Sumner, David E. Fumbled Call: The Bear Bryant-Wally Butts Football Scandal That Split the Supreme Court and Changed American Libel Law. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2018. 11 b/w photographs, acknowledgments, four appendices, chapter notes, bibliography, index. Pp. 234. $35.00 softcover. Reviewed by Michael T. Wood In Fumbled Call, David E. Sumner recounts the events surrounding the…
Fields, Sarah K. Game Faces: Sport Celebrity and the Laws of Reputation. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2016. Pp. xxii+187. Notes, index. $95.00 cloth, $24.95 paper, $22.46 ebook. Reviewed by Cat Ariail In the fall of 2012, a lawyer representing Hulk Hogan (Terry Bollea) filed a federal invasion-of-privacy lawsuit against Gawker Media for publishing…
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…
Regalado, Samuel O., and Sarah K. Fields, eds. Sport and the Law: Historical and Cultural Intersections. Fayetteville: The University of Arkansas Press, 2014. Pp. ix+166. Notes, contributors, and index. $34.95 paperback Reviewed by Erica Zonder Sport is a multi-billion dollar industry, and college sport in particular generates staggering amounts of revenue. In 2011-12, the NCAA…
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 