I enjoyed @SITimLayden's essay on football's outsized importance. But since he asked: no, that idea didn't start in the 1940s. It began in the late 19th century, and there's some great scholarship explaining how it became an entrenched part of US culture. A partial reading list: Michael Oriard's writing played a big part in my decision to do sports history, so I gotta list him first amazon.com/Reading-Footba…

I want to add a bit of historical perspective to the details we've learned recently about the toxic culture of intimidation and abuse in Maryland's football program by going back to one of the earliest moments when that style of coaching was publicly challenged: 1954 Nebraska. Back then Nebraska was coached by Bill Glassford. He came to the school in 1949, bringing with him a hard-driving and "merciless" approach that, rather than causing concern, earned him a fawning 1951 profile in the Saturday Evening Post.

Mike Sweeney, Roger Staubach, Bill Bradley, Tim Tebow, David Robinson...who else cultivated a similar public persona?

https://twitter.com/p_emory/status/1015043768964341760

Don't have a Mormon on the list yet, but Dale Murphy definitely belongs. Here's the beginning of a 1986 Jim Murray @latimes column on him:

Before evangelicals had their own versions of “secular” music and movies, they had their own fictional schoolboy athlete. My look at Tom Huntner, an obscure relic of the fundamentalist/neo-evangelical subculture sportianity.com/2018/07/the-fu… From 1946, an ad and review in The Evangelical Beacon for the second Huntner book

I kid you not, Walter Camp died less than two months after this promo was published And yes, observers in 1925 noticed the irony as well. It led to a referendum of sorts on the benefits of exercise.

I can't get over how similar this "visionary leadership" pablum is to the way business leaders of the 1920s (and their journalistic hype men and women) talked about themselves and their business principles nytimes.com/2018/05/24/us/… For example, this isn't new at all. Go read business leaders of the 1920s talk about how they based their business leadership on the Golden Rule. The point was to serve society (or rather convince ppl you were serving society) so that ppl wouldn't clamor for structural change.

Miscellaneous moments in football and national anthem history, a thread. In 1936, this gentleman wanted severe reprimands for college football players who did not pause their game when flag-raising ceremonies were conducted at the same time as the opening kick-off In 1948 a columnist in the Los Angeles Times lamented the increasing tendency to play the anthem before sporting events. It cheapened true patriotism, he said, plus it led to "atrocious" musical performances

In my research I don't think I've come across a more interesting person than Nick Chiles of Topeka, Kansas—editor, entrepreneur, hell-raiser, civil rights activist. Historians will likely give him more attention soon. In the meantime, this thread has a few Chiles highlights👇 Chiles moved from South Carolina to Kansas in the 1880s. He made his way into public life through Topeka's black underworld, operating a saloon. By the 1890s he was enough of a presence in Topeka that white newspapers regularly complained about the "notorious negro jointist"