More Themes for 2008–This one courtesy of Dave Zirin

And, of course, it was all brought to us 24 hours a day by a sports media quick to draw broad assumptions, as the push to put out opinions in the absence of facts has become an accepted hallmark of today’s information-first age. This was a particular catastrophe after the tragic slaying of Taylor and the irresponsible assumption that his death in a botched robbery was the result of a thug life gone awry.

Yes, my own theme for ‘08 is to Write-Write-Write, but Zirin’s message is an important one to consider. I think it is vital that the sports media starts to include more critical voices. My hat goes off to Zirin, William C. Rhoden, and Stephen Brunt, but I think that it is important to get some critical academic voices to join this choir. And I don’t mean in the “soundbite” kind of way that many academics make newsprint, but in comprehensive, thoughtful, reflective, and engaged ways–but still timely.

Dig it!

Themes for 2008:

It is almost impossible to narrow down the most important theme for me and apandanhandad in 2008. Generally, it could easily be assigned to Do. Dammit, but the Nike slogan rings so true for me right now–Just Do It. Period. For all of the things that I want to get done, that slogan is what needs to drive me this year. In all reality, 2008 could be the year that apandanhandad comes to fruition. The harvest is revealed. In order for me to do that, however, means that there is another important single action word–WRITE! Write, dammit, write!

To Write–To Act–To Do

And this goes for all other things too: through my personal life, professional, spiritual, corporeal, economic, philosophical, activist, pedagogical, familial, right down through the menial. Just Act. 

Action is just, when it is “correct action”–buddhist-style. When an act is wise, it is a just act. Thoughtful. Generous. Peaceful. Resolute. Responsible.

That action can be to write, and to write critically and fair. And there are many things I need to write about in this way. Some of those things are:

New Racism in Sport–my dissertation topic. It’s a history lesson as much as it is a theorization and application. I’m finding flashpoint events in the media and using them for their pedagogical moments. Moments to pause and reflect on what’s just happened. And moments to prospect for different ways to negotiate the moments to come, and events yet to unfold. We remember the past, assess the contemporary, and envision the future. I need to write about this. From that, I can teach about this.

An Historical Sense (wirkliche historie)–Searching for Jimmy Brown. Racial Integration in Canadian Football (compared and contrasted with the AFL/NFL). Can-Am Relations post-Second World War. 1946 is a pivotal year in many ways, for many reasons. There are ways that sport reflects broader social and political movements–shifts. American import rules. Places like Syracuse and strict non-integrationist practices. The segue here is to the context in which this all occurred. Post-War milieux.

Speaking of War–The Militarization of Canadian Society. Sport as the “Long Bomb” into individual lives. Asking hard questions. Finding accountability. Deconstructing military logics. Reading Empire. Reading Zygmunt Bauman. Arendt. Frantz Fanon. Man, I’m so ready to write about this–invoking the Multitude.

Canadian Football: The Game, The Issues, The Fans–From a concerted effort to become an historian of the game itself, or more accurately, a social historian–to an ethicist exploring several issues confronting the league (e.g., CFLPA Disability Pensions, Retirement & Injury; The No-Drug-Testing Policy and its relation to an inferiority complex; Officiating)–to an honest-to-goodness “Superfan” of the game interested in capturing other fan experiences of the CFL, the Grey Cup especially. There is a LOT to be written about the CFL, from a variety of perspectives. 

In close, for the time being, the theme of ‘08 is WRITE! Write everything that needs to be written. My dissertation. My passions. My life. Writing is my life. And a good life it is!

*since there’s so much more to say and do, I must leave it at this for the moment …

Hello, 2008 … We’re gonna get along just great … 

Dig it!

   

I’ve got to work this out …

Okay, so I haven’t been blogging as promised. I’ve got a lot on the go at the moment. Unfortunately, that means my own writing has been taking a bit of a back seat. But there’s something that I have to get written ASAP, and that’s my NASSH abstract. I’ve been working on this for a long time. But now it’s time to work it out.

