Dr. Jay Coakley helps us understand the scope of sport sociology as the study of social worlds that people create, maintain, and change over time through their interaction with one another through sport.

Jay Coakley is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Colorado in Colorado Springs. He received a Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Notre Dame and has since taught and done research on play, games, and sports, among other topics in sociology. Dr. Coakley has received many teaching, service, and professional awards, and is an internationally respected scholar, author, and journal editor. In 2007 the Institute for International Sport selected him as one of the 100 Most Influential Sports Educators, and the University of Chichester in West Sussex, England awarded him an Honorary Fellowship in recognition of his outstanding leadership in the sociology of sport; in 2009, the National Association for Sport and Physical Education inducted Coakley into its Hall of Fame; and in 2015 he was named an Honorary Member of the International Sociology of Sport Association. A former intercollegiate athlete, Coakley continues to use concepts, research, and theories in sociology to critically examine social phenomena and promote changes that make social worlds more democratic and humane. He currently lives in Fort Collins, Colorado with his wife, Nancy.

Coakley, Jay; Coakley, Jay. Sports in Society: Issues and Controversies (p. vi). McGraw-Hill Higher Education.