Episode 6: College Football from Muscular Christianity to the Cultural Wars

In this episode I return to the topic of sports and college football. I outline how sport became socially acceptable during the 19th Century thanks to Muscular Christians and political leaders, operating as a form of character development. And then I turn to how coaches and political leaders worked hand-in-hand to position the cultural values of college football as essential to Cold War America, and maintaining order amidst the upheaval of the New Left in the late-1960s and into the Culture Wars of the last 40-years. In this episode I mention a few things I have published. The citations are below:“The Anti-Intellectual coach: The Cultural Politics of Coaching from the New Left to the present,” Journal of Sport and Social Issues (May 2022). https://doi.org/10.1177%2F01937235221098915“Emissaries of Toughness: How Coaches Teamed with U.S. Presidents to Politicize College Football during the Cold War” in: Sports and the American Presidency: From Theodore Roosevelt to Donald Trump, eds. Adam Burns and Rivers Gambrell, (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2022). “College football gives conservatives their own safe space on campus,” Made By History Blog, Washington Post, 1 September 2017. Get full access to History + Sport at amcgregor.substack.com/subscribe