From the NASSH website:

Guidelines for Individual Papers:

1. Include author’s name, phone and fax number, and postal and email addresses.
2. Include title and abstract of the paper. The abstract should include the question(s) addressed in the paper, the evidence to be used, a precise statement of the argument and conclusions, and what significance the paper has to our understanding of sport history (500 words).
3. Suggest the type of NASSH conference session for which this paper might be appropriate.
4. Submit copies of the complete proposal by November 15, 2007 to ALL members of the program committee. E-mail addresses of the Program Committee members appear below. Early proposals are appreciated. E-mail attachment is one of the two preferred forms of submission. The second preferred method is sending the proposal via the NASSH website (www.nassh.org). People wishing to submit via the NASSH website will find instructions posted there as the deadline approaches.

So now, what I’ve gotta do is: ask the questions, find my evidence through research, clearly articulate the argument and the conclusions. Simple, right? So what about this?

To fully contextualize the current state of affairs in the Canadian Football League (CFL), a different kind of story line needs to be explored. Magnified by the overall lack of scholarship on the CFL, the histories of minority players has gone relatively unexplored. A few recent books on the subject have made me turn my eye in that direction. Third and a Mile: The trials and triumphs of the black quarterback by William C. Rhoden, and The Slave Side of Sunday by Anthony Prior, each tell similar stories. They draw comparisons between the Canadian and American (National) football leagues. And all share the kinds of stories told about life in football during the fifties and sixties. Out of Their League by Dave Meggeyesy and Canada’s own The Plastic Orgasm are rich with similar stories. But little effort has been made to connect them all.

My argument comes from a guy who really wants to know what life was like back then. The call has been loud for this kind of work. Rinaldo Walcott resonates the loudest, but also Abdel-Shehid, hooks, Anzaldua, and Shogan. It’s a call for a different kind of cultural studies. One that floats freely, not mired, in academese. One that roams smoothly back and forth between academic and less critical worlds. And I think people are really diggin’ critical histories these days. They move off the bookshelves. The grit and grime of real life need to be felt when reading or hearing the history. The texture of lives lived revealed. This goes for both my dissertation chapter/NASSH paper (the history of racial integration in the CFL) and the Jim Brown chapter. Yes, that totally needs to be next. From Ray Emery to Jim Brown, I’ll be able to easily jump to more ambitious projects. The dissertation project, to be precise. But I’ve digressed … my argument is that we need to have the historical sense of the people and the time. That’s the gritty feel. To really know what life was like, or the closest thing to it possible. So I read. I listen to people. I learn the stories. And then, I tell them the way I feel them. Like Dionne Brand on a mission. Like W.O. Mitchell on the prairies. Who has seen the wind? No, we know it’s who has felt the wind.

So now, in the true Murray style of making a short story long, the NASSH abstract idea:

On the heels of a revival movement around Black history, or rather, histories of blackness–the black experience–I am suggesting that one of the most fecund sites for historical analysis is the Canadian Football League. I can’t think of another perspective from which to better capture the racial climate across the nation, than through the eyes of the “pioneers.” What really happened in the wake of Jackie Robinson in Canada? How has the African-American experience informed, or been transformed by, life in Canada. My contemporary interest is in the Ricky Williams saga. My historical interest is from Herb Trawick (or not long before) through Johnny Bright to Warren Moon and Tracy Ham. I recognize, for brevity sake at a conference, I must limit this to a more narrow scope, but this contextualizes whatever period or figures I choose in the broader view of the research project overall. I think it is shameful that the public isn’t more aware of this fascinating thread of Canadian history, or the story that’s presently being told. Some writers have their finger on the pulse. Dionne Brand. Dave Zirin. Spike Lee. Sean Penn. Paul Haggis. Stephen Brunt. William Rhoden. And I’d love to join that club. Clearly, not in that same league right away, but always striving for it, and in time–who knows? But back to the punchline. I argue that by examining the stories of racialized athletes in certain parts of the country, at certain times in the past, we can get a better view of what social and cultural life were like in those places at those times. And while it feels like I’m stating the obvious, it’s one of those things that still needs to be restated. The CFL is largely unexplored, especially in light of the wealth and breadth of scholarly and literary work on hockey in Canada. Racial histories are only recently being added. A Fly in a Pail of Milk was quickly forgotten, Breaking the Ice was relatively cursory. But the cry sounds loud and clear in Black Like Who? and Bread Out of Stone. And even Linda Hutcheon. That’s right, I invoke an admitted postmodernist. Postmodernism is not the death of history, but a warm embrace of multiple histories. Just like when TV went from black & white to color. Life–in living color–the way it’s meant to be lived and remembered and re-told.

