Listed here are awards given by the Interest Group to its members. Interests Groups are smaller communities within NCA's large membership that provide a range of resources including networking opportunities, Annual Convention programming, leadership opportunities, awards, and specialized information dissemination channels, among others.
Read more about this Interest Group.
Top Overall Paper Award
| Year |
Award Winner |
| 2021 |
Emilee Shearer & Anthony Peavy , "Attempts at Renewing Her Career: Serena Williams and Her Year of 2018" |
| 2020 |
Kyle R. King, “'You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby': The Evolution of Billie Jean King’s Feminism and the Battle of the Sexes in Public Memory" |
| 2019 |
Gregory A. Cranmer, Jimmy Sanderson, David Cassilo, and Bailey Troutman, "Social Media Discourse about Division-I Football Players' Announcements of Early Exit: The Role of Expressed Fandom" |
| 2018 |
Michael Serazio, "The Transformations in American Sports Journalism: Managing Access and Autonomy in the Production of Infotainment" |
| 2017 |
Jacob Justice, "From Communist Nightmare to American Dream: Mythic Rhetoric in Senator Marco Rubio's 2016 Tribute to Jose Fernandez" |
| 2016 |
Kyle King, “The Spirituality of Sport and the Role of the Athlete in the Tennis Essays of David Foster Wallace” |
Top Student Paper Award
| Year |
Award Winner |
| 2021 |
Nathaniel Repay, "A Rhetoric of Fire at the Intersection of Race, Politics, and Sport" |
| 2020 |
Patrick Gentile and Nicholas Buzzelli, "Hablamos Inglés: Media Portrayals of English-Proficient Latin American MLB Players" |
| 2019 |
Ashley Danielle Garcia and William R. Cooney, "The Processional Hymn of Sunday Night Football: Praising the Patriotic Unity in 'Oh, Sunday Night'" |
| 2018 |
Jeanette E. Musselwhite, "Gender Perfomativity: Contradictions and Empowerment Through Femal NFL Fandom" |
| 2017 |
Jacob Justice, "From Communist Nightmare to American Dream: Mythic Rhetoric in Senator Marco Rubio's 2016 Tribute to Jose Fernandez" |
| 2016 |
Kyle King, “The Spirituality of Sport and the Role of the Athlete in the Tennis Essays of David Foster Wallace” |
Emerging Scholar Award
| Year |
Award Winner |
| 2020 |
Travis R.Bell |
| 2019 |
Natalie Brown- Devlin |
| 2018 |
Michael Devlin |
| 2017 |
Gregory Cranmer |
Outstanding Book Award
| Year |
Award Winner |
| 2021 |
Gregory M. Cranmer, Athletic Coaching: A Communication Perspective |
| 2020 |
Travis R. Bell, Janelle Applequist, and Christian Dotson-Pierson, CTE, Media, and the NFL: Framing a Public Health Crisis as a Football Epidemic |
| 2019 |
Andrew C. Billings and Jason Edward Black, Mascot Nation: The Controversy over Native American Representations in Sports |
| 2018 |
Daniel A. Grano, The Eternal Present of Sport: Rethinking Sport and Religion |
| 2017 |
Robert Kerr, How Postmodernism Explains Football and Football Explains Postmodernism: The Billy Clyde Conundrum |
