS TALK RADIO



6. In the Jungle with the “Clones”



Interviewing the “Clones”

The Entertainment Value

Homosociality

The Audience Does Social Issues



7. Where Everybody Knows Your Name




Cheers to
Monday Night Football

Lou From Lodi

A Community of Callers

Among the Clones Hooligans



8. A Sports Radio Intruder



My Take on the Audience of Sports Talk Radio



9. My Final Take



Sports Talk and Civic Discourse

Sports and Sexuality

Masculinity and Sports



Notes

Bibliography

Index

About the author

David Nylund is Assistant Professor of Social Work at California State University at Sacramento. He is the author of
Treating Huckleberry Finn: A New Narrative Approach to Working with Kids Diagnosed ADD/ADHD and the coeditor (with Craig Smith) of
Narrative Therapies with Children and Adolescents.