{"product_id":"reading-football-michael-oriard-9780807820834","title":"Reading Football","description":"\u003cp\u003eIs football an athletic contest or a social event? Is it a game of skill, a test of manhood, or merely an organized brawl? Michael Oriard, a former professional player, asks these and other intriguing questions in Reading Football, the first contemporary book about football's formative years.      \u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eAmerican football began in the 1870s as a game to be played, not watched. Within a brief ten years, it had become a great public spectacle with an immense following, a phenomenon caused primarily by the voluminous commentary about the game conducted in popular newspapers and magazines.      \u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eOriard shows how this constant narrative in football's early years developed many different stories about what the game meant: football as pastime, as the sport of gentlemen, as a science, as a game of rules and their infringements. He shows how football became a series of cultural stories about power, luck, strategy, and deception. These different interpretations have been magnified by football's current omnipresence on television. According to Oriard, televised football now plays a cultural role of enormous importance for men, yet within the field of cultural studies the influence of football has been ignored until now.    \u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eFrom the book:      \n\u003cbr\u003e\"\"A receiver sprints down the sideline, fast and graceful, then breaks toward the middle of the field where a safety waits for him. From forty yards upfield the quarterback releases the ball; it spirals in an elegant arc toward the goalposts as the receiver now for the first time looks back to pick up its flight. The pass is a little high; the receiver leaps, stretches, grasps the ball--barely, fingers clutching--at the very moment that the safety drives a helmet into his unprotected ribs. The force of the collision flings the receiver backward, slamming him to the turf. . . .   This familiar tableau, this exemplary moment in a football game, epitomizes the appeal of the sport: the dramatic confrontation of artistry with violence, both equally necessary.\"\"\n\u003cbr\u003e|The first contemporary book about football's formative years. Oriard, a former professional football player, examines how American football changed from a game to be played to a game to be watched.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Michael Oriard","offers":[{"title":"Good","offer_id":46331210236147,"sku":"8880002523866","price":24.5,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0634\/4284\/5939\/files\/9780807820834.jpg?v=1729283095","url":"https:\/\/www.harryhartog.com.au\/products\/reading-football-michael-oriard-9780807820834","provider":"Harry Hartog Bookseller","version":"1.0","type":"link"}