This book illustrates how sports controversies reflect our broader culture. Large events like the Olympics, the World Cup, the World Series of baseball, cycling's Tour de France, and the Super Bowl draw our attention to the deep cultural significance of sport and its role in fostering social bonds. Yet when it comes to sport, there is no shortage of debate: stereotypes regarding sexuality, race, gender, and children abound and have been hotly contested by critics for over 40 years. Never before has sport controversies received more public attention, and we are now only beginning to understand the social complexity of how violent or aggressive behaviours happen in sport and how they might be regulated."Battleground: Sports" presents the 100 most contentious public and private controversies of the sports world. Engaging and accessible to a wide variety of readers, this fascinating set illustrates how sports controversies reflect the historically enduring and changing nature of our broader cultures, and the social battles we engage on a day-to-day basis surrounding the struggles for equality, debates about social violence, the ethics of competition, the politics of civic life, the creation of global communities, and the State's role in protecting citizens. Entries contain an array of thoughtful perspectives on historic and current controversies, and allow readers to formulate their own conclusions. Enhanced with a timeline and a thorough guide of print and electronic resources for student research, this one-stop source goes beyond the newspaper headlines to provide readers with a guide map for understanding what sport controversies teach us about our culture and ourselves.