football 
-
SOURCE: Texas Monthly
3/7/2021
A University of Texas Report Will Find That ‘The Eyes of Texas’ Has “No Racist Intent”
A University of Texas Commission's report will likely serve as reinforcement for the administration's decision to keep the tradition of playing "The Eyes of Texas" after football games, pleasing many rich donors and angering student activists.
-
SOURCE: The Atlantic
3/6/2021
Conservative Donors Have Their Own Cancel Culture
"In 1903, the two students premiered their song at an annual campus minstrel show, where white musicians performed it in blackface. It became a tradition at subsequent minstrel shows and was soon embedded in the university’s culture. Some people apparently want to keep it there forever."
-
SOURCE: Texas Tribune
3/1/2021
“UT Needs Rich Donors”: Emails Show Wealthy Alumni Supporting “Eyes of Texas” Threatened to Pull Donations
A number of wealthy University of Texas alumni have threatened to withhold donations unless "The Eyes of Texas," a song with roots traced to blackface minstrelsy and the Lost Cause mythology, is reinstated as the Longhorns' postgame anthem.
-
SOURCE: The Nation
2/23/2021
Japanese Internment, Football, and a Legendary Team
Dave Zirin's Edge of Sports podcast hosts Bradford Pearson, the author of "The Eagles of Heart Mountain," the story of a group of interned Japanese American teens whose football team dominated the state of Wyoming.
-
SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
2/5/2021
The Buccaneers Embody Tampa’s Love of Pirates. Is that a Problem?
by Jamie L.H. Goodall
"Perhaps time has dulled us to the atrocities committed by these 17th and 18th century outlaws. Or perhaps it’s the fact that if pirates of the Golden Age were bloodthirsty, so too were the nations who opposed them."
-
SOURCE: Made By History at The Washington Post
8/12/2020
As College Football Grapples with the Coronavirus, it also Confronts its Racist History
by Bennett Parten
It's no coincidence that the south is the heartland of college football. The region first embraced the game as an expression of southern honor culture. While southern colleges were slow to adopt integrated rosters, today's Southeastern Conference teams rely heavily on the unpaid labor of Black players.
-
SOURCE: Made By History at The Washington Post
8/11/2020
Black College Athletes are Rising up Against the Exploitative System they Labor In
by Amira Rose Davis
While athletes’ collegiate activism in the 1960s and 1970s produced limited wins, today’s movement echoes many of the still-unanswered demands of that time.
-
SOURCE: Washington Post
7/28/2020
Playing College Football in 2020 Would Continue to Devalue Black Lives
by Eddie R. Cole
In many ways, the disproportionate number of black student-athletes preparing for their football seasons have become the figurative lab mice as some college leaders assess the feasibility of in-person classes.
-
SOURCE: Washington Post
7/28/2020
History Meets Mythology: Debate Stirs over Push to Rename T.C. Williams High School, of ‘Remember the Titans’ Fame
Thomas Chambliss Williams served as superintendent of Alexandria City Public Schools from the 1930s to the 1960s. He resisted integration, argued black and white students learn differently and fired a black cafeteria worker when she joined a NAACP lawsuit compelling Alexandria to end segregation.
-
SOURCE: Baltimore Sun
7/15/2020
University of Texas won’t Drop Song with Racist History as Players Requested
University of Texas athletes had demanded that the university cease to use the song, which has roots in racist minstrelsy and the words of Robert E. Lee, as an anthem.
-
SOURCE: WTOP
7/13/2020
Where Did The Term ‘Redskins’ Come From?
Monday’s announcement that the D.C. region’s football team would be abandoning the Redskins brand marks the end of a decadeslong push to shift the team away from the historically racist and oppressive term.
-
SOURCE: Washington Post
7/3/2020
A Brief History of The Word ‘Redskin’ And How It Became a Source of Controversy
Its origins extend back to the 18th century, long before it became the name of a football team.
-
SOURCE: Boston Globe
6/23/2020
Cancel the Fall College Football Season
by Victoria L. Jackson
For too long, instead of facilitating the intellectual advancement and economic empowerment of young Black men, college sports have helped make American universities another institution perpetuating the undervaluing of Black lives.
-
SOURCE: Washington Post
4/6/2020
Myron Rolle, now a doctor treating coronavirus patients, draws on football background in crisis
Myron Rolle’s hands are used to moving from one unalike task to another. He has batted away footballs and wielded a blade in neurosurgery with equal deftness at the top levels, so dealing with the novel coronavirus would be just another stretch, if not for an unsettling major difference: He is being asked to play without a helmet.
-
SOURCE: Washington Post
9/4/19
100 Years of NFL History in Objects
100 years of football history through artifacts from the Pro Football Hall of Fame
-
SOURCE: Christianity Today
God and the Gridiron Game
by Paul Putz and Hunter Hampton
America's obsession with football is nearly as old as the game itself.
-
1-24-16
Review of Julie Des Jardins' "Walter Camp: Football and the Modern Man"
by Luther Spoehr
The "Father of Football" and the "crisis of masculinity."
-
SOURCE: OUPblog
8-4-15
“Deflategate” and the “Father of Football”
by Julie Des Jardins
Today one could argue that the very size and convoluted nature of the NFL rule book is proof of football’s imperfection, but Walter Camp, the father of football, saw this development as progress.
-
SOURCE: NYT
11-14-14
The President Who Never Earned His Varsity Letter
by Michael Beschloss
For a president who never made the front line of his college squad, football played a surprisingly large part in Richard Nixon’s life.
-
SOURCE: WSJ
9-22-14
The Forgotten Story of the Men Who Broke the NFL’s Color Barrier
“No one has bothered to tell this story,” Mr. Greenberg said. “So I said, we’re telling the story through them, and their families.”
News
- House Panel Advances Bill to Study Slavery Reparations
- House Arrest: How An Automated Algorithm Constrained Congress for a Century
- Hank Aaron’s Name Will Replace a Confederate General’s on an Atlanta School
- How Domestic Labor Became Infrastructure
- ‘That Man Makes Me Crazy’: Neil Matkin's Reign at Collin College Draws Scrutiny
- “Containment and Control, Not Care or Cure”: An Interview with Elizabeth Catte on Virginia’s Eugenics Movement
- How White Fears of ‘Negro Domination’ Kept D.C. Disenfranchised for Decades
- The Sun Never Set on the British Empire’s Oppression
- Sounds of Freedom: The Music of Black Liberation
- How Americans Lost Their Fervor for Freedom (Review of Louis Menand)