Coaches Can Be Moral Role Models

Highly publicized ethical lapses by sports celebrities have raised questions about morality in athletics. If coaches help their athletes achieve peak physical performance, can they also teach their sports charges to make ethical choices?

New research from Concordia University has examined how coaches exert moral influence over athletes and how athletes respond. The study garnered data from 17 elite coaches who had once been athletes themselves.

The investigation found compelling evidence that coaches can provide important moral guidance for their athletic charges. "Coaches have a unique relationship with their athletes," says Sandra Peláez, who completed the study as part of her PhD thesis at Concordia's School of Graduate Studies and Department of Exercise Science.

"Coaches are mentors, parent figures, career enablers, and judges -- all at the same time," continues Peláez. "Every coach, however, doesn't influence every athlete he or she works with. The coach-athlete relationship is what enables a coach's influence and therefore determines how much influence a coach has. We found athletes would evaluate the relationship with their coaches and then decide whether to accept moral guidance or not."

Overweight Kids Think Better After Exercise

Regular exercise improves the ability of overweight, previously inactive children to think, plan and even do math, Georgia Health Sciences University researchers report.  They hope the findings in 171 overweight 7- to 11-year-olds -- all sedentary when the study started -- gives educators the evidence they need to ensure that regular, vigorous physical activity is a part of every school day, said Dr. Catherine Davis, clinical health psychologist at GHSU's Georgia Prevention Institute and corresponding author on the study in Health Psychology.

"I hope these findings will help reestablish physical activity's important place in the schools in helping kids stay physically well and mentally sharp," Davis said. "For children to reach their potential, they need to be active."

To measure cognition, researchers used the Cognitive Assessment System and Woodcock-Johnson Tests of Achievement III that measure abilities such as planning and academic skills such as math and reading. A subset of the children received functional magnetic resonance imaging highlighting increased or decreased areas of brain activity.

For Sports Betting, The Crowd Usually Picks The Favorite

Point spreads -- the number of points by which a strong team can be expected to defeat a weaker team -- are supposed to reflect the "wisdom of crowds." But a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research found that crowds don't have a clue.

"Point spread betting markets seem to offer an important example of crowd wisdom, because point spreads are very accurate and are widely believed to reflect the 'crowd's' prediction of upcoming sporting events," write authors Joseph P. Simmons (Yale University), Leif D. Nelson (University of California at Berkeley), Jeff Galak (Carnegie Mellon University), and Shane Frederick (Yale University). But previous research shows that bettors are biased in their predictions; their intuitions tend to favor "favorites" over "underdogs", in everything from NFL football to NCAA basketball betting.

The authors conducted a season-long investigation of the betting habits of enthusiastic NFL football fans from diverse regions of the United States. Participants wagered more than $20,000 on football games against point spreads that were manipulated to favor the underdog.

Youth Baseball Pitchers Need To Stay Under 100 Innings Per Year

For years, sports medicine professionals have talked about youth pitching injuries and the stress the motion causes on developing bones and muscles. In a new, 10-year study published in the February issue of the American Journal of Sports Medicine, researchers showed that participants who pitched more than 100 innings in a year were 3.5 times more likely to be injured.

"The study proved a direct link between innings pitched in youth and adolescent baseball and serious pitching injuries. It highlights the need for parents and coaches to monitor the amount of pitching for the long-term success and health of these young athletes. We need to all work together to end the epidemic of youth sports injuries, and education through campaigns like STOP Sports Injuries is in excellent first step," said lead researcher, Glenn S. Fleisig, PhD, of the American Sports Medicine Institute in Birmingham, Alabama.