ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book highlights how damaging organized, competitive team sport can be. It discusses sports that are competitive, organized, coached, and institutionalized into leagues, schools, or other administrative bodies. The book helps readers see problems associated with, not so much the act of sport, but the way they play it, and the problem of how they value it. People's personal experience of sport is likely to cloud their judgments about the operation of it. The functionalist idea concerning sport is that the severe regulation of sport is necessary in order to take care of people in a modern society. Cognitive dissonance is a valuable tool for helping people to understand the process of what happens when their logic no longer aligns with their emotions. Social theory attempts to explain a phenomenon, or set of phenomena.
