Miller, Jeffrey J. Pop Warner: A Life on the Gridiron. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2015, 209 pp. + Index. $29.95 paperback. Reviewed by Kate Aguilar Growing up in the Region, a colloquial term for the northern part of Northwest Indiana where the largest North American facility for U.S. Steel resides, I never put…
By Andrew D. Linden Dissertations are hard. While writing a long piece of sport history, you uncover many stories about events of the sporting past, narratives of individual heroics on and off the playing fields, and many pieces of important contextualization. Yet, eventually you must decide what stays and goes. In my dissertation, I analyze…
By John E. Price My first real memories of the Super Bowl are from January, 1991. Bill Parcells, LT, and the backup Jeff Hostetler versus Marv Levy, Jim Kelly, and Thurman Thomas. My mother, a life-long NY Giants fan, made sure the whole neighborhood knew when Mark Bavaro was playing well. My dad, loyal to…
By Michael T. Wood As 2015 comes to a close, we are entering the home stretch of the college football postseason. By the end of the day (or in the first moments of the New Year), thirty-one of the record forty bowl games will be completed, including the two semifinal games of the College Football…
Reck, Gregory G., and Bruce Allen Dick. American Soccer: History, Culture, Class. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2015. Pp. 229 + x. Bibliography and Notes. $29.95 paperback. Reviewed by Lindsay Parks Pieper On December 6, the Portland Timbers squared off against the Columbus Crew in the 2015 MLS Cup. Although the match was played…
Reviewed by Max Rieger History is a powerful muse at the University of Southern California (USC). In the documentary, “Trojan War”, ESPN gives its viewers a look at one of the nations most successful and unique football programs. Before examining the film and its subjects in some depth, I must make a disclosure. I am…
By Andrew D. Linden “Thanksgiving and football was the perfect blend of two great American creations,” explains ESPN reporter Sal Paolantonio. “Thanksgiving is our own holiday. And football is this great indigenous sport, created here, for Americans, so it was just this great blend of two great American creations.” Indeed, these purported American traditions helped…
Kluck, Ted. Three-Week Professionals: Inside the 1987 NFL Players’ Strike. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015. Pp. vii + 157. $25.00 hard cover. Reviewed by Kate Aguilar In August of 2000, The Replacements, starring Keanu Reeves and Gene Hackman, hit the big screen. The comedy was loosely based on the 1987 NFL players’ strike, a three…
By Kate Aguilar The second thing people who understood Miami had in common was the realization that the real and the fake, the dream and the nightmare, the hope and the despair, were inseparable- that, in Miami, the good always came wrapped up in the bad. ~T. D. Allman, Miami: City of the Future (1987) On August…
By Erica Zonder, Guest Contributor It has been a tough year for NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell. Most recently, the discipline he imposed on Tom Brady for allegedly deflating footballs, discipline that he himself, as a “neutral” arbitrator, upheld during the subsequent arbitration process, was tossed by a Federal District Court judge. “Deflategate” was, to borrow…
Sport in American History 