Discipline and indulgence : college football, media, and the American way of life during the cold war / Jeffrey Montez de Oca.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Montez de Oca, Jeffrey.

Series:

Critical issues in sport and society

Critical Issues in Sport and Society

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Football--United States--History--20th century.

Football.

Football--Social aspects--United States--History--20th century.

College sports--United States--History--20th century.

College sports.

Cold War--Social aspects--United States.

Cold War.

Social aspects.

Mass media and sports.

History.

Football--Social aspects.

United States.

Cold War--Influence.

Mass media and sports--United States--History--20th century.

Physical Description:

x, 174 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

New Brunswick, New Jersey : Rugers University Press, [2013]

Summary:

The early Cold War (1947-1964) was a time of optimism in America. Flush with confidence by the Second World War, many heralded the American Century and saw postwar affluence as proof that capitalism would solve want and poverty. Yet this period also filled people with anxiety. Beyond the specter of nuclear annihilation, the consumerism and affluence of capitalism's success were seen as turning the sons of pioneers into couch potatoes. In Discipline and Indulgence, Jeffrey Montez de Oca demonstrates how popular culture, especially college football, addressed capitalism's contradictions by integrating men into the economy of the Cold War as workers, warriors, and consumers. In the dawning television age, college football provided a ritual and spectacle of the American way of life that anyone could participate in from the comfort of his own home. College football formed an ethical space of patriotic pageantry where men could produce themselves as citizens of the Cold War state. Based on a theoretically sophisticated analysis of Cold War media, Discipline and Indulgence assesses the period's institutional linkage of sport, higher education, media, and militarism and finds the connections of contemporary sport media to today's War on Terror. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 Introduction 1

2 Fortifying the City upon a Hill: College Football and Cold War Citizenship 17

3 Duck Walking the Couch Potato: Exercise as Therapy for a Consumer Society 32

4 The Best Seat in the Ballpark: Lifestyle and the Televisual Event 57

5 Fordism in the Airwaves: The NCAA's Use of Market Regulations to Control College Athletics 73

6 From Neighborhood to Nation: Geographical Imagination of the Cold War in Sports Illustrated 93

7 Conclusion 113.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780813561271

0813561272

9780813561264

0813561264

OCLC:

813690891