Philosophy Lyceum at MTSU

Bigger than Football: 

Fan Anxiety and Memory in the Racial Present 

Erin C. Tarver Oxford College of Emory University 

Understanding fans’ responses to football players’ protests against police brutality requires recognizing the historic and contemporary role of football fandom in managing racial and gendered anxieties. Tarver analyzes three distinct uses of memory by white football fans as they work through the anxiety that results when the sport fails to work in the way they expect. Drawing on opposing views of football taken by the American philosophers Josiah Royce and George Santayana, and on contemporary social science research on the behavior of sports fans, she shows that contemporary fan hostility to protesting players is consistent with the social ills that have surrounded football since the era of Royce’s critique.

Friday, February 15, 2019 at 5:00 pm, COE, Room 164
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Super Bowl venue Atlanta stokes a civil rights conversation for some players
It is doubtful that the N.F.L. owners understood, when they decided early in 2016 to play the Super Bowl here, how the city of Atlanta, as the cradle of the civil rights movement, would serve as a natural forum for the many complicated social and racial issues that have roiled the league in recent years.

Now, many players are showing that the moment is not lost on them.

On Tuesday, Devin McCourty, a team captain on the New England Patriots, and several of his teammates boarded a bus to pay homage at the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historical Park in the Sweet Auburn neighborhood of Atlanta.

“Today, when we have a little time off, guys are searching for something to do so they’re not just sitting in a hotel room,” McCourty said Tuesday. “With this game, everything is focused on playing Sunday. But when you step back and think about it, what better way to be on this stage, with this platform, but also to get a big dose of what’s really important.”

Often, the Super Bowl city is merely a prop for the game and parties. The Patriots, who face the Los Angeles Rams on Sunday, have played for the championship in Minneapolis, Houston and Glendale in the past five years. But Atlanta, and what it has stood for, resonates on a deeper level in light of contemporary issues in the league... (continues)
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The Super Bowl That Trump’s America Deserves

The post-truth era has found its post-truth sport.

I’m not really sure why they’re bothering with a Super Bowl this year. Sure, a bunch of people will make a boatload of money, tens of millions of us will reflexively tune in and we’ll find rare common ground over how cheesy the halftime show is. But are we believers anymore? Will we really see the winner as the winner — or just as the charmed survivor of a grossly tarnished process? Be it the New England Patriots or the Los Angeles Rams, the team will have an asterisk after its name. And that asterisk is a big fat sign of the times.

I’m referring, of course, to the miserable officiating that’s arguably the reason the Patriots beat the Kansas City Chiefs and the Rams beat the New Orleans Saints, leading to the matchup in this coming Sunday’s season-finale game. The Rams in particular were blessed by the referees, who failed to note and penalize a glaring case of pass interference in the climactic minutes. I needn’t describe what happened. Footage of it has been replayed as extensively and analyzed as exhaustively as the Zapruder film.

And it has prompted an intensity of protest, a magnitude of soul searching and a depth of cynicism that go well beyond the crime in question. That’s where the feelings about the Super Bowl and the mood of America converge... (continues)

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See "Against football" and other contrarian posts in the sidebar under Our Games... another NFL CTE victim...