Luther, Jessica. Unsportsmanlike Conduct: College Football and the Politics of Rape. New York: Akashic, 2016. Pp. 247. Notes. $15.95 paperback. Reviewed by Noah Cohan Jessica Luther didn’t intend to make a career at the intersection of journalism, college football, and sexual assault. But not long after she started her sports blog, Power Forward, in 2011,[1]…
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”…
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 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…
By Hunter Hampton College football is the most powerful sport in America. I am serious. College football holds more power than the NFL, NBA, PGA, etc. It is not that it owns a day of the week, or its TV revenue, or its number of teams. I’m confident in this argument because college football holds…
Smith, Ronald A. Wounded Lions: Joe Paterno, Jerry Sandusky, and the Crises in Penn State Athletics. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2016. Pp. xiii+259. Notes, index. $95.00 hardcover, $21.95 paperback. Reviewed by Colleen English Before I begin the review, I want to mention my ties to Penn State. For nearly a decade, as both…
As part of ESPN’s 30 for 30, O.J.: Made in America examines O.J. Simpson’s movement through the American cultural, political, and social landscape of the past five decades. The five-segment documentary explores the significances of race, gender, celebrity, and violence in Simpson’s football career and later criminal trial. The Sport in American History blog will…
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…
Schultz, Jaime. Moments of Impact: Injury, Racialized Memory, and Reconciliation in College Football. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska, 2016. Pp. 216 + 25 photographs. $40.00 hardcover. Reviewed by Matt Follett Jaime Schultz’s Moments of Impact: Injury, Racialized Memory, and Reconciliation in College Football examines how college football, race, public history, and memory are interrelated by…
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…
Sport in American History 