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Chronicle of a (Football) Death Foretold: The Imminent Demise of a National Pastime?

ScholarsArchive at Oregon State University

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Title Chronicle of a (Football) Death Foretold: The Imminent Demise of a National Pastime?
Names Oriard, Michael (creator)
Date Issued 2014-03-26 (iso8601)
Note This is an author's peer-reviewed final manuscript, as accepted by the publisher. The published article is copyrighted by Taylor & Francis and can be found at: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/fhsp20#.U-k0mWPhz5w.
Abstract Football today, most conspicuously at the professional level (National Football
League) is the economic and cultural colossus of American spectator sports. To
speak of its “life cycle,” then, would seem nonsensical: although it has a clear
“birth,” to speak of its “death” might seem ridiculously premature. Yet recent
developments make imagining such a death possible. This essay will explore two
current controversies—over “athletes’ rights” at the collegiate level and the
dangers of traumatic head injury at all levels—that have the potential to destroy
American football at least in the form we know it today. And it will trace the
factors behind those controversies—the insistent and persistent “amateurism” of
American college athletes and the fundamental violence of the game itself—back
to their origins. What might end American football as we know it was present in
the game from nearly the beginning.
Genre Article
Topic American football
Identifier Oriard, M. (2014). Chronicle of a (Football) Death Foretold: The Imminent Demise of a National Pastime?. International Journal of the History of Sport, 31(1-2), 120-133. doi:10.1080/09523367.2013.842557

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