Abstract:
Over the past few decades athletes have moved from being on-field performers to full time celebrities, and frequent role models. As a result, these athletes are constantly under surveillance, through what Foucault (1985) would refer to as the panopticon. Utilizing Bourdieu's (1986) discussion of social and economic capital to parse out how different athletes might be framed by the media, this dissertation examines what happens when an athlete steps outside the bounds of normalcy off the field of play. This dissertation scrutinized how a player is perceived on the field after an off-field deviant action through an experimental design. The player's personality was examined through a player image scale combined from Reysen (2008) honesty scale and Reysen (2005) likability scale, while his on-field performance was measured through a scale designed for this dissertation. Ultimately, it was found that the athlete's type of deviance impacted the way participants saw the player as a person, and that his previous on-field performance impact the way participants saw him on and off the field.
