Description
Book SynopsisThe National Football League is one of the most significant cultural engines in contemporary American life. Yet despite intense and near ubiquitous media coverage, commentators rarely turn a critical lens on the league to ask what material and social forces have contributed to its success, and how the NFL has influenced public life in the United States. The editors of and contributors to The NFL examine the league as a culturally, economically, and politically powerful presence in American life. The essays, by established and up-and-coming scholars, explore how the NFL is packaged for commercial consumption, the league's influence on American identity, and its relationship to state and cultural militarism. The NFL is the first collection of critical essays to focus attention on the NFL as a cultural force. It boldly moves beyond popular celebrations of the sport and toward a fuller understanding of football's role in shaping contemporary sport, media, and everyday life. Contribut
Table of Contents Foreword: Football as Mediated Spectacle • Michael Oriard
Introduction: The Political Football: Culture, Critique, and the NFL • Thomas P. Oates and Zack Furness
I Production, Promotion, and Control
1 The Greatest Game Ever Played: An NFL Origin Story • Daniel A. Grano
2 Game Time: A History of the Managerial Authority of the Instant Replay • Dylan Mulvin
3 The Ochocinco Brand: Social Media’s Impact on the NFL’s Institutional Control • Jacob Dittmer
4 New Media and the Repackaging of NFL Fandom • Thomas P. Oates
II Identities, Social Hierarchies, and Cultural Power
5 NFL Sex • Toby Miller
6 Football and “Ghettocentric” Logics? The NFL’s Essentialist Mobilization of Black Bodies• Ronald L. Mower, David L. Andrews, and Oliver J. C. Rick
7 “I Was a Gladiator”: Pain, Injury, and Masculinity in the NFL • Katie Rodgers
8 Masculinity, Race, and Violence in Any Given Sunday • Aaron Baker
9 Spignesi, Sinatra, and the Pittsburgh Steelers: Franco’s Italian Army as an Expression of Ethnic Identity, 1972–1977 • Nicholas P. Ciotola
III Gridirons and Battlefields
10 Offensive Lines: Sport-State Synergy in an Era of Perpetual War • Samantha King
11 NFL Films and the Militarization of Professional Football • Michael L. Butterworth
12 For the Love of National Manhood: Excavating the Cultural Politics and Media Memorializations of Pat Tillman • Kyle W. Kusz
Contributors
Index
