Brandon Crooms, tenured Trinity University sports management professor, received the honor of San Antonio Business Journal’s 40 Under 40 for his research on the intersection of race, faith and sports in adolescents.
The journey that led to Crooms’ research started with a desire to play sports at the collegiate level. After exploring options at multiple universities, he ultimately ended up playing for North Carolina A&T State University and University of Pittsburgh’s traveling basketball intramural team to fulfill his desire. During his time playing at the semi-professional level, Crooms noted patterns within African-American male athletes competing at these levels.
“Some did well, some didn’t. They have allowed sports to exploit them. They allowed their time with sports to take so much of them and not really prepared for life; they kept, even after, when everything looked like it was meant for them to move on, they kept pushing to go to the next level, and it affected their life,” Crooms said. “That really initiated this thought of like, what is it about half sports and racial identity with African-Americans.”
At the University of Texas at Austin, Crooms found professor Lewis Harrison. Under Harrison’s mentorship, Crooms pursued his doctorate and researched identity within sports, adding the focused component of faith.
“I wanted to look at adolescents because this is a pivotal time in identity formation, coming to know who they are. And a lot of that has to do with values that could be cultural values, family values and even religious values, which all intersect,” Crooms said. “Seeing that there was research that proved that there is a correlation between athletic identity and racial identity. African-American student athletes that have a higher athletic identity tend to have a high racial identity, a pride in the sense of who they are.”
Crooms shared that these correlations are often mistaken to be simple, when in reality they deal with the complexities of understanding one’s identity. Crooms highlighted the significance of a “self-fulfilling prophecy” in forming one’s identity and how the connection between racial and athletic identities may form.
“Someone who is an African-American male may adopt the ideology that they are good in sports because they are innately and naturally really good in sports as a whole, as ethnic group, as racial group,” Crooms said. “Someone who is young, who’s trying to find their identity and trying to find meaning in life, tends to go towards something that they feel more praised or recognized for. The issue could be, when that is disrupted, they lose sight of who they are, because there’s no foundational identity that they have outside of just sport.”
The findings from his research have resulted in a number of pursuits such as a business, writing a book and of course, teaching at Trinity. Beyond teaching sports management classes at the university, Crooms uses his expertise to offer himself as a mentor.
“I’ve had the privilege of mentoring some students, specifically student-athletes who go through various different things, and just trying to navigate life, navigate being an athlete, trying to understand who they are in different spaces, like certain situations in life, you know that may occur. And so I just kind of help them find, you know, help them discover things on their own,” Crooms said.
His business, Crooms Collective, offers programs for “Youth Empowerment and Development,” “Motivational Speaking and Workshops” and “Coaching and Consulting.” Crooms released his book, ‘Game Changer,’ last summer. The book was inspired by his experience working as a mentor with athletes.
“It’s for athletes, but it could be applicable for anybody, especially college students,” Crooms said. “It’s a devotion with Scripture as a motivational message. It’s separated by categories … it’s organized in that type of way to help people stay motivated … find purpose in what they do in school and sports and to really find purpose in all that they do for a greater purpose.”
