By Kevin Rossi, Guest Contributor Colin Kaepernick’s ongoing protest against racial injustice and police violence has created a unique lens with which to view the role sport can serve in the dialogue about race relations in the United States. His message echoes that of the Black Lives Matter movement: police officers in the United States are…
By Russ Crawford Yesterday, two teams from the National Football League (NFL) will played the first of three scheduled games in England this season. Two games take place at Wembley Stadium, the venue for twenty-three previous NFL games played across the pond since 1983,[1] and the third is to be held at Twickenham Stadium. The Jaguars,…
Young, William A. John Tortes “Chief” Meyers: A Baseball Biography. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2012. Pp. 257. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $29.95 paperback. Reviewed by Andrew McGregor The stories of American Indians in baseball are often overlooked. During the first two decades of the twentieth century they were among the game’s biggest stars, annually playing in…
By Andrew McGregor “We have (re)entered the Revolt of the Black Athlete,” Louis Moore proclaimed on Twitter two weeks ago amidst a wave of protests and demonstrations by prominent professional football players following the lead of San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick. Moore’s comment harkens us back to the original “Revolt of the Black Athlete”…
Inspired by recent post series and roundtables at the African American Intellectual History Society blog, as well as the desire to integrate diverse voices and approaches to the community of sport historians, the Sport in American History blog is happy to announce a new series on the Life and Legacy of Muhammad Ali. The goal…
By Andrew McGregor “How does a third-rate college football team suddenly become one of the best in the country?” Paul Gardner asked in True magazine amidst OU’s 31-game win streak in October 1950.[1] The University of Oklahoma’s rise from obscurity to football power surprised college football observers. He believed something more than Bud Wilkinson’s coaching…
By Kyle Kusz For the past year, I’ve been reading, collecting articles, taking notes, and generally doing what academics do trying to carefully make sense of the specific cultural ideas, logics, and performances that orient the wave of white supremacy that Donald Trump has stoked and ridden since he surprisingly emerged from the Republican primaries…
By Kate Aguilar “What is happening today amounts to a revolt by the black athlete against the framework and attitudes of American sport, and that such a thing could occur in his own pet province has astonished the white sports follower. The reason for the astonishment is that the man in the grandstand knows nothing…
By Andrew McGregor Football found its way to Oklahoma during the 1890s. The game flowed naturally into the Sooner state, invading its borders like the schooners that raced in during the land rush. Students at the fledgling territorial university took up the activity alongside baseball, with the encouragement of chemistry professor Edwin DeBarr, when the…
This week we’re offering our thoughts and reflections on the recently completed Rio Olympics. Today is part two of our roundtable. It features a Q&A with four of our contributors — Cat Ariail, Josh Howard, Andrew McGregor, and Lindsay Parks Pieper — about their views on the Rio Olympics and its legacy as both scholars and sports fans. Feel…
Sport in American History 