Luther, Jessica and Kavitha A. Davidson. Loving Sports When They Don’t Love You Back: Dilemmas of the Modern Fan. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2020. Pp. 328. Notes & Index. $26.95 hardcover. Reviewed by Noah Cohan This being 2020, an annus horribilis if there ever was one, Earthlings—and especially Americans—have a lot to reconsider. Since…
Kalman-Lamb, Nathan. Game Misconduct: Injury, Fandom, and the Business of Sport. Halifax, NS: Fernwood, 2018. Pp. 183. Notes & Index. $24.00 paperback. Reviewed by Noah Cohan As Kevin Durant writhed on the floor of Scotiabank Arena partway through the second quarter of Game 5 of the 2019 NBA Finals, his Achilles tendon having recoiled upward…
By Seth S. Tannenbaum A new Major League Baseball season is about to get underway and, as it has for years, the game continues to struggle to pull in younger fans. Since 2006, the average age of baseball fans has gone up from 52 to 57. To counter this and hopefully attract new fans, this season…
By Brett L. Abrams Like many of you, I finished a book and quickly realized how much more work remained as one faced the challenges of marketing the work! Terry Bradshaw: From Super Bowl Champion to Television Personality emerged from Rowman & Littlefield which is a good press with a small publicity department. Since I…
Pearson, Greg. Maybe Next Year: Long Suffering Fans and the Teams That Never Deliver. Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, Inc., Publishers, 2016. Pp. 264. 66 Photos. Index, $35.00 paperback. Reviewed by Jorge Iber As a long suffering fan of the Pittsburgh Pirates and Miami Dolphins (an odd combination, to be sure), this reviewer met the…
On February 20, 2015, officials from both the National Football League’s Oakland Raiders and San Diego Chargers announced their plans to build and share a $1.7 billion privately-funded stadium. The proposed new facility will be located in Carson, adding the two teams to the constant speculation about the NFL’s return to L.A. Both the Raiders and…
After reading the Sports Documentary/Sports History issue of the Journal of Sports History (Summer 2014) I watched Michael Rapaport’s contribution to ESPN’s 30 for 30 series, “When the Garden Was Eden.” The documentary intended to show how important the New York Knicks teams of the early 1970s were to the NBA and that they represented an oasis in…
While writing my book, The Bullets, The Wizards and Washington, DC Basketball on professional basketball industry and Washington, DC, a central question emerged about the city’s fans. From the origins in the late 1920s through the Bullets in Landover, Maryland, the city’s teams never drew very well. Even when they reached the National Basketball Association…
Sport in American History 