Recent weeks have included several posts by both myself and Lora Burnett on sports and recent American history. I’d like to continue that trend, but with a slight twist. The intersection of race and sports, not to mention gender and sports, has been written about extensively by both journalists and academic historians. A more recent trend in sport historiography, however, has been to think about what pushes people to root for certain teams. Several books on 1970s National Football League clubs shed some light on how people chose to root for certain squads. Read more