Posts

The Super Bowl and U.S. Solipsism

Image
In February 2007, I was in New Zealand when Super Bowl XLI was played between the Chicago Bears and the Indianapolis Colts. At the time, I assumed that people all around the world would be tuning in to see this most important of U.S. rituals. After all, I reasoned, the U.S. was arguably the most powerful nation in the world--who wouldn't be interested in seeing the highlights of our favorite past time? Due to the time difference, it was about noon Monday in Raglan, NZ (the day after the Super Bowl was actually played in the U.S.), when I tuned in with my friends, Toni and Steve. We were grad students together at the University of Illinois during the 1990s. Toni was a native New Zealander (a Kiwi), while Steve hailed from Virginia. I assumed that he would be excited to see the game--and might even feel nostalgic about participating in the familiar ritual of watching the Super Bowl. I assumed wrong. Admittedly, it was more than a little distracting to try to watch football when th
9 comments
Read more

Sport & Society #1: Reflections on first class

Doing a blog for class I am starting this blog entitled "Sport and Society" for those who are interested in doing a blog as a way to reflect on assigned readings and class discussions. If you have never kept a blog, it is not too difficult to start. There should be a link on this blog that says "Create blog." That will instruct you to put in your email address and a password, as well as a userid to access it through blogger.com (For those who decide to do a blog for class, please send your URL to me so I can check your entries.) Let me know if you would like to make your blog available to others in class, and if so, I will post your URL on this blog. Reflections on class Since we have not yet had an assigned reading, I wanted to write some things I have been thinking about in relation to class, in the hope that this will give you ideas of how you might want to start your blog for class. As mentioned in Monday's class, the first reading comes from a classic in So
1 comment
Read more