Professor Molly Harry: The NCAA’s Use of Language to Assert and Protect Its Power
Professor Molly Harry (University of Florida): The NCAA’s Use of Language to Assert and Protect Its Power
Introduction: In this episode, we sit down with University of Florida professor Molly Harry to discuss how the NCAA’s public messaging strategies on name, image, and likeness preserve and protect NCAA regulatory power and authority. Using her 2023 article “Hegemony and the National Collegiate Athletic Association: A critical Discourse Analysis of National Collegiate Athletic Association Resources Concerning Name, Image, and Likeness” as the framework for our discussion, Professor Harry analyzes how the NCAA communicated its power through the distribution of NIL resources. Professor Harry discusses the NCAA’s use of (1) “hard” and “soft” power, (2) ideological messaging, and (3) coercion. She also explores the NCAA’s decentralization of power in communications that shifted control to member institutions and by requesting federal intervention. Professor Harry is an Assistant Professor of Sport Management at the University of Florida. She received her undergraduate degree from the University of Florida, her master’s in sport administration from the University of North Carolina, and her doctorate in higher education from the University of Virginia.
Note: We recorded this interview on April 26th, 2024.
Timestamps:
0:00 Intro/Professor Harry’s background
5:04 Addressing controversial college sports issues at Power 4 universities
8:30 Role as female scholar on college sports issues and gender-based siloing in academia
12:56 Professor Harry’s 2023 article and the concepts of hegemony and hard/soft power
19:09 Critical Discourse Analysis and the NCAA’s NIL-related messaging
22:21 NCAA’s coercion tactics and conditional messaging on NIL
24:34 NCAA’s ideological messaging through college sports’ mythologies
28:59 NCAA messaging on “equity” between athletes and non-athletes and the NCAA’s fluid use and definition(s) of “amateurism”
33:06 NCAA’s use of the term “student-athlete”
37:47 Prevalence of ideological messaging
40:10 Decentralization of NCAA authority to member schools and the federal government
45:52 NCAA’s messaging on “modernization”
48:37 Hegemonic role of Power 5 conferences
50:44 Critical Discourse Analysis as a method to “quantify” messaging tactics
53:05 Short-term future of college sports
57:58 NCAA messaging on education
1:00:29 Professor Harry’s future scholarship
For hyperlinked timestamps, please view the episode on our YouTube channel.