Pigskin Nation: How the NFL Remade American Politics (Sport and Society)

This book explores professional football’s rising popularity in the 1960s and its simultaneous promotion by the NFL as “what makes this country great.” Taking the NFL seriously as a producer of culture—it boasted a publishing house, movie studio, and lobbyists—reveals how it used its status as the national pastime to foment broad debate. The book then explores how political influencers capitalized on that popularity by sending candidates to games, encouraging players and coaches to run for office, and stage-managing conventions that conveyed competence through effective television presentation. Middle Americans might vote for politicians who liked the game; centrist players became engaged democratic citizens; traditionalist coaches and radical athletes suddenly had a platform. Though this field tilted right, politicians on the left saw no contradiction between loving the game and standing for civil rights. This interweaving of football and politics does not reflect a dumbing-down of American politics or merely replicate the standard narrative of conservative realignment: no single participant in this scrimmage won a dominant political meaning for football. But Ronald Reagan built his appeal in 1980 around the romanticized role of George Gipp, making clear that a cluster of images promoted in the ‘60s by the NFL, and created collectively over the next decade, could and would still serve as a resonant symbol through the 80s and beyond. Cast as the ultimate hardhats, football players of the 1960s seemed to personify a crewcut traditional manhood that channeled the Puritan work ethic. Yet, despite a social upheaval against such virtues, the National Football League won over all of America—and became a cultural force that recast politics in its own smashmouth image. Jesse Berrett explores pro football's new place in the zeitgeist of the 1960s and 1970s. The NFL's brilliant harnessing of the sports-media complex, combined with a nimble curation of its official line, brought different visions of the same game to both Main Street and the ivory tower. Politicians, meanwhile, spouted gridiron jargon as their handlers co-opted the NFL's gift for spectacle and mythmaking to shape a potent new politics that in essence became pro football. Governing, entertainment, news, elections, celebrity—all put aside old loyalties to pursue the mass audience captured by the NFL's alchemy of presentation, television, and high-stepping style. An invigorating appraisal of a dynamic era, Pigskin Nation reveals how pro football created the template for a future that became our present.| Cover Title Page Copyright Contents Acknowledgments Introduction: Football's Taking Over PART I. MAKING FOOTBALL IMPORTANT 1. No Football Fans, Just Football Intellectuals 2. Search and Destroy 3. The NFL's Role in American History (Somebody's Gotta Be Kidding) PART II. MAKING FOOTBALL POLITICAL 4. The Kennedy/Lombardi School 5. A Real Coup with the Sports Fans 6. I Really Believed in the Man 7. Out of Their League 8. Right Coach, Wrong Game Epilogue: Hollywood Ending Notes Bibliography Index | "A superb cultural history."— Publisher's Weekly "Jesse Berrett's Pigskin Nation is an insightful account of how professional football intersected with politics between 1966 and 1974, and how the sport "became both a metaphor for American achievement and an effective means of reaching voters."" — Journal of American History "The book is extensively researched throughout, and Berrett includes copious notes, which will prove helpful for sports historians and general readers alike. Recommended." — Choice |Jesse Berrett earned a PhD in History at the University of California, Berkeley. He has worked as a rock critic, television columnist, and book reviewer. He teaches history at University High School in San Francisco. "When we think about "the '60s, " most of us know where the era's major confrontations took place--outside the Pentagon, on college campuses, in the streets of Chicago. Not on the sidelines of a football field. Yet football was the sport of the decade. What did it say that Americans craved regular doses of televised but rule-bound mayhem at the same time that real violence involving Americans roughly the same age was taking place half a world away? The game's militaristic aura suggests a simple story: brutish, crewcut traditionalism opposing itself to the gentle, peace-loving vibe of hippie protestors. Whatever your political perspective, the NFL tried to convince you that you could enjoy the game. Pigskin Nation argues that we can better understand the decade's political battles by paying attention to these collisions between football and many different people's visions of America. The NFL's attempts to define football to America at large produced a sports-entertainment complex that helped define "the new politics." In a society where Americans across the political spectrum were busily "politicizing" things, the NFL itself, players, coaches, and fans--some as prominent as the President and Vice-President--leveraged the game's political implications to shape a post-'60s language built on spectacle. Politics and sports and celebrity and news all became part of a grander cycle focused less on traditional party loyalties and more on presentation, television, and style. Pigskin Nation tells the story of how the spectacle of football made its way into politics and culture and created a new template for the future"-- Provided by publisher "When we think about "the '60s," most of us know where the era's major confrontations took place--outside the Pentagon, on college campuses, in the streets of Chicago. Not on the sidelines of a football field. Yet football was the sport of the decade. What did it say that Americans craved regular doses of televised but rule-bound mayhem at the same time that real violence involving Americans roughly the same age was taking place half a world away? The game's militaristic aura suggests a simple story: brutish, crewcut traditionalism opposing itself to the gentle, peace-loving vibe of hippie protesters. Whatever your political perspective, the NFL tried to convince you that you could enjoy the game. Pigskin Nation argues that we can better understand the decade's political battles by paying attention to these collisions between football and many different people's visions of America. The NFL's attempts to define football to America at large produced a sports-entertainment complex that helped define "the new politics." In a society where Americans across the political spectrum were busily "politicizing" things, the NFL itself, players, coaches, and fans--some as prominent as the President and Vice-President--leveraged the game's political implications to shape a post-'60s language built on spectacle. Politics and sports and celebrity and news all became part of a grander cycle focused less on traditional party loyalties and more on presentation, television, and style. Pigskin Nation tells the story of how the spectacle of football made its way into politics and culture and created a new template for the future"-- Provided by publisher