By Patrick Salkeld Soccer started in the United States during the 1860s before the formal establishment of England’s Football Association. As professional clubs and leagues developed, they turned into businesses that relied on spectators to purchase tickets and attend the matches in order to make a profit. Without this commitment and support, teams collapsed—for instance,…
By Andrew McGregor During the fall of 1953 Bud Wilkinson, head coach of the University of Oklahoma, launched his own coach’s show. The fifteen-minute program initially aired live on Tuesday nights at 10:15 p.m. on Oklahoma City’s WKY-TV. Plainly titled “Bud Wilkinson’s Football,” newspapers simply described it as “OU’s famous coach discusses football.”[1] The show…
By Andrew McGregor During the 1950s, the University of Oklahoma was the class of college football. The Sooners entered the fall of 1956 poised to make history. They were the defending national champions and had won thirty-consecutive games, one win shy of the team’s record-long winning streak. Though the schedule was not easy – it…
Editor’s note: This is the second of two posts this week exploring the connections and intersections between sport history, sport heritage, and public history. These three fields do not always work together when studying and presenting the sporting past. We hope sharing different perspectives and overviews of the fields will help us forge conversations that…
Editor’s note: This is the first of two posts this week exploring the connections and intersections between sport history, sport heritage, and public history. These three fields do not always work together when studying and presenting the sporting past. We hope sharing different perspectives and overviews of the fields will help us forge conversations that…
C. Richard King, Redskins: Insult and Brand. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2016. Pp. 256. 12 Illustrations, notes and index. $24.95 Hardcover. By Andrew McGregor In October 2014 I had lunch with Billy Mills. Though we keep in touch, I hadn’t seen him since 2011. He was on campus giving a talk — one similar to the…
By Charles Westmoreland, Jr. The 1996 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament entered uncharted territory in recent college basketball memory. On March 14, 1996, Duke University saw its mediocre 18-13 campaign come to an end at the hands of the unheralded Eastern Michigan University Eagles. The injury-riddled, talent-depleted Blue Devils were no match for a hungry Eagles…
By Betsy Schlabach In my “Race, Sexuality, and United States Sports History” course my students are required to analyze a sports’ history film. Numerous papers arrive on Jackie Robinson, the Miracle on Ice, All American Girls Professional Baseball League, Michigan’s Fab Five, the Black Sox Scandal, or Notre Dame Football. While drafting these papers, I…
By Andrew McGregor The NFL Combine is currently underway at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, IN. The annual event is billed as a showcase where players exhibit their talent and skills in front of scouts and team executives in hopes of increasing their draft stock. It is an important event for the league as it…
By Jorge E. Moraga *Author’s Note: For the spring 2016 semester, I was fortunate to be assigned ‘The Cultural Politics of Sport’, an upper division course housed in the Department of CCGRS at Wazzu. As a new teaching prep, I chose to pivot our class around American football: a sport that sells campus identity, ensures…
Sport in American History 