By Andrew McGregor Recently the University of North Carolina (UNC) cancelled history professor Jay Smith’s class “Big-Time College Sports and the Rights of Athletes, 1956-Present.” The Daily Tar Heel reported that the department was “under pressure from the college to cancel the class to prevent students from learning about the University’s recent scandals.” His colleagues…
By Zachary R. Bigalke In the summer of 1986 Diego Maradona sealed an eternal place in Argentinian hearts, notching both the most revered and the most reviled goals in FIFA World Cup history in a 2-1 quarterfinal victory over England. “We were representing our dead who were sent to die by their own country,” Maradona…
By Andrew McGregor “One lesson to be learned in reaching an age where you are both a viable politician and a washed-up lineman is that past glories are not negotiable in the open market,” then Vice-President Gerald Ford wrote in Sports Illustrated in July 1974. “When you stop winning they not only start booing, they…
by Zachary R. Bigalke The ideology of racial democracy cast a long shadow over twentieth-century race relations in Brazil. First popularized by influential Brazilian scholar Gilberto Freyre, this theory presumed a level racial playing field that was paradoxically dependent on the whitening of the populace. Rather than helping to drive the country toward a multiracial…
Nelson, Murray R. Big Ten Basketball, 1943-1972. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2017. Pp. 256. Appendix, notes, bibliography, and index. $39.95 softcover. Reviewed by Andrew McGregor March has arrived, much to the glee of basketball fans. Conference tournaments are in full swing across the country, helping solidify the fates of those teams living on the bubble before…
By Zachary R. Bigalke Major League Soccer (MLS) kicked off its 22nd season over the past weekend, welcoming two new teams into the fold to expand the league into two 11-team conferences. Fifteen years after the league contracted its two Florida teams, the long-term plan executed by Don Garber seems to have fully flowered. Having…
By Andrew McGregor This semester Lawrence (Larry) Glickman is trying something new with his students at Cornell University. He is teaching a class on “Sports and Politics in American History.” Over the course of the fall and winter Glickman reached out to me and other Sport in American History contributors for help navigating the field of sport…
This post is the fifth post in our Life and Legacy of Muhammad Ali Series guest edited by Andrew R.M. Smith. Muhammad Ali was a complex figure and he had a large influence beyond the United States. The goal of these posts is to explore various aspects of Ali’s life and reflect on his legacies, offering insight into understudied themes…
This post is the fourth post in our Life and Legacy of Muhammad Ali Series guest edited by Andrew R.M. Smith. Muhammad Ali was a complex figure and he had a large influence beyond the United States. The goal of these posts is to explore various aspects of Ali’s life and reflect on his legacies, offering insight into understudied…
This post is the third post in our Life and Legacy of Muhammad Ali Series guest edited by Andrew R.M. Smith. Muhammad Ali was a complex figure and he had a large influence beyond the United States. The goal of these posts is to explore various aspects of Ali’s life and reflect on his legacies, offering insight into understudied themes…
Sport in American History 