But more on this later … like I said, it something I have to work out. To be continued …       

Searching for Jim Brown

So I have been contracted to write a chapter in a kind of critical biography series. In this second volume, the theme is fallen. My chapter is supposed to be about how Jim Brown has seemingly fallen from grace in his status as a legendary runningback in the NFL, through times as a political activist (strong supporter in a pivotal time), to early retirement from football to pursue a career in film. I tentatively want to title the piece, “Jim Brown: One Bad Actor (or a really good guy?)” Fact is, I really don’t know Jim Brown. Yet, I can’t really explain why. I’m removed from him by just some degree of separation. There are athletes of similar status that I feel I know very well. Mediated knowledge of course, but still that so-close-you-can-think-you-can-touch-him kinda knowledge. [reminder: follow up with Smithers on that 'tactile burden' question] Magic Johnson. Moreso than Michael Jordan. I saw the former play live. And with historical athletes, like Muhammad Ali (who I did actually see fight live, but on television, and when I was very young), George Foreman (saw him fight Ken Lakusta at the Agricom), Walter Payton, Ben Johnson, Carl Lewis, Lew Alcindor to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, et al, I really feel confident in my knowledge about them, but it’s definitely knowledge in the wirkliche Historie as Nietzsche and Foucault describe it. I may be able to trace a genealogy, but I must be willing to surrender or refuse the certainty of absolutes. I can’t “know” anyone. But I can know how we got broken down by distinct regimes. I can know the resistances that have formed. But I can’t “know” it all.

So, that’s my long-winded way of saying that I can’t know it all, but I can get an historical sense. And that’s what I’m after about Jim Brown. And so, I’ve set out to look for him. He’s in many places, but only the spectre of him. It’s like he haunted many places and many people, but like a ghost you just can’t see the whole of him. It’s almost like Plato and how he almost never mentions himself, and when he does, it’s always in the third person. He’s always situated among great names. So what was his gift? What did he bring for us? And what did he do to make us think that he has fallen? That’s what I need to know. Jim Brown. That’s who I need to know. And here’s where I found him tonight:

The desire for Woods to be a savior matched a widespread hunger for a great African American redeemer. In twentieth-century American history, a series of black sports heroes achieved mythic status for their athletic exploits that transcended the social limitations of their race. From Jack Johnson, Jesse Owens, and Jackie Robinson to Muhammad Ali, Arthur Ashe, Jim Brown, and all the way through to Tiger Woods, American writers have continually fantasized that a single person could save U.S. society from endemic racial problems (Yu, 2002, pp.338-339). 

 And then there’s the reference in the classic, The Revolt of the Black Athlete:

In professional athletics, blacks and whites of similar abilities are paid vastly different salaries. Whites, in a word, make more on average than blacks. The super-stars such as Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, Willie Mays, and Jimmy Brown, of course, rank as exceptions (Edwards, 1969, p. 22).

 And I’ll close with a quote from ol’ Jimmy himself:

Then, as now, attitudes toward Muhammad Ali paralleled attitudes toward his time. “I loved the 1960s,” Jim Brown, a friend and fan of Ali’s admitted; “America met Rebellion, got its pompous ass woken up.” (Hietala, 1995, p. 127).

I’m still searching for Jim Brown. One day, clearly a day after I’ve watched his film exploits, “I’m gonna git you sucka!”

Dig it!

Edwards, H. (1969). The Revolt of the Black Athlete. New York, NY: The Free Press. 

Hietala, T.R. (1995). Muhammad Ali and the age of bare-knuckle politics. In Gorn, E.J. (Ed.). Muhammad Ali: The People’s Champ. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. 117-153.

Yu, H. (2002). Tiger Woods at the center of history. In Bloom, J. & Willard, M.N. (Eds.). Sports Matters: Race, Recreation, and Culture. New York, NY: New York University Press. 320-353.