Americans love sports. We are fanatics who dress in team colors, root, root, root for the home team, and live and die with the success and failure of our favorite athlete. But if we take the time to look beneath the surface and beyond the simple factual question of who won and who lost, we are also presented with some of the most fascinating stories from our nation’s past.
In this new podcast series Professor Matt Andrews goes beyond telling entertaining tales of races won, touchdowns scored, players rounding the bases, and highlights the historical significance of sports in the United States. He explains to us why sports have mattered so much in this country and he reveals how sports have actually changed the course of American history.
Sports are a highlight reel of history. Join us as we explore the stories that are more than just exciting tales of athletic competitions. American Sport is about some of the most compelling moments and significant turning points in American history.
American Sport is created by Professor Matt Andrews and is an original podcast by Trailblazer Studios, Executive Produced by Katye Rone, and Co-produced by Aurelia Belfield and Casey Helmick.
Return of the Great White Hope
In the 1980s, many white Americans invested their emotions in a handful of white athletes—athletes both real and fictional. In the last episode of Season One, we explore the popularity of Larry Bird, Gerry Cooney, and Rocky Balboa in the 1980s—three “Great White Hopes” competing in professional sports that were dominated by black Americans.
Bibliography:
Todd Boyd, Young, Black, Rich, and Famous: The Rise of the NBA, the Hip Hop Invasion, and the Transformation of American Culture (New York: Doubleday, 2003).
J. Anthony Lukas, Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families (New York: Vintage, 1985).
Carlo Rotella, “The Stepping Stone: Larry Holmes, Gerry Cooney, and Rocky,” in Amy Bass, ed., In the Game: Race, Identity, and Sports in the Twentieth Century (New York:” Palgrave, 2005).
2 Jun 2021
Adam v. Eve
Adam v. Eve
The story of the Women’s Sport Revolution in the 1960s and 1970s is really two stories—it is the story of women pushing for access in the American sports world; and it is the story of many men opposing their participation and pushing back. In “Adam v. Eve,” Professor Matt explores what happened when the Modern Feminist Movement and the masculine American sports culture collided.
Bibliography:
Amy Burfoot, First Ladies of Running: 22 Inspiring Profiles of the Rebels, Rule Breakers, and Visionaries Who Changed the Sport Forever (New York: Rodale, 2016).
Jamie Schultz, Qualifying Times: Points of Change in U.S. Women’s Sport (Urban and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2014).
Susan Ware, Game, Set, Match: Billie Jean King and the Revolution in Women’s Sports (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 2011).
26 May 2021
The Russians Are Coming
The Russians Are Coming
The Cold War was a military contest, a fight to secure economic markets, a race for scientific breakthroughs—and it was an athletic competition. Every four years, the Olympic Games provided an arena where American and Soviet athletes could meet and wage a battle for international supremacy. “The Russians are Coming” is the story of hotly contested medal counts, secret political defections, how heroes are made, and why you did the standing broad jump in elementary school.
Bibliography:
Susan Cahn, Coming on Strong: Gender and Sexuality in Twentieth-Century Women’s Sports (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 1994).
David Goldblatt, The Games: A Global History of the Olympic Games (New York and London: W. W. Norton, 2016).*
Allen Guttmann, The Games Must Go On: Avery Brundage and the Olympic Movement (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984).
Toby Rider, Cold War Games: Propaganda, the Olympics, and U.S. Foreign Policy (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2017).
* Special mention to David Goldblatt and his line about getting “tased from a drone”...so good I had to steal it!
19 May 2021
Man is a Free Agent
Man is a Free Agent
For over a century, professional athletes in the United States were the exclusive property of the team that signed them first. In baseball, team owners called it the “reserve system” and they said it was essential for the good of the game. The players called it something else—they said it was “slavery.” In this episode of American Sport, we explore the battle between owners and players that culminated with the birth of free agency in the 1970s (someone, who shall remain anonymous, also urges LeBron James to leave the NBA and create his own pro basketball league).
Bibliography:
John Helyar, Lords of the Realm: The Real History of Baseball (New York: Ballantine Books, 1994).
Marvin Miller, A Whole Different Ball Game: The Inside Story of the Baseball Revolution (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1991).
Jon Pessah, The Game, Inside the Secret World of Major League Baseball’s Power Brokers (New York, Boston, and London: Back Bay Books, 2015).
Brad Snyder, A Well-Paid Slave: Curt Flood’s Fight for Free Agency in Professional Sports (New York: Penguin, 2006).
12 May 2021
The Fight of the Century
The Fight of the Century
On July 4, 1910, in a makeshift wooden boxing arena in Reno, Nevada, a white man named Jim Jeffries climbed into the ring to fight a black man named Jack Johnson, and the nation held its breath. Taking place in an era of Darwinian thought and murderous racial anxieties, the outcome of the “Fight of the Century” caused the death of dozens of Americans and sparked the first nationwide race riot in American history.
Bibliography:
Jack Johnson, My Life: In the Ring and Out (Chicago: National Sports Publishing Co., 1927).
Randy Roberts, Papa Jack: Jack Johnson and the Era of White Hopes (New York: Free Press, 1983).
Jeffrey Sammons, Beyond the Ring: The Role of Boxing in American Society (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1990).
Geoffrey C. Ward, Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson (New York: Random House, 2004).
5 May 2021
USA v. All Y’All
USA v. All Y’All
Where did the Modern Olympic Games comes from? Why do athletes have to compete as representatives of nations? And what would happen if the United States hosted an Olympic Games and nobody showed up? [Spoiler alert: people died]
Bibliography:
Jules Boykoff, Power Games: A Political History of the Olympic Games (New York and London: Verso, 2016).
Mary Dyreson, Making the American Team: Sport, Culture, and the Olympic Experience (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1998).
David Goldblatt, The Games: A Global History of the Olympic Games (New York and London: W. W. Norton, 2016).
Davd E. Martin and Roger W. H. Gynn, The Olympic Marathon: The History and Drama of Sport’s Most Challenging Event (Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics, 2000).
28 Apr 2021
Civil War on the Racetrack
“Civil War on the Racetrack” In the years leading up to the Civil War, North and South put their pride and prestige on the line in a series of intersectional horse races. Fueled by the passions of the debate over slavery in the United States, these were the events that sparked our modern American mania for sport.
Bibliography:
Melvin Adelman, A Sporting Time: New York City and the Rise of Modern Athletics, 1820-1870 (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinoi Press, 1990).
John Eisenberg, The Great Match Race: When North Met South in America’s First Sports Spectacle (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2006).
Benjamin G. Rader, American Sports: From the Age of Folk Games to the Age of Televised Sports (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999).
12 Apr 2021
Trailer
Americans love sports. We are fanatics who dress in team colors, root, root, root for the home team, and live and die with the success and failure of our favorite athlete. But if we take the time to look beneath the surface and beyond the simple factual question of who won and who lost, we are also presented with some of the most fascinating stories from our nation’s past.
In this new podcast series, American Sport, Professor Matt Andrews goes beyond telling entertaining tales of races won, touchdowns scored, players rounding the bases, and highlights the historical significance of sports in the United States. He explains to us why sports have mattered so much in this country and he reveals how sports have actually changed the course of American history.
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