This exploratory study utilized a mixed-method approach to examine why some NFL players participate in deviant, and sometimes law-breaking, behavior and others do not. The qualitative findings in conjunction with Durkheimian theory provided the conceptualization of a quantitative instrument. Through a snowball sample, 104 NFL players were interviewed and surveyed. From the qualitative data, three core themes emerged: 1) deviance, 2) anomie, and 3) social ties. Within the study group, a substantial number of players had prior experience with deviant and illegal behaviors. It appeared that some level of anomie was present in a number of these players' lives. However, players that had strong ties to various social groups appeared less likely to succumb to anomie and deviance. Supporting the qualitative data, the quantitative findings revealed that anomie was one of the significant predictors of law-breaking players. It would therefore appear reasonable to suggest that some of the players were involved in behaviors that could be labeled anomic deviance. Furthermore, the findings supported the primacy of social ties/support in buffering anomie and deviance in the lives of NFL players in the study group.
Abelson, R.P. and Tukey, J.W. (1970) `Efficient Conversion of Non-Metric Information into Metric Information', in E.R. Tufte (ed.) The Quantitative Analysis of Social Problems, pp. 407—17. Reading, MA: Addison Wesley.
2.
Abrahamson, M. (1980) `Sudden Wealth, Gratification and Attainment: Durkheim's Anomie of Affluence Reconsidered', American Sociological Review45: 49—57.
3.
Adler, F. (2000) `Synnomie to Anomie: A Macrosociological Formulation' , in F. Adler and W.S. Laufer (eds) The Legacy of Anomie Theory, pp. 271—83. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.
4.
Adler, F. and Laufer, W.S. (eds) (2000) The Legacy of Anomie Theory . New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.
5.
Agnew, R. (2000) `The Contribution of Social-Psychological Strain Theory to the Explanation of Crime and Delinquency', in F. Adler and W.S. Laufer (eds) The Legacy of Anomie Theory, pp. 113—37. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.
6.
Babbie, E. (1986) The Practice of Social Research, 4th edn. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing.
7.
Bauman, L.J. and Adair, E.G. (1992) `The Use of Ethnographic Interviewing to Inform Questionnaire Construction', Health Education Quarterly19: 9—23.
8.
Benedict, J. (1997) Public Heroes, Private Felons. Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press.
9.
Benedict, J. and Yaeger, D. (1998) Pros and Cons: The Criminals Who Play in the NFL . New York: Warner Books.
10.
Berg, B.L. (2001) Qualitative Research Methods for the Social Sciences . Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon.
11.
Besnard, P. (1988) `The True Nature of Anomie', Sociological Theory6: 91—5.
12.
Blackshaw, T. and Crabbe, T. (2004) New Perspectives on Sport and `Deviance:' Consumption, Performativity and Social Control. New York: Routledge.
13.
Blumstein, A. and Benedict, J. (1999) `Criminal Violence of NFL Players Compared to the General Population', Chance12: 12—15.
14.
Bonjean, C.M., Hill, R.J. and McLemore, S.D. (1967) Sociological Measurement: An Inventory of Scales and Indices. San Francisco, CA: Chandler.
15.
Campbell, D.T. and Fiske, D.W. (1959) `Convergent and Discriminant Validation by the Multitrait-Multimethod Matrix', Psychological Bulletin56: 81—105.
16.
Caplan, G. (1974) Support Systems and Community Mental Health: Lectures on Concept Development. New York: Behavioral Publications.
17.
Cassel, J. (1974) `Psychosocial Processes and “Stress”: Theoretical Formulations', International Journal of Health Services4: 471—82.
18.
Champion, D.J. (1981) Basic Statistics for Social Research. New York: Macmillan.
19.
Clinard, M.B. (ed.) (1964) Anomie and Deviant Behavior. New York: Free Press.
20.
Coakley, J. (2001) Sport and Society: Issues and Controversies. Boston, MA: McGraw Hill.
21.
Cobb, S. (1976) `Social Support as a Moderator of Life Stress' , Psychosomatic Medicine38: 300— 14.
22.
Cohen, D.V. (2000) `Ethics and Crime in Business Firms: Organizational Culture and the Impact of Anomie', in F. Adler and W.S. Laufer (eds) The Legacy of Anomie Theory, pp. 183—206. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.
