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Sports is History Profile picture
@SportsbyBrooks
Sep 13, 2020 • 4 tweets • 1 min read • Read on X
The pandemic and Trump has shown America how overrepresented sports - particularly American football - is in our culture.

Our outsized perception of the importance of sports is a new development in history, and entirely due to ESPN and 24/7 media, which originated in the 1980s.
Our blind willingness to check humanity at the door for a "sport" that w/out media wouldn't exist b/c no one plays it past 21 w/out pay began w/ the 24/7 access cable TV granted media to individuals. ESPN used that to reinvent our perception of the importance of American football
After cable subscribers, college football is ESPN's biggest revenue producer. Full integration of college football teams only took place in the 1980s after ESPN sent TV rights fees skyward, giving schools an incentive to win. So schools sued NCAA for rights and signed more Blacks
I've been working on content related to this and many other subjects and this is a small taste of it. Stay tuned.

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More from @SportsbyBrooks

Sports is History Profile picture
Jan 29, 2021
Jackie Robinson was a UCLA All-American football RB who averaged 12 yards per carry but wasn’t taken in the NFL draft while two of his (white) teammates were. (At the time the NFL had zero black players!)

Was Jackie Robinson the victim of race-related blackballing by NFL owners?
Jackie received nearly a million votes in a national poll which landed him a spot on a college All-Star team that played against the Chicago Bears.
The only Black player in the game, Jackie was also the only All-Star not offered an NFL deal. (After a 48 yd TD catch vs the Bears)
Like his McCaskey descendants today, @NFL founder and @ChicagoBears owner George Halas, who watched Robinson score a 48 yard TD against his Bears in 1941 yet didn’t offer Jackie a contract, always denied any and all race-related blackballing.

Was the founder of the NFL a liar?
Read 8 tweets
Sports is History Profile picture
Jan 29, 2021
Jackie Robinson on opening day 1947:

1) 28 yo
2) nationally-known All-American football player at UCLA
3) military vet (WWII)
4) ex-#1 Olympic long jumper
5) PAC Conf. hoops #1 scorer

Does that sound like someone who needed a 64-year-old white guy to tell him not to fight back?
Jackie Robinson suffered physical and verbal abuse from opponents and teammates at UCLA.

Robinson missed several games because of injuries stemming from that abuse including two games in which his own teammates deliberately injured him in practice. (Reported by the LA Times.)
His junior year at UCLA, a USC frat won “most humorous homecoming display” by simulating a lynching of Robinson - hanging him in effigy from a tree in front of the fraternity house.

The abuse Robinson faced as a UCLA athlete was much worse than anything he faced w/ the Dodgers.
Read 9 tweets

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