The freedoms to invent, adapt, and create – central to the American experience – are integral to the proliferation of sports activities in the United States and the tremendous popularity they enjoy. Sports are both a social glue bonding the country together and a vehicle for transmitting such values as justice and fair play, team work and sacrifice. They have contributed to racial and social integration, and even to the development of language, as sports terms and expressions slide into everyday usage. Sports also have been a popular focus for the arts, particularly in novels and films.
Various social rituals have grown up around athletic contests. The local high school football or basketball game represents the biggest event of the week for residents in many communities across the United States. Fans of major university and professional football teams often gather in parking lots outside stadiums to eat a picnic lunch before kickoff, and for parties in front of television sets in each other's homes during the professional championship game, the Super Bowl. Thousands of baseball fans flee the snow and ice of the North for a week or two each winter by making a pilgrimage to training camps in the South and Southwest to watch up close their favorite players prepare for the spring opening of the professional baseball season.
- Sports in America
- "Open to All:" Title IX at Thirty; Final Report DOE, Secretary of Education's Commission on Opportunity in Athletics. Feb. 2003
- Women in Intercollegiate Sport: A Longitudinal Study - Twenty-five Year Update, 1977-2002 Acosta, R. Vivian and Carpenter, Linda Jean, 2002
- Sports Injuries
- Exercise/Physical Activity National Center for Health Statistics
- America's Sports Illustrated: 50 Years, 50 States, 50 Sports
- Big Game, Small World: A Basketball Adventure Wolff, Alexander, 2002
- Career Information from BLS
- CBS Sportsline.com
- Center for the Study of Sport in Society. Northeastern University
- Disabled Sports USA
- D.C. United (Professional Football Team)
- ESPN.com
- Hickok's Sports History
- Iowa Girls High School Athletic Union
- Major League Baseball (MLB)
- Major League Soccer (MLS)
- National Association for Girls and Women in Sport (NAGWS)
- National Association for Sport and Physical Education (NASPE)
- National Basketball Association (NBA)
- National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA)
- National Hockey League (NHL)
- National Football League (NFL)
- President's Council on Fitness, Sports and Nutrition
- Sports Rules
- Sport Science
- Sports Illustrated/CNN
- The Sports Network
- Street Basketball Association
- U.S. Dept. of Education. Secretary's Commission on Opportunity in Athletics
- U.S. Olympic Committee
- International Olympic Committee
- U.S. Paralympics
- U.S. Special Olympics
- USA Triathlons
- Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA)
- Women's Sports Foundation