Synopses & Reviews
Is football an athletic contest or a social event? Is it a game of skill, a test of manhood, or merely an organized brawl? Michael Oriard, a former professional player, asks these and other intriguing questions in Reading Football, the first contemporary book about football's formative years. American football began in the 1870s as a game to be played, not watched. Within a brief ten years, it had become a great public spectacle with an immense following, a phenomenon caused primarily by the voluminous commentary about the game conducted in popular newspapers and magazines. Oriard shows how this constant narrative in football's early years developed many different stories about what the game meant: football as pastime, as the sport of gentlemen, as a science, as a game of rules and their infringements. He shows how football became a series of cultural stories about power, luck, strategy, and deception. These different interpretations have been magnified by football's current omnipresence on television. According to Oriard, televised football now plays a cultural role of enormous importance for men, yet within the field of cultural studies the influence of football has been ignored until now.
Review
Oriard's thesis is refreshingly original.
Nation
Review
A well-researched, fascinating ride through football history that will be enjoyed by scholars and fans alike.
Philadelphia Inquirer
Review
Michael Oriard's important book is a welcome, extremely insightful cultural history of football's early decades.
American Historical Review
Review
[A] careful, fascinating study of football's emerging importance at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth.
Journal of Southern History
Review
Reading Football is a playbook to understanding America.
Robert Lipsyte, sports columnist for The New York Times
Synopsis
The first contemporary book about football's formative years. Oriard, a former professional football player, examines how American football changed from a game to be played to a game to be watched.
Synopsis
Oriard's thesis is refreshingly original.
Nation A well-researched, fascinating ride through football history that will be enjoyed by scholars and fans alike.
Philadelphia Inquirer Michael Oriard's important book is a welcome, extremely insightful cultural history of football's early decades.
American Historical Review [A] careful, fascinating study of football's emerging importance at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth.
Journal of Southern History Reading Football is a playbook to understanding America.
Robert Lipsyte, sports columnist for The New York Times
About the Author
Michael Oriard, who played professional football for the Kansas City Chiefs from 1970 to 1973, is Distinguished Professor of American Literature and Culture at Oregon State University. He is author of Dreaming of Heroes: American Sports Fiction, 1868-1980, The End of Autumn: Reflections on My Life in Football, and Sporting with the Gods: The Rhetoric of Play and Game in American Culture.