William A Gamson

William Anthony Gamson (born January 27, 1934) is a professor of Sociology at Boston College, where he is also the co-director of the Media Research and Action Project (MRAP). He is the author of numerous books and articles on political discourse, the mass-media and social movements from as early as the 1960s. His works include The Strategy of Social Protest, WHAT'S NEWS (1984), and Talking Politics (2002), as well as numerous editions of SimSoc.

Gamson, who received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1959, was the 85th president of the American Sociological Association in 1994. He is also a 1978 recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 1962, he won the AAAS Prize for Behavioral Science Research.

Gamson was instrumental in the creation of fantasy baseball and fantasy sports. He created one of the first fantasy baseball leagues in Boston in 1960, the "Baseball Seminar," where colleagues would form rosters that earned points on the players' final standings in batting average, RBI, ERA and wins. Gamson later brought the idea with him to the University of Michigan where some professors played the game. One professor playing the game was Bob Sklar, who taught an American Studies seminar which included Daniel Okrent, who learned of the game his professor played. Okrent would later write a book that was the key catalyst for the modern fantasy sports industry.