A provocative, must-read investigation that both appreciates the
importance of--and punctures the hype around--big-time contemporary
American athletics
In an increasingly secular, fragmented, and distracted culture, nothing
brings Americans together quite like sports. On Sundays in September,
more families worship at the altar of the NFL than at any church. This
appeal, which cuts across all demographic and ideological lines, makes
sports perhaps the last unifying mass ritual of our era, with huge
numbers of people all focused on the same thing at the same moment. That
timeless, live quality--impervious to DVR, evoking ancient religious
rites--makes sports very powerful, and very lucrative. And the media
spectacle around them is only getting bigger, brighter, and
noisier--from hot take journalism formats to the creeping infestation of
advertising to social media celebrity schemes.
More importantly, sports are sold as an oasis of community to a nation
deeply divided: They are escapist, apolitical, the only tie that binds.
In fact, precisely because they appear allegedly "above politics,"
sports are able to smuggle potent messages about inequality, patriotism,
labor, and race to massive audiences. And as the wider culture works
through shifting gender roles and masculine power, those anxieties are
also found in the experiences of female sports journalists, athletes,
and fans, and through the coverage of violence by and against male
bodies. Sports, rather than being the one thing everyone can agree on,
perfectly encapsulate the roiling tensions of modern American life.
Michael Serazio maps and critiques the cultural production of today's
lucrative, ubiquitous sports landscape. Through dozens of in-depth
interviews with leaders in sports media and journalism, as well as in
the business and marketing of sports, The Power of Sports goes behind
the scenes and tells a story of technological disruption, commercial
greed, economic disparity, military hawkishness, and ideals of manhood.
In the end, despite what our myths of escapism suggest, Serazio holds up
a mirror to sports and reveals the lived realities of the nation staring
back at us.
