Course outline (Subject to change): Please complete readings before class

1 - September 14 – Introduction to the course, Colonial and Early National Sports Culture; Baseball’s Origins and Golden Age

– Albert G. Spalding, America’s National Game (1911)

2 – September 21– The College Game: The Early Development, Growth, and Crisis of American Football

– “Football Unfit Game says President Eliot,” New York Times (February 3, 1906)

3 – September 28 – A Game for a Purpose: Basketball’s Invention and Early Development

– “Where Basketball was Invented: The History of Basketball”

4 - October 5 – The Depression, War, and Sport

5 – October 12 – The Color Line and American Sport

– Jules Tygiel, “The Negro Leagues,” OAH Magazine of History (1992)

6 – October 19 – Sports Protest: 1968, and Beyond

– David K. Wiggins, “’The year of awakening’: black athletes, racial unrest and the civil rights movement of 1968,” The International Journal of the History of Sport (1992)

– Andrew Maraniss, “The Mexico City Olympics Protest and the Media,” The Undefeated (2018)

7 - October 26 – The NFL at 100: Origins and Rise of America’s Favorite League

– “Colts' 1958 championship win over Giants voted greatest game,” USA Today (October 2019)

– Jeff Pearlman, “When Trump Made the U.S.F.L. Great Again,” New York Times (October 9, 2018)

– Anthony Gulizia and Jeremy Willis, “How the NFL took over America in 100 years,” ESPN (2019)

8 – November 2 – American Soccer: The World’s Game and the US

– Scott Salter, “How Pelé and the New York Cosmos Changed Soccer,” These Football Times (2015)

– Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, “Soccer will never be a slam dunk in America,” Time (June 30, 2014)

9 – November 9 – Midterm examination

10 – November 16 – Ali, Boxing, and America

– David Remnick, “The Outsized Life of Muhammad Ali,” New Yorker (2016)

– Lewis A. Erenberg, “Rumble in the Jungle”: Muhammad Ali vs. George Foreman in the Age of Global Spectacle,” Journal of Sport History (2012)

11 – November 23 – Documentary: “When We Were Kings” (Leon Gast, 1996)

12 – November 30 – Basketball ABA-Style, the Rise of the NBA

– Michael Murphy, “Remember the ABA,” Houston Chronicle (1996)

– Walter L. LaFeber, “Bittersweet Championship: Michael Jordan, the Chicago Bulls, and International Sports Marketing,” (2009)

– Rick Telander, “Senseless,” Sports Illustrated (May 14, 1990)

13 - December 7 – Fitness: From the “Soft American” to Arnold Schwarzenegger

– John F. Kennedy, “The Soft American,” Sports Illustrated (1960)

– Merrell Noden, “#33 Jim Fixx,” Sports Illustrated (1994)

– Benjamin G. Rader, “The Quest for Self-Sufficiency and the New Strenuosity: Reflections on the Strenuous Life of the 1970s and the 1980s,” Journal of Sport History (1991)

– Richard W. Johnston, “Men and the Myth,” Sports Illustrated (1974)

Essay due in class

14 – December 14 – Women and Modern Sport: From Unequal Standards to the Battle of the Sexes

– Jane Curry and Marjorie Bingham, “American Women and Sport,” OAH Magazine of History (Summer, 1992)

– Curry Kilpatrick, “There she is, Ms. America,” Sports Illustrated (1973)

– Charlie Bevis, “Four Girls in Spring 1974: The First Foot-Soldiers of Female Inclusion in Little League Baseball,” Baseball Research Journal (2022)

15 – December 21 – The US and the Olympics

– John Soares, “The Cold War on Ice,” The Brown Journal of World Affairs (2008)

16 – December 28 – Final Examination

does not apply 

-  Attendance and participation, occasional pop quizzes (‘perfect attendance’ 0 or 1 absences) – 10%

-  Mid-term Exam November 9 – 30% ?   

-  Essay – 30% (3-4 pages, typed, double-spaced. Topic: “A Significant Moment in American Sports.” Due December 14 in class (please do not email your essay). More details to be announced in class. Late essays (10% grade reduction per week – December 29, 10% reduction; January 5, 20% reduction) ?    

-  Final – December 28 – 30%

See course syllabus