By Jesse Berrett Halfway through this NFL season, one that saw President Donald Trump declare war on professional football players because of ongoing political protests during pregame national anthems, it seemed clear that 50 years of careful political positioning had rebounded on the league. Under media-savvy commissioner Pete Rozelle, between 1961 and 1966, the NFL…
By Apryl Lewis Since Colin Kaepernick started protesting during the national anthem in 2016, other NFL players also engaged in similar protests to bring attention to social injustices against people of color. As national anthem protests gained momentum, many white sports fans questioned Black athletes’ patriotism, rather than concerning themselves with the issues athletes are…
By Patrick Salkeld Certain years stand out in history, such as 1945 with the end of World War II or 1980 and the presidential election of Ronald Reagan due to his populist-nationalist campaign and the evolution of neoliberalism as the prevailing ideology of the United States government, because of their historical significance. The last twelve months…
By Robert J. Lake No story more captivated the tennis world in 2017 than the resurgence of some of the sport’s biggest stars. As Nick Wells and Eric Chemi reported, the average age of the four finalists at the Australian Open in January was 34 years old; Roger Federer, 35, beat Rafael Nadal, 30; meanwhile,…
By Kyle R. King This fall semester, I taught a course called Sports, Ethics, Literature. One of the course units was first foreshadowed in a scene from episode ten of Friday Night Lights, which we watched near the beginning of the semester. In the scene, cheerleading captain Lyla Garrity explains to her paramour Tim Riggins…
By Andrew Pettit This Boxing Day (yesterday, December 26), like many millions of other Canadians, I sat on a couch surrounded by friends and family partaking in a very typically Canadian thing to do: watching hockey. Every year I cannot help but fall for the hype – promoted endlessly on TSN during the weeks leading…
This is a cross post in partnership with the U.S. Intellectual History Blog. It will appear there on Wednesday. By Robert Fitzgerald, Guest Contributor At a recent rally in Huntsville, Alabama while stumping for Luther Strange, a Republican candidate for the Senate, President Trump said something that should concern everyone who cares about what it…
By Tom Fabian North Korea is arguably the most reclusive and enigmatic nation in the world. Due to a historically strained relationship with the United States and the advent of Westernization, the “Hermit Kingdom” has cloistered itself off from the rest of the world as one of the last truly communist states. With escalating rhetoric…
By Louis Moore Nothing happened! No race riots. No so-called “racial contamination.” No intermarriage. Just a football game. On October, 11, 1947, Chet Pierce, the 6’4” 215-pound lineman for Harvard, became the first Black man to play an integrated college football game in the South. “In the shadow of Confederate monuments,” he played that game…
By Louis Moore Fifty years ago, on July 23, 1967, routine arrests at a blind pig (an illegal after hours’ establishment) in Detroit ignited an explosive rebellion that lasted five days. That night, hometown hero, Willie Horton, of the Detroit Tigers, drove his car into the rebellion to quell the flames. It didn’t work. This…
Sport in American History 