JRN573DE - Sports Literature: Week Seven Lecture

JRN 573 - Sports Literature

Rich Hanley, Associate ProfessorSpring 2015/ Week Seven


Week Seven - 1

● This week, we will briefly review the material covered to date in class.

● In short, we will see how the narrative infrastructure for contemporary sports literature and sports writing as identified by Messenger emerged from literary works in the 19th century and are with us today.


Week Seven - 2

● As Messenger writes, we can now ask the following question in this review: “What happens to the Ritual, School, and Popular Sports Heroes as they move into the contemporary era?” (313)


Week Seven - 3

● The Ritual Sports Hero as defined by Messenger is one who participates in play and games as part of nature, as an isolated figure who competes against self or natural obstacles.

● The origins of this sports figure can be traced to sacred ceremonies or rituals, Messenger concludes.


Week Seven - 4

● Sports “becomes a way of knowing” for the Ritual Sports Hero, Messenger concludes. (8).

● The Ritual Sports Hero would be one who hunts, traps, fishes or scouts (hikes), among other things.


Week Seven - 5

● The Ritual Sports Hero became known by competing in games or fairs that showcased his skilled learned not through practice but through life.

● Today, the Ritual Sports Hero has been redefined as a severely limited Modern Ritual Sports Hero who is not truly pursuing a ritual as much as an activity.


Week Seven - 6

● The Modern Ritual Sports Hero is one who competes for the sake of competing but in a structure that is removed from nature as his skill is exhibited as spectacle.

● Think of the literature distance between Cooper’s guide in the 19th century to Hemingway’s bullfighter in the 20th.


Week Seven - 7

● The Modern Ritual Sports Hero is also evident underneath the veneer of the Popular Sports Hero in the rare case in which he or she resists the imposition of media or scrutiny of his or her life by contemporary media.

● Generally in this case, the athlete simply retires such as the former Arizona quarterback Jake Plummer.


Week Seven - 8

● Plummer left the NFL and moved to Idaho, where he competed in handball tournaments with his brother far from the spectacle of professional football.

● He sought a return to a life defined by his personal rituals rather than by media-saturated spectacle.


Week Seven - 9

● The School Sports Hero likewise has faded since the 1920s and 1930s when the rise of professional sports particularly football transformed college athletics from an end in itself to a stop on the way to more fame and, at least eventually, to a modest fortune.


Week Seven - 10

● The School Sports Hero emerged from the post-Civil War challenge of manliness to college students in the east.

● This hero, Messenger reveals, sought victory in the larger context of self-discipline and the development of leadership skills for a life after sports.


Week Seven - 11

● Messenger describes the School Sports Hero as the “most influential American sporting hero” of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. (9).

● And for good reason. The figure fit perfectly within the explosion of dime-store novels and mass print media that competed with tales of heroics.


Week Seven - 12

● The fictionalized version of the School Sports Hero created the myth of the student-athlete that persists today.

● Frank Merriwell remains the prime example of this figure. His character was the most popular character of any kind in the dime-store novel genre.


Week Seven - 13

● The success of stories featuring the fictional Merriwell revealed the popularity of organized spectator sports in the United States.

● That sets up the golden age of sports in the 1920s, when the School Sports Hero became a staple of Hollywood movies.


Week Seven - 14

● Those movies established the mythology of college life in the U.S. in addition to affirming the status of the School Sports Hero.

● Less than 15 percent of Americans attended college at the time, but millions watched movies of sports stars playing college sports.


Week Seven - 15

● The Popular Sports Hero figure was shaped by the frontier in 19th century America.

● “He was deeply democratic, raw, humorous, and unlettered,” Messenger found. (8)


Week Seven - 16

● The Popular Sports Hero is and the Ritual Sports Hero share a common ancestry in that both were products of the frontier.

● The Popular Sports Hero, however, shed the ritualistic characteristics of sport to willingly and profitably perform in front of crowds.


Week Seven - 17

● The Popular Sports Hero reflected the late 19th century formation of spectator sports alongside the rise of the rotary printing press, which enabled the production of millions of copies of newspapers and dime-store books along with catalogs and other components of print media.


Week Seven - 18

● The Popular Sports Hero competed for fame and fortune as part of a live spectacle.

● Unlike the Ritual Sports Hero, the Popular Sports Hero sees sport as an end within itself, without any relationship to personal growth or leadership.


Week Seven - 19

● Here’s Messenger’s summary:

● “The Popular Hero competes for immediate extrinsic rewards … “

● “The Ritual Hero plays for the growth of spirit.”● The School Hero competes “for character and

recognition.”


Week Seven - 20

● We started the semester with the statement from Roger Angell that “Sports are too much with us.”

● Now within that statement, only one sports hero type seems to remain complete in the contemporary age.


Week Seven - 21

● The School Sports Hero is now interpreted more as a Modern Ritual Sports Hero in sports that are only with us during the Olympics; i.e., rowing or NCAA Division III competition that bars scholarships.

● The School Sports Hero emerges only after failing in pursuit of pro career (see Tim Tebow).


Week Seven - 22

● The Popular Sports Hero seems to be the one enduring figure that emerged from 19th century American literature.

● The reason for this is clear: the commercialization of sport in the 20th century required athletes to become part of a larger spectacle,


Week Seven - 23

● That spectacle has been amplified by contemporary media, particularly cable television with its insatiable appetite for live events and the internet with its insatiable appetite for content.

● In fact, we now see a fourth kind of hero sprouting from the Popular kind: the fantasy sports hero.


Week Seven - 24

● The fantasy sports hero exists only in the abstract realm of statistics, a compiler of numbers.

● That’s a long way from the frontiersman who became a hero because of something raw and physical.


Week Seven - 25

● Sports in literature and sports writing likewise have focused on the primacy of mathematics to measure the heroics of athletes as the success of a factual book such as Moneyball and the primacy of statistical analysis in day-to-day sports coverage suggests.


Week Seven - 26

● Sports in literature and sports writing likewise have increasingly focused on the primacy of mathematics to measure the heroics of athletes.

● The success of a factual book such as Moneyball and the primacy of statistical analysis in day-to-day sports coverage points to this development.


Week Seven - 27

● Leaving that aside, it’s clear that the three types of sports figures in American literature as identified by Messenger are, like the sports themselves, with us in some form or another.

● That means the forms can serve as an instrument for us to self-reflect on our own sports coverage as something that falls into a line of history that includes great writers.


Week Seven - 28

● For the remainder of the semester, we will focus on the practice of sports literature within the realm of factual works as published in The New Yorker.

● The factual characters in each of the stories can be interpreted as being shaped within the context of the sports heroes identified by Messenger.


Week Seven - 29

● Please pay particular attention in the readings to come on the depth of literary expression in the stories about sports.

● The stories are written by some of the finest writers in American history who saw sports as a reflection of the nation’s expression of itself.

JRN573DE - Sports Literature: Week Seven Lecture

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