On Tuesday evening, the Cleveland Cavaliers received their championship rings and watched their 2016 NBA Champions banner rise to the rafters at Quicken Loans Arena. After the festivities, the Cavs took to the hard court to take on the New York Knicks. Hours later, the Golden State Warriors, with their new acquisition, the former league…
Tonight, the Carolina Panthers will run onto the field at the Sports Authority Field at Mile High to take on the defending Super Bowl champion Denver Broncos. There are many on-the-field stories of interest. Can the Broncos continue their dominance from last season without the now retired quarterback Peyton Manning? How will Northwestern alum Trevor Siemian fare in…
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…
This post is a part of the series, “Sport History Rewind.” In this series, contributors revisit and reevaluate important texts to determine the degree to which their analyses, arguments, research, and influence resonate in the field today. Of particular concern is how well the works fit into historiographical debates and compare with more recent sport-related…
Hawkins, Billy; Cooper, Joseph; Carter-Francique, Akilah; Cavil, J. Kenyatta (eds.) The Athletic Experience at Historically Black Colleges and Universities: Past, Present, and Persistence. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015. Pp. 270. Index, About the Editors, About the Contributors. $75 hardcover, $64.49 e-book. Reviewed by Kristy L. McCray It is only appropriate to begin this post…
By Andrew D. Linden In early 2014, I received a Facebook notification about an upcoming initiative in sport history. Andrew McGregor posted a message to the North American Society for Sport History’s (NASSH) Grad Student Facebook page about a new academic blog he wished to launch. Promoted as a “place for junior faculty and graduate…
This post is a part of a new series, “Sport History Rewind.” In this series, contributors revisit and reevaluate important texts to determine the degree to which their analyses, arguments, research, and influence resonate in the field today. Of particular concern is how well the works fit into historiographical debates and compare with more recent…
By Colleen English In the 1960s and 1970s, Jerry Seltzer led his father’s invention, roller derby, to renewed success. Formerly a Depression Era endurance sport (I have discussed the early origins of roller derby here), roller derby became an entertainment spectacle that featured drama, feuds, and athletic talent. Journalist Jack Fincher credited Seltzer with making…
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…
Thomas, Damion L. Globetrotting: African American Athletes and Cold War Politics. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2012. 232 pp. $60.00 cloth. Reviewed by Andrew D. Linden In Globetrotting: African American Athletes and Cold War Politics, Damion L. Thomas analyzes the US government’s use of African American athletes as tools in the ideological battle between American…
Sport in American History 