23.
Cohen, H. (1972) `The Anomia of Success and the Anomia of Failure: A Study of Similarities in Opposites', The British Journal of Sociology23: 329—43.
24.
Coser, L.A. (1977) Masters of Sociological Thought: Ideas in Historical and Social Context. New York: Harcourt Brace.
25.
Creswell, J.W. (1994) Research Design: Qualitative & Quantitative Approaches. Los Angeles, CA: SAGE .
26.
Creswell, J.W. (2005) Educational Research: Planning, Conducting, and Evaluating Quantitative and Qualitative Research. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.
27.
Cullen, F.T. (1994) Rethinking Crime and Deviance Theory: The Emergence of a Structuring Tradition. Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Allenheld.
28.
Cullen, F.T. and Wright, J.P. (1997) `Liberating the Anomie-Strain Paradigm: Implications from Social-Support Theory', in N. Passas and R. Agnew (eds) The Future of Anomie Theory, pp. 187—206. Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press.
29.
Dexter, L.A. (1970) Elite and Specialized Interviewing. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
30.
Durkheim, E. ([1893] 1933) The Division of Labor in Society , trans. G. Simpson. New York: Free Press.
31.
Durkheim, E. ([1897] 1951) Suicide, trans. J.A. Spaulding and G. Simpson. New York: Free Press.
32.
Durkheim, E. ([1925] 1961) Moral Education, trans. E.K. Wilson and H. Schnurer. New York: Free Press.
33.
Edwards, A. (1957) Techniques of Attitude Scale Construction. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.
34.
Eitzen, S.D. (1999) Fair and Foul: The Myths and Paradoxes of Sport . Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield .
35.
Gopnik, A. (2007) `The Unbeautiful Game; The Sporting Scene', The New Yorker82: 38.
36.
Green, T. (1996) The Dark Side of the Game: My Life in the NFL. New York: Warner Books.
37.
Hendershott, A. (2002) The Politics of Deviance. San Francisco, CA: Encounter Books.
38.
Hill, T. and Lewicki, P. (2006) Statistics: Methods and Applications. Tulsa, OK: StatSoft.
39.
Hirschi, T. (1969) Causes of Delinquency. Berkeley : University of California Press.
40.
Hirschi, T. ([1969] 2005) Causes of Delinquency. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.
41.
Jick, T. (1979) `Mixing Qualitative and Quantitative Methods: Triangulation in Action', Administrative Science Quarterly24: 602—11.
42.
Kim, J. (1975) `Factor Analysis', in N. Nie, H. Hull, J. Jenkins, K. Steinbrenner and D. Bent (eds) SPSS: Statistical Package for the Social Sciences, 2nd edn, pp. 468—514. New York: McGraw Hill.
43.
Kornhauser, R.R. (1978) Social Sources of Delinquency: An Appraisal of Analytic Models. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
44.
Labovitz, S. (1967) `Some Observations on Measurement and Statistics' , Social Forces46: 151—60.
45.
Labovitz, S. (1970) `The Assignment of Numbers to Rank Order Categories' , American Sociological Review35: 515—24.
46.
Lee, G.R. (1974) `Marriage and Anomie: A Causal Argument', Journal of Marriage and the Family36: 523—32.
47.
Lovell-Troy, L.A. (1983) `Anomia among Employed Wives and Housewives: An Exploratory Analysis', Journal of Marriage and the Family45: 301—10.
48.
Lowry, T. (2003) `The NFL Machine', Business Week , 27 January, pp. 86—91, 94.
49.
Lukes, S. (1972) Emile Durkheim: His Life and Work. New York: Harper and Row.
50.
MacCambridge, M. (2004) America's Game: The Epic Story of How Pro Football Captured a Nation. New York: Random House.
51.
MacIver, R.M. (1950) The Ramparts We Guard. New York : Macmillan.
52.
Marks, S.R. (1974) `Durkheim's Theory of Anomie', American Journal of Sociology80: 329—63.
53.
McClosky, H. and Schaar, J.H. (1965) `Psychological Dimensions of Anomy', American Sociological Review30: 14—40.
54.
Merton, R.K. (1938) `Social Structure and Anomie', American Sociological Review3: 672—82.
55.
