February 6-7, 2016: AmericanStudying Super Bowl L

[For each of the last few years, I’ve used Super Bowl week to AmericanStudy some football and/or sports topics. This week, I’ve focused on five football debates I haven’t already covered in those series, leading up to this special post two complementary Super Bowl L storylines!]

Consider this a Guest Post of ours, because when it comes to Super Bowl L and its two most prominent and polarizing figures, I couldn’t possibly AmericanStudy them any better than did two scholars on the great Sport in American History blog:

Andrew McGregor on “Peyton Manning: The NFL’s Great White Hope”;

And Kate Aguilar on “The Man in the Mirror: Black Culture, White Privilege, and Supermen in the Age of Cam Newton.”

Before you settle down for the spectacle, the commercials, the Coldplay, and oh yeah the football, I urge you to read those two great examples of SportsStudying.

Next series starts Monday,

Ben

PS. What do you think?

February 5, 2016: Football Debates: Banning the Sport

[For each of the last few years, I’ve used Super Bowl week to AmericanStudy some football and/or sports topics. This week, I’ll focus on five football debates I haven’t already covered in those series, leading up to a special post on a few Super Bowl L storylines!]

Two of the many complex and compelling layers to a campus-wide conversation.

Throughout the Spring 2015 semester, Fitchburg State’s Center for Conflict Studies hosted a series of presentations, panels, and conversations focused on football, and more exactly on issues of violence and other controversies linked to that hugely popular sport. As I noted in this week’s series intro, I’ve blogged about football in Super Bowl series each of the last couple years, and have engaged briefly in those series with many of the issues that became part of these campus-wide conversations: concussions and brain trauma; rape and sexual violence; racism; the exploitation of college athletes. As much as I hope for this space to be conversational and communal, though, the truth is that it’s always framed and driven at least initially by my own interests, ideas, and perspectives, and so these semester-long Fitchburg State conversations about football and its debates added a great deal to my own perspective in multiple ways.

One way was through those conversations that were planned, such as a late April roundtable discussion of the highly controversial question, “Should football be banned?” The roundtable featured the kinds of interdisciplinary voices and connections that represent the best of Fitchburg State as a scholarly community, with presentations by philosopher David Svolba, Director of Athletics Sue Lauder, sociologist G.L. Mazard Wallace, exercise physiologist Monica Maldari, and my English Studies colleague Kisha Tracy. But besides the value of putting these voices and frames in conversation, the roundtable also allowed each presenter to develop a particular part of his or her identity at compelling length: Monica, for example, talked about how her discipline and her knowledge impacted her family’s decision not to let their young son play football; while G.L. highlighted how we can’t discuss football without addressing the issues of ethics, race, work and labor, and social obligations that form key parts of his teaching and scholarship.

Alongside those planned conversations, however, and offering an importantly complementary window into attitudes about and perceptions of these issues, were more impromptu debates that sprung up online. The most interesting such debate came in the wake of the aforementioned roundtable, in emails to the entire university community, and featured three voices: a Fitchburg State assistant football coach, who had attended the roundtable and offered his impassioned defense of the sport and its value; a Fitchburg State hockey coach, who had likewise attended and argued for the value of the roundtable itself as a layered scholarly conversation; and one of the event’s organizers, who followed up both emails in hopes of keeping the conversation going beyond that event and this spring’s series. These messages reminded us all that there are individuals, in our community and in every one, directly impacted by such debates and their potential outcomes and effects—the players most especially, in every sense, but lots of others as well. But they also made clear that in our 21^st century moment, important public conversations don’t have to and can’t happen simply in individual places and times; they have to continue online, and I’d love for you to share any responses to help this one continue here!

Super Bowl post this weekend,

Ben

PS. What do you think?

February 4, 2016: Football Debates: Missouri Activism Update

[For each of the last few years, I’ve used Super Bowl week to AmericanStudy some football and/or sports topics. This week, I’ll focus on five football debates I haven’t already covered in those series, leading up to a special post on a few Super Bowl L storylines!]

On the latest twist in one of 2015’s biggest stories, and why it’s vital to resist it.

In one of my 2015 wrap up posts, I linked the inspiring protest by University of Missouri football players to the broader trend of campus protests, many of them linked to the #BlackLivesMatter movement and related issues. I stand by what I wrote in that post’s concluding paragraph, and would go even further—the Missouri football protest is one of the most unique and significant (and successful) examples of activism in American sports we’ve ever seen, and deserves not only our respect and praise but also our collective memory as one of the year’s—indeed, one of the young century’s—most meaningful collective actions.

If a Missouri state legislator has his way, however, the football protest’s legacy could be something quite different. Republican Representative Rick Brattin proposed a bill (co-sponsored by Rep. Kurt Bahr) that would strip athletic scholarships from any student athlete at a public university who “calls, incites, supports, or participates in any strike,” as well as fining any coaches or staff members who encourage or enable such student protests (as, of course and inspiringly, did Missouri head coach Gary Pinkel). As the ESPN.com story hyperlinked above under “Republican Representative…” notes, the bill runs afoul of both the 1^st Amendment and the actual funding of the University of Missouri’s athletic department (which comes from internal revenue and not state appropriations), and is thus perhaps more of a symbolic response to the football protests than an actual policy proposal. But even as the former, it’s a deeply troubling step and one that demands our attention and response.

I can’t imagine a clearer and compelling such response to the bill than that provided by Missouri football player and protest leader Ian Simon (also quoted in that ESPN.com article): “They want to call us student-athletes, but they keep us out of the student part of it. I’m more than just a football player…Our sport is just a small part of who we are.” Indeed, perhaps the most troubling aspect of Brattin’s bill is the implicit but crystal clear assumption that college athletes are brought to campus and supported solely to participate in their sports, and that if they step outside that role, they can and should be stripped of their support. Given how much more money is made off of big-time college athletes (and especially football players) than they are ever compensated (in any form), this attitude is particularly galling. But in any case, the simple fact is that the vast, vast majority of college football players will never play professionally—meaning that their time in college is instead, as for their peers, a chance to prepare them for the rest of their lives. I shudder to think what life and world Brattin believes they should be prepared for.

Last debate tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think?