By Jorge E. Moraga *Author’s Note: For the spring 2016 semester, I was fortunate to be assigned ‘The Cultural Politics of Sport’, an upper division course housed in the Department of CCGRS at Wazzu. As a new teaching prep, I chose to pivot our class around American football: a sport that sells campus identity, ensures…
By Kate Aguilar I spent the week leading up to the Super Bowl in El Paso, Texas. For a historian of race and sport, it felt quite fortuitous to be awaiting Super Bowl 50 while engrossed in the emotion surrounding the 50th anniversary celebration of Texas Western’s 1966 historic 72-65 win over the University of…
By Andrew McGregor This is one of two new posts today exploring race in the NFL. This piece looks at Whiteness, considering Peyton Manning as a Great White Hopes. Kate Aguilar’s post The Man in the Mirror: Black Culture, White Privilege, and Supermen in the Age of Cam Newton offers a contrasting view. Read in…
By Kate Aguilar This is one of two new posts today exploring race in the NFL. This article explores race, culture, and Blackness, looking at narratives surrounding Cam Newton. Andrew McGregor’s piece looks at Whiteness, considering Peyton Manning as a Great White Hopes. Read in tandem, we hope they offer context that helps frame the narratives surrounding…
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 Nick Sacco In his 2014 publication on the history of the National Football League, historian Richard C. Crepeau declares that the game of football has become “America’s New National Pastime.” It’s easy to see why. Football has always been a popular sport in America, but the “New NFL” era—which began in the early 1990s…
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…
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…
Crepeau, Richard C. NFL Football: A History of America’s New National Pastime. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2014. Pp. 256. Notes, bibliography, and index. $95.00 clothback, $19.95 paperback. Reviewed by Andrew D. Linden Throughout this weekend, football is king. On Thursday, the Patriots defeated the Steelers, with an impressive performance by embattled quarterback Tom Brady.…
Sport in American History 