Over the past two months, the momentum of the opposition to Boston hosting the Olympic Games spurred me while the narratives coming out about Rio sparked Matt Holder to write pieces about the Olympics for this blog. Matt summarized his article on media narratives with the statement: “…we see that media narratives care less about…
Released in 2007, Pride — a historical sport film about “the first black swim team” — came out during the same time as similar films (Coach Carter (2005), Glory Road (2006), The Express (2008)) also focusing on relationships between race and sport. It also primarily focuses on one individual (Coach Jim Ellis, played by Terrence Howard) in telling the story of how…
By Wesley R. Bishop and Andrew McGregor The smoke and ash of Baltimore has cleared in the magical land of cable news. With protests in Cleveland underway, the short attention span of corporate media discourse has found another tragedy to focus on, with many talking heads treating yet another “isolated” incident of police brutality as…
The cycle of national group bids to host the Olympic Games usually has not generated the type of openly negative discussion that occurred this year in the United States. From newspaper articles to blogs, to “Olbermann” on ESPN, Boston’s winning bid to represent the U.S. as a potential Summer Olympic site generated a firestorm of…
Later this week, former college football players will walk across the stage at the Auditorium Theatre of Roosevelt University in Chicago, Illinois. They will shake the hand of NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, put on new hats, and hold the jerseys of their new NFL teams. Outside of the Theatre, the NFL will hold a “Draft…
By Dunja Antunovic, Guest Contributor In the April 8, 2015, edition of CBS News, anchor Scott Pelley begins “If there is one thing more difficult than breaking into the NFL as a player, it’s breaking in as an official. There are only 119. And breaking in as a woman? Impossible. Until today’s announcement.” The camera cuts…
by Adam Park You can tell a lot about a person by how they do their pull-ups these days. Indeed, the CrossFit pull-up is as divisive an issue as politics. But take it or leave it, CrossFit is everywhere. With a network of over 11,000 affiliated gyms, more than 100,000 accredited trainers, the CrossFit Games…
Jerry Tarkanian put the University of Nevada, Las Vegas on the map. The Runnin’ Rebels former coach, who died yesterday at age 84, was the architect of a basketball powerhouse that established UNLV as a national brand. Tarkanian and UNLV, followed the example of other major universities and used sports as an important method of public relations…
In November 2014, the prodigiously talented Phillip Hughes was on the cusp of a return to international cricket. He had previously toured with the national side in 2009/2010 but inconsistency cost him his spot. Hughes’ batting style was unorthodox but it was also clean and powerful, and despite his inconsistent performances he was considered by…
By Wesley R. Bishop Any notion that the United States was in a “post racial” society ended last summer. Preceded by the killing of Florida teenager Trayvon Martin in 2012, the high profile murders of unarmed black civilians returned with the shooting of Michael Brown. Then the deaths of John Crawford, Tamir Rice, and Eric…
Sport in American History 