Football, Culture and Power

This book brings together scholars, writers and commentators to examine the relationship between football, violence and the larger relations of power in which we all live our lives. Within the context of the NFL and the structural conditions in which the NFL has emerged, this book explores issues of racism, sexism and homophobia as a window into the social, political and cultural imprint of America's national pastime. The book argues that the NFL reveals a collective psychic participation, by which our subjectivity is formed within historical systems of violence, power, and hierarchy. The NFL's participation in and production of hegemonic masculinity, alongside its practices of racism, sexism, heterosexism, and ableism, allows us to think deeply about the historical and contemporary systems of violence we are invested in and entertained by. Football becomes a cultural text to examine and learn from.

David J. Leonard is a Professor at Washington State University, USA and author of After Artest: The NBA and the Assault on Blackness. Kimberly B. George is a Ph.D. student in Ethnic Studies at UC San Diego, USA. She is also a writing consultant and an entrepreneur of alternative forms of critical social theory based education. Wade Davis is a former NFL player, educator, writer and public speaker on gender, race, and LGBT rights. He is an NFL diversity consultant, a former surrogate for President Obama, and the recipient of an Honorary Doctorate of Public Service from Northeastern University, USA.

1. Football, its Narratives, and Their Challenges 2. Look Away: On the Racial, Sexual, and Cultural Politics of the NFL 3. Ballers without Blackness: The NFL's Suppression of Black Culture 4. Derelictum Ex Nihilo: Origins and Beginnings in The Blind Side 5. God-Fans of the Gridiron: Madden, Fantasy, Football, and Simulation 6. 4th & G(l)o(b)al: Origins, Evolution & Implications of a Globalized NFL 7. Fabled Futures: Migration and Mobility for Samoans in American Football 8. Everybody's All-Americans: High School Football and the U.S. Military 9. Gender, Violence, and Brain Injury In and Out of the NFL: What Counts As Harm? 10. A societal mirror and a force for change: the NFL and its response to domestic violence 11. In Dialogue: On Sports, Sports Activism, Sexual Freedom and Other Types of Liberation 12. Michael Sam and the Sport of Queer Failure 13. 'U Mad Bro?' NFL Player Use of Social Media in Contentious Conversation 14. The NFL, Activism, and #BlackLivesMatter 15. A Feminist Football Fan: On the Psychic Life of Spectatorship