During the late 1950’s and throughout the 1960’s, American football has a bad reputation for being mean, cruel and had plenty of skull bashing in it. The nation was going through a societal upheaval that fit into the thinking of people towards football. The change came from a small group that called themselves NFL films.
They would produce short films that showed the good parts of football and the winning portions of the game and eventually people starting taking notice. It didn’t hurt anything that Richard Nixon was running for president and he needed something to hang his hat on that was different and would strike a chord with the American people.
Politicians began to take notice of the game and started using words that were part of the football jargon. People took sides in games for one of the first times as government had teams across the land, entertainment showed their biases of teams, and celebrities were all part of the mass audience that brought football alive.
Politicians outsmarted each other as Louisiana got a team in order for their vote on the game itself. Others whiffed as they waited too long to get involved. Football brought them all together. All facets of life took an interest in the game. This book is well researched but the bottom line is the book is loaded with a very large vocabulary, from a college professor, that the average reader will blow right through and not comprehend parts of the book.
The book is hard to read but has tons of information regarding society, politics, and football.
This is a book from the University of Illinois Press and it was sent to me in exchange for a fair and honest review.
