Abstract

After a public and very difficult on-going sexual assault investigation at Baylor University, several areas of the institution attempted to ensure clearly stated Christian values were present and practiced at all levels of the student experience, including the university’s sporting engagements. With the aim of promoting the values of respect, support, and honor, the university administration created and implemented a student sportsmanship pledge in the summer of 2016 as one way to instill such idealized values in the campus climate. This exploratory case study investigated the student fan perceptions of identity and the values promoted by this sportsmanship pledge and explores whether the values and scope of this particular sportsmanship pledge adequately represents sportsmanship values that were meaningful to the student fans. Current students (n = 1276) completed an online survey, answering questions related to how they perceived the implemented sportsmanship pledge values and asked them to respond to other questions related to such values and pledges. This paper contributes to the sparse literature of sportsmanship as fan behavior and offers implications for sport administrators.