Morgan, P.S. and Teachman, J.D. (1988) `Logistic Regression: Description, Examples, and Comparisons', Journal of Marriage and the Family50: 929—36.
56.
Neal, A.G. and Seeman, M. (1964) `Organizations and Powerlessness', American Sociological Review29: 216—26.
57.
Nie, N., Hull, H. , Jenkins, J., Steinbrenner, K. and Bent, D. (eds) (1975) SPSS: Statistical Package for the Social Sciences, 2nd edn. New York: McGraw Hill.
58.
Nunnally, J.C. (1978) Psychometric Theory. New York : McGraw Hill.
59.
Orru, M. (1987) Anomie: History and Meanings. Boston, MA: George Allen & Unwin.
60.
Owens, T. and Rosenhaus, J. (2006) T.O. New York: Simon & Schuster.
61.
Park, R. and Burgess, E. (1921) Introduction to the Science of Sociology. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
62.
Parsons, T. (1937) The Structure of Social Action. New York: McGraw Hill.
63.
Parsons, T. ([1937] 1968) The Structure of Social Action . New York: Free Press.
64.
Passas, N. (2000) `Continuities in the Anomie Tradition', in F. Adler and W.S. Laufer (eds) The Legacy of Anomie Theory, pp. 91—112. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.
65.
Passas, N. and Agnew, R. (eds) (1997) The Future of Anomie Theory . Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press.
66.
Pierce, C. (2006) Moving the Chains: Tom Brady and the Pursuit of Everything. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
67.
Pope, W. (1976) Durkheim's Suicide. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
68.
Powell, E.H. (ed.) (1970) The Design of Discord: Studies of Anomie. New York: Oxford University Press.
69.
Press, J.S. and Wilson, S. (1978) `Choosing Between Logistic Regression and Discriminant Analysis', Journal of the American Statistical Association73: 699—705.
70.
Riesman, D., Glazer, N. and Denney, R. (1956) The Lonely Crowd: A Study in the Changing American Character. New York: Doubleday & Company.
71.
Romanowski, B., Schefter, A. and Towle, P. (2005) Romo: My Life on the Edge. New York: William Morrow.
72.
Sage, G.H. (1998) Power and Ideology in American Sport: A Critical Perspective, 2nd edn. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.
73.
Schatzman, L. and Strauss, A.L. (1973) Field Research: Strategies for a Natural Sociology . Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall .
74.
Sieber, S.D. (1973) `The Integration of Fieldwork and Survey Methods' , The American Journal of Sociology78: 1335—59.
75.
Siegel, S. and Castellan, J.W. (1988) Nonparametric Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences . Boston, MA: McGraw Hill.
76.
Srole, L. (1956) `Social Integration and Certain Corollaries: An Exploratory Study', American Sociological Review21: 709—16.
77.
Starr, M. and Samuels, A. (2000) `A Season of Shame', Newsweek135: 56—60.
78.
Strauss, A.L. (1987) Qualitative Analysis for Social Scientists. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
79.
Strauss, A.L. ([1987] 2003) Qualitative Analysis for Social Scientists. New York: Cambridge University Press.
80.
Taylor, L. and Serby, S. (2003) LT: Over the Edge. New York : HarperCollins.
81.
Thompson, K. (1982) Emile Durkheim. New York: Tavistock Publications.
82.
Thorlindsson, T. (1983) `Social Organizations and Cognition', Human Development26: 289—307.
83.
Thorlindsson, T. and Bjarnason, T. (1998) `Modeling Durkheim on the Micro Level: A Study of Youth Suicidality', American Sociological Review63: 94—110.
84.
Vaux, A. (1988) Social Support: Theory, Research, and Intervention . New York: Praeger.
85.
Wright, J.P. (1996) `Parental Support and Delinquent Behavior: The Limits of Control Theory', paper presented at theAmerican Society of Criminology, Chicago, IL.
86.
Wright, J.P., Cullen, F.T. and Wooldredge, J.D. (1995) `Parental Support and Juvenile Delinquency: A Social Capital Approach', paper presented at theAmerican Society of Criminology, Boston, MA.
87.
Yost, M. (2006) Tailgating, Sacks, and Salary Caps: How the NFL Became the Most Successful Sports League in History. Chicago, IL: Kaplan.
