Sport, politics and the public intellectual

It was Keynes (1948) who famously remarked that intellectuals typically have to ‘perform at one and the same time the tasks appropriate to the economist, to the financier, to the politician, to the journalist, to the propogandist, to the lawyer, to the statesman – even, I think, to the prophet and to the soothsayer’ (p. 1109). Likewise, Eyerman (2011) characterises them more simplistically as ‘carrier-groups’ who make claims and voice concerns for others. Those
intellectuals, including academics, employed in sports scholarship – an academic field that has taken a coherent form over the last half century – are familiar with this multi-faceted depiction and their broader role in bringing to the fore the significance and impact of sport – arguably the most dominant cultural form of the post-modern age.