DC Sports
DC Sports

Author: Chris Elzey

Publisher: University of Arkansas Press

Published: 2015-07-15

Total Pages: 421

ISBN-13: 1610755669

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Washington, DC, is best known for its politics and monuments, but sport has always been an integral part of the city, and Washingtonians are among the country’s most avid sports fans. DC Sports gathers seventeen essays examining the history of sport in the nation’s capital, from turn-of-the-century venues such as the White Lot, Griffith Stadium, and DC Memorial Stadium to Howard-Lincoln Thanksgiving Day football games of the roaring twenties; from the surprising season of the 1969 Washington Senators to the success of Georgetown basketball during the 1980s. This collection covers the field, including public recreation, high-school athletics, intercollegiate athletics, professional sports, sports journalism, and sports promotion. A southern city at heart, Washington drew a strong color line in every facet of people’s lives. Race informed how sport was played, written about, and watched in the city. In 1962, the Redskins became the final National Football League team to integrate. That same year, a race riot marred the city’s high-school championship game in football. A generation later, race as an issue resurfaced after Georgetown’s African American head coach John Thompson Jr. led the Hoyas to national prominence in basketball. DC Sports takes a hard look at how sports in one city has shaped culture and history, and how culture and history inform sports. This informative and engaging collection will appeal to fans and students of sports and those interested in the rich history of the nation’s capital.

The End of Amateurism in American Track and Field
The End of Amateurism in American Track and Field

Author: Joseph M. Turrini

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 282

ISBN-13: 0252077075

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Combining social and institutional history and incorporating the recollections of the athletes and meet directors on the front lines, The End of Amateurism in Track and Field shows how the athletes thoroughly transformed their sport to end the amateur system in the early 1990s---changes that allowed the athletes to market their potential, drastically increase their earning possibilities, and improve their quality of life. --

Spitting in the Soup
Spitting in the Soup

Author: Mark Johnson

Publisher: VeloPress

Published: 2016-07-01

Total Pages: 325

ISBN-13: 1937716821

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Doping is as old as organized sports. From baseball to horse racing, cycling to track and field, drugs have been used to enhance performance for 150 years. For much of that time, doping to do better was expected. It was doping to throw a game that stirred outrage. Today, though, athletes are vilified for using performance-enhancing drugs. Damned as moral deviants who shred the fair-play fabric, dopers are an affront to the athletes who don’t take shortcuts. But this tidy view swindles sports fans. While we may want the world sorted into villains and victims, putting the blame on athletes alone ignores decades of history in which teams, coaches, governments, the media, scientists, sponsors, sports federations, and even spectators have played a role. The truth about doping in sports is messy and shocking because it holds a mirror to our own reluctance to spit in the soupthat is, to tell the truth about the spectacle we crave. In Spitting in the Soup, sports journalist Mark Johnson explores how the deals made behind closed doors keep drugs in sports. Johnson unwinds the doping culture from the early days, when pills meant progress, and uncovers the complex relationships that underlie elite sports culturethe essence of which is not to play fair but to push the boundaries of human performance. It’s easy to assume that drugs in sports have always been frowned upon, but that’s not true. Drugs in sports are old. It’s banning drugs in sports that is new. Spitting in the Soup offers a bitingly honest, clear-eyed look at why that’s so, and what it will take to kick pills out of the locker room once and for all.