Brand NFL: Making and Selling America's Favorite Sport (Caravan Book)

Professional football today is a $6 billion sports entertainment industry. In this astute field-level view of the National Football League since 1960, Michael Oriard looks closely at the development of the sport and at the image of the NFL and its unique place in American life. At the heart of this story is a question with no simple answer: has the extraordinary commercializing and ''branding'' of NFL football since the late 1980s ironically weakened the cultural power of a sport whose appeal for more than a century was fundamentally noncommercial? "Professional football in the twenty-first century is a $6 billion sports entertainment industry. In this field-level view of the National Football League since 1960-covering the "modern NFL" led by Pete Rozelle and the "new NFL" led by Paul Tagliabue - Michael Oriard looks closely at the development of the sport and the image of the NFL and its unique place in American life. At the heart of this story is a question with no simple answer: has the extraordinary commercializing and "branding" of NFL football since the late 1980s ironically weakened the cultural power of a sport whose appeal for more than a century was fundamentally noncommercial?" "Oriard traces the evolution of the Super Bowl, the development of NFL Films and ESPN, the rise of the commissioner as corporate CEO, the management of the demands of players, changing attitudes toward race, and the roles of iconic figures such as Vince Lombardi, Joe Namath, and Deion Sanders. What we know as NFL football, Oriard argues, includes what the players themselves do, but it is also in great part how they are represented on television and in other media." "As a member of the Kansas City Chiefs from 1970 through 1973 who lost his job at the end of the first players' strike, Oriard offers unique insight as both insider and historian. Marketing the game as entertainment rather than sport makes the NFL ripe for popular consumption. It also, Oriard warns, risks alienating those passionate fans drawn to the game on the field and its larger-than-life heroes."--Jacket

In this astute field-level view of the National Football League since 1960, Michael Oriard looks closely at the development of the sport and at the image of the NFL and its unique place in American life. New to the paperback edition is Oriard's analysis of the offseason labor negotiations and their potential effects on the future of the sport, and his account of how the NFL is dealing with the latest research on concussions and head injuries.

The Washington Post - Jonathan Yardley

[Oriard] is scarcely the first former player to write about the game—Jerry Kramer's Instant Replay (1968), published while its author was still a member of the Green Bay Packers, remains to this day the best book about football qua football—but the combination of his playing experience and his deep knowledge of the league's inner business workings makes for a unique and useful point of view. Much of the material in the first two-thirds of the book will be familiar to readers of Michael MacCambridge's America's Game (2004), the best history of pro football to date, but his discussion of what can fairly be called the game's larger meaning is especially interesting and insightful.

Contents......Page 8 Introduction......Page 12 1 The Creation of the Modern NFL in the 1960s......Page 21 2 No Freedom, No Football......Page 66 3 The End of the Rozelle Era......Page 106 4 The New NFL......Page 151 5 Football as Product......Page 186 6 Football in Black and White......Page 221 Conclusion......Page 261 Notes......Page 270 Acknowledgments......Page 320 B......Page 322 D......Page 324 F......Page 325 H......Page 326 K......Page 327 L......Page 328 M......Page 329 N......Page 330 P......Page 332 R......Page 333 S......Page 334 V......Page 336 Z......Page 337 The evolution of how the NFL is marketed as entertainment rather than sport is detailed in a study that looks closely at the development of the sport and its unique place in American life.