Aspen is a place for leaders to lift their sights above the possessions which possess them. To confront their own nature as human beings, to regain control over their own humanity by becoming more self-aware, more self-correcting, and hence more self-fulfilling.
Walter P. Paepcke, Aspen Institute Co-Founder
Aspen Institute
SXSW: Raising the 21st Century Athlete
Note: This is a past event, additional resources may be available below.
Knowledge about the best practices in raising young athletes is constantly evolving. At this SXSW panel, Sports & Society Executive Director Tom Farrey joins Matt Bowers, Clinical Assistant Professor of Sport Management, University of Texas at Austin; Christine Bolger, Associate Director of Coaching Education, United States Olympic Committee; and Emmanuel Acho, NFL Linebacker/Media Personality to share the latest advancements in the science and policies in youth sports. The goal: to help parents (and those interested in youth sports) navigate the maze of new information on raising good athletes…and good kids.
Knowledge about the best practices in raising young athletes is constantly evolving. At this SXSW panel, Sports & Society Executive Director Tom Farrey joins Matt Bowers, Clinical Assistant Professor of Sport Management, University of Texas at Austin; Christine Bolger, Associate Director of Coaching Education, United States Olympic Committee; and Emmanuel Acho, NFL Linebacker/Media Personality to share the latest advancements in the science and policies in youth sports. The goal: to help parents (and those interested in youth sports) navigate the maze of new information on raising good athletes…and good kids.
The Project Play Summit is the nation’s premier gathering of leaders building healthy children and communities through sports. On March 24-25, Project Play heads to the Bay Area — the first time the event has been hosted on the West Coast and a world-renowned center for innovation, just the kind of setting leaders from across sectors need to unlock the ideas and innovations to better serve youth.
The 11th annual Project Play Summit took the Project Play network to Baltimore, Maryland – the site of the Sports & Society Program’s first State of Play report released in 2017. We reflected on the work accomplished, the learnings there and across the nation since then by innovators, and charted next steps in building healthy communities through sports.
On the eve of NBA All-Star Weekend 2025, the Sports & Society Program spoke with NBA star Luka Dončić about his experience growing up in Europe, and explored recommendations in a new report by his foundation with a panel of experts as part of its Future of Sports conversation series.
Created 45 years ago during the height of the Cold War, the Sports Act needs to be updated. It’s hard to conclude otherwise after reading the final report of the Commission on the U.S. Olympics and Paralympics. From unchecked athlete abuse to declining youth sports participation rates, our sport system has been shaped by fundamental flaws in the design of the Sports Act. How should the Sport Act be reshaped so the Olympic & Paralympic movements serve the public interest?
The national conversation around NCAA reform has centered on two parties: revenue-producing athletes and the universities they play for. But big-time college sport is not an island. It sits on top of and influences the shape of a much larger ecosystem, youth and school sports, which has been transformed over the past generation by the chase for scholarships, preferential admission slots for recruited athletes, and now NIL opportunities. So how to get the new model right? How to reform college sports in the public interest?
Sports both reflect and shape our society. Journalism unpacks those relationships, along the way making the games that we play more interesting and relevant. The New York Times, HBO Real Sports, and Los Angeles Times helped set the standard. Now, each outlet is changing how it covers sports – and Real Sports ended after 29 award-winning years.
What happened? And what does the future hold for enterprise and investigative journalism in sports? Could the public get less, or more, coverage of important topics as the media landscape evolves? What are the most promising business models to support this work? And what do we lose if longform sports journalism gets deprioritized in a streaming world?
Race-based preferences during college admissions are gone, jettisoned by the Supreme Court. Now universities are under pressure to drop favorable treatment for donors and children of alumni. But what about recruited athletes, whose admission advantage far outstrips any of the above categories of student? At Harvard, for instance, the chances of getting in move from less than 1% to 86% if coveted by a coach.
Can special admissions for recruited athletes be preserved? Should they? Our panels explore the societal implications of preferred treatment of athletes, from the contributions they make to campus life to the downstream reshaping of the youth sports industry, and considers: What treatment makes sense now?
At the Super Bowl, the NFL honored the 25 medical personnel who saved the life of Damar Hamlin. Many high school athletes are lucky to have even one athletic trainer on site during games and practices. What if Hamlin’s survival served as a catalyst to get every high school athlete access to an athletic trainer? And, where that’s not possible due to financial or personnel reasons, what other options exist to save lives and care for young athletes’ health?
The future of sports is dimmer without soccer journalist Grant Wahl, who died last week at age 49 while covering the FIFA men’s World Cup. But there are lessons from his work and life that anyone can take forward to build a better world. On Thursday, Dec. 15 (12-1 pm ET), we distill them and take measure of the legacy of the trailblazing writer on soccer, sports journalism and countless lives he lifted along the way.
