This weekend @HuskerFBNation announced that they would wear helmet stickers to honor George Flippin, the team’s first Black player (1891-94, pic below is the ‘91 team)

It’s good to honor Flippin, but we should also take an honest look at what his time at Nebraska was like

🧵 Flippin was one of several Black athletes at PWIs in the late 19c, so he wasn’t unprecedented. But he was unusual.

Flippin’s appearances on the 1891 team earned positive press from Omaha (left) and Iowa’s student newspaper (right), which described him as the team’s best player

Went to some college football history material to see how coaches responded to the flu pandemic during the 1918 season. Knute Rockne did not disappoint:

"I am having quite a time down here, our asinine doctor has called off all practice for this week for no reason whatsoever." To add some more context:
this was from a private letter Rockne sent to fellow football coach Amos Alonzo Stagg.

Along with the canceled practices, Notre Dame’s game against a Naval Reserve team had been abruptly canceled the Saturday before.

I've spent a large part of the past four years studying and writing about the history of sports & Christianity in the United States. For #SuperBowlSunday, here's a thread of my football-related essays 1. My first piece on the subject was with @ReligPolitics, a look at the blending of faith and football in my home state of Nebraska religionandpolitics.org/2015/03/17/neb…

If I wasn't teaching a J-Term class right in which we cover a week's worth of material every day, I'd write something about this Cody Parkey thing. Instead, a few quick thoughts... chicagotribune.com/sports/footbal… First, s/o to @CParkey36 for very publicly undermining recent claims I've made on this very site about evangelical sports ministry + success 😂

https://twitter.com/p_emory/status/1082106267802451968

Here’s my fav thing I wrote in 2018. How the political and cultural meanings of prayer in football have changed over the past 140 years religionandpolitics.org/2018/08/28/foo… Other highlights this year: providing background info and getting interviewed for this @ringer story on @Sports_Spectrum theringer.com/nfl/2018/3/23/…

I enjoyed @SITimLayden's essay on football's outsized importance. But since he asked: no, that idea didn't start in the 1940s. It began in the late 19th century, and there's some great scholarship explaining how it became an entrenched part of US culture. A partial reading list: Michael Oriard's writing played a big part in my decision to do sports history, so I gotta list him first amazon.com/Reading-Footba…

I want to add a bit of historical perspective to the details we've learned recently about the toxic culture of intimidation and abuse in Maryland's football program by going back to one of the earliest moments when that style of coaching was publicly challenged: 1954 Nebraska. Back then Nebraska was coached by Bill Glassford. He came to the school in 1949, bringing with him a hard-driving and "merciless" approach that, rather than causing concern, earned him a fawning 1951 profile in the Saturday Evening Post.

Mike Sweeney, Roger Staubach, Bill Bradley, Tim Tebow, David Robinson...who else cultivated a similar public persona?

https://twitter.com/p_emory/status/1015043768964341760

Don't have a Mormon on the list yet, but Dale Murphy definitely belongs. Here's the beginning of a 1986 Jim Murray @latimes column on him:

Before evangelicals had their own versions of “secular” music and movies, they had their own fictional schoolboy athlete. My look at Tom Huntner, an obscure relic of the fundamentalist/neo-evangelical subculture sportianity.com/2018/07/the-fu… From 1946, an ad and review in The Evangelical Beacon for the second Huntner book

I kid you not, Walter Camp died less than two months after this promo was published And yes, observers in 1925 noticed the irony as well. It led to a referendum of sorts on the benefits of exercise.

I can't get over how similar this "visionary leadership" pablum is to the way business leaders of the 1920s (and their journalistic hype men and women) talked about themselves and their business principles nytimes.com/2018/05/24/us/… For example, this isn't new at all. Go read business leaders of the 1920s talk about how they based their business leadership on the Golden Rule. The point was to serve society (or rather convince ppl you were serving society) so that ppl wouldn't clamor for structural change.

Miscellaneous moments in football and national anthem history, a thread. In 1936, this gentleman wanted severe reprimands for college football players who did not pause their game when flag-raising ceremonies were conducted at the same time as the opening kick-off In 1948 a columnist in the Los Angeles Times lamented the increasing tendency to play the anthem before sporting events. It cheapened true patriotism, he said, plus it led to "atrocious" musical performances

In my research I don't think I've come across a more interesting person than Nick Chiles of Topeka, Kansas—editor, entrepreneur, hell-raiser, civil rights activist. Historians will likely give him more attention soon. In the meantime, this thread has a few Chiles highlights👇 Chiles moved from South Carolina to Kansas in the 1880s. He made his way into public life through Topeka's black underworld, operating a saloon. By the 1890s he was enough of a presence in Topeka that white newspapers regularly complained about the "notorious negro jointist"