Writing and reading American football: culture, identity and sports studies. (original) (raw)
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Some studies date the origins of US intercollegiate football—and, by extension, the modern game of American football—back to a soccer-style game played between Princeton and Rutgers universities in 1869. This article joins with others to argue that such a narrative is misleading and goes further to clarify the significance of two “international” fixtures in 1873 and 1874, which had a formative and lasting impact on football in the United States. These games, contested between alumni from England’s Eton College and students at Yale University, and between students at Canada’s McGill University and Harvard University, combined to revolutionize the American football code. Between 1875 and 1880, previous soccer-style versions of US intercollegiate football were replaced with an imported, if somewhat modified, version of rugby football. It was the “American rugby” that arose as a result of these transnational exchanges that is the true ancestor of the gridiron game of today.
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British American Football: National Identity, Cultural Specificity and Globalization
American football. Sports have socio-historical links to specific nation-states, thus encoding them with culturally specific values. Despite a movement towards cultural convergence, especially of popular culture, aspects of sport have remained resistant to dominant globalization trends. My thesis reveals that the globalization of American football to Britain has been a process which makes concessions to the local, while still retaining many of its global characteristics. Through an ethnographic study of one team, I spent an entire season becoming an "insider" and understanding the British American football culture from the perspective of the participants themselves. Analysis of data collected through participant observation and interviews revealed a number of themes which defined British American football as a hybrid and distinctive sport. First, that British American football was distinctive within the domestic British sports space because of its unique combination of American characteristics. Second, that "glocalization" influences the structuring of British American football under the amateur code, in order for the sport to better fit within the British sporting habitus. Finally, that the two branches of American football in Britain, the NFL and the British grassroots, were found to be involved in a disparate relationship which involved each branch concentrating on their own separate agendas for the sport. In conclusion, the American football played in Britain is British American football and this study importantly demonstrates that while a sport can retain its roots in terms of its physical appearance and playing structure, in order for it to infiltrate a foreign sports space, concessions must be made to the local sporting culture. The single most important thread that ran throughout this thesis was that American football could, and has, taken on multiple meanings, which were dependent upon the national context in which it was being played. It emphasizes the idea of globalization as glocalization; that the local is important in the global aspirations of the sport of American football. British American football has placed a uniquely British stamp on an otherwise purely American pastime.
Laterality, 2018
In ‘Football and Manliness,’ Thomas B. Oates offers a prescient intersectional feminist analysis of the central symbolic place of the National Football League in U.S. culture and politics. In each chapter, Oates provides close readings of various popular media texts, which, despite remaining secondary to the spectacle of televised games, profoundly shape the ideological work the NFL performs in relation to dominant constructions of race, gender, sexuality, and class. These texts include ctionalized cinematic and televised melodramas depicting the internal dynamics of professional football teams; sports media coverage of the NFL draft; self-help books authored by noted NFL coaches; computer-based games, including fantasy league football and Madden NFL; and lastly, the investigative reportage that ignited the NFL concussion scandal. As Oates succinctly posits, “these texts produce a complex but ultimately coherent set of stories about gender, race, and contemporary capitalism” (20). F...
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De Montfort University, 2020
To the best of my knowledge I confirm that the work in this thesis is my original work undertaken for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Arts, Design and Humanities, De Montfort University. I confirm that no material of this thesis has been submitted for any other degree or qualification at any other university. I also declare that parts of this thesis have been submitted for publications and conferences.
Football and the Boundaries of History
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The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The Stolen Championship of the Pottsville Maroons: A Case Study in the Emergence of Modern Football
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Few sports afficianados (and even fewer scholars) are likely to have heard of the Pottsville Maroons. The Maroons were one of a myriad of now-defunct teams that played for the early National Football League. They were typical of these early professional teams in many ways, including their location in a relatively small city, their short life span, and the informality of their season scheduling. However, they were atypical of small city teams in several important ways. They were much more successful on the gridiron than most, boasting records of 10-2 and 16-2-1 in 1925 and 1926, respectively. Some argue that the Maroons won the 1925 NFL championsip. They were so popular with their fans that many league teams (including the New York Giants!) gave up their home field advantage in order to enjoy the larger gates in or around Pottsville. The tremendous enthusiasm for football in Pottsville can be explained in large part by certain specific social characteristics of Pottsville and its surrounding area. In addition, the Maroons represented a transitional phenomenon from amateur teams composed largely of local players to the professional teams recruiting players from outside the local area.