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Pigskin nation : how the NFL remade American politics / Jesse Berrett.

by Berrett, Jesse Isaac, author.

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Urbana : University of Illinois Press, [2018]

National Football League -- History -- 20th century.

Football -- United States -- History -- 20th century.

Football -- Political aspects -- United States.

Political culture -- United States -- History -- 20th century.

9780252083327 (paperback ; alkaline paper)

0252083326 (paperback ; alkaline paper)

Sport and society.

xii, 287 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm.

Introduction: Football's taking over -- part 1. Making football important. No football fans, just football intellectuals -- Search and destroy -- The NFL's role in American history (somebody's gotta be kidding) -- part 2. Making football political. The Kennedy/Lombardi school -- A real coup with the sports fans -- I really believed in the man -- Out of their league -- Right coach, wrong game -- Epilogue: Hollywood ending.

"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"--

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