Wait until Next Year
Sports History and the Quest for Respect
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5705313 |
|---|---|
| Authors | A Burgos (0000-0002-6793-4591) |
| Year | 2014 |
| Volume | 101 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 176-180 |
| Publication date | 2014-06-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of American History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-8723 • E-ISSN: 1945-2314 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/jahist/jau195 |
| OpenAlex | W2318260483 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
Wait until next year” is a familiar expression heard in sporting circles as fans, journalists, athletes, and front-office personnel reflect on the state of their team(s), diagnose what went right and wrong, formulate a new plan of action, and forecast their teams’ hopes for the next season. Amy Bass has done sports history scholars a valuable service in noting important trends within the growing literature on sport being produced by journalists and historians, in pointing out areas that need further exploration, and in lamenting that the subfield remains underappreciated within the larger field of history. The last academic season started with intriguing possibilities for sports historians and scholars. A group of scholars (faculty and graduate students) formed the Sports Studies Caucus within the American Studies Association. Two top-level research universities announced searches for chair positions in sports history, portending an excellent season for those plying in the field. The sports history arena can seem awfully crowded. The lure of venturing in lies partly in the field's everydayness and its seeming accessibility. The material is plentiful: more than one major U.S. media network is now dedicated solely to sports coverage; major journalists and broadcasters regularly take to the keyboard to hammer out works in sports history; scholars from other academic disciplines enter the field to produce their own historical or cultural analyses of sports. Amateur, collegiate, and professional sports provide plenty of hot topics for everyone to offer their comment, whether about the meteoric rise (known as “Linsanity”) of Jeremy Lin of the Houston Rockets; the worthiness of the former National Football League (nfl) quarterback Tim Tebow; Alex Rodriguez's use of steroids during his career with the New York Yankees; the basketball prowess of Brittney Griner; the National Basketball Association veteran Jason Collins's and the nfl prospect Michael Sam's declarations of their homosexuality; or the campaign to strip Lance Armstrong of his Tour de France titles due to doping. Yet that popular accessibility is also what tends to crowd out the seriousness of sports history within academic units and history departments. It is ironic that at many of the same universities where tens of thousands gather in person during fall weekends for football and where millions more watch on television, the study of sport as a cultural institution does not have a similar hold within the humanities: we are all witnesses to our students, local residents, and even fellow faculty flocking to the stadium. One lesson offered by Bass's essay is that the place of sport in American studies and U.S. history is actually smaller than in its place within U.S. society, culturally and economically speaking
Amateur · Athletes · Caucus · Media studies · Political science · Politics · Public relations · Sociology · History · Law · Sport and Mega-Event Impacts · Sports, Gender, and Society
| Citations per year | 0.4 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2016 - 2018 (3) |
| Highly cited | No |