Prologue: Crafting Patriotism – America at the Olympic Games

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size

Notes

[1] On the United States and the origins and evolution of nationalism see Anderson, Imagined Communities; Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism Since 1780; Roshwald, The Endurance of Nationalism; Wiebe, Who We Are. On the American role in the development and spread of modern sport see especially, Guttmann, Games and Empires and Guttmann, A Whole New Ball Game.

[2] Thrilled by the promulgation of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, Adams penned a missive to his wife Abigail counselling that Independence Day ‘ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other from this time forward evermore’. John Adams to Abigail Adams, July 3, 1776, in Butterfield et al., The Adams Family Correspondence, vol. 2, 30.

[3] Adelman, A Sporting Time; Goldstein, Playing For Keeps; Gorn, The Manly Art; Guttmann, A Whole New Ball Game; Hardy, How Boston Played; Isenberg, John L. Sullivan and His America; Kirsch, The Creation of American Team Sports; Levine, A.G. Spalding and the Rise of Baseball; Mrozek, Sport and American Mentality; Oriard, Reading Football; Pope, Patriotic Games; Rader, Baseball; Riess, City Games; Smith, Sports and Freedom.

[4] MacAloon, This Great Symbol; Roche, Mega-Events and Modernity; Young, The Modern Olympics.

[5] Dyreson, Making the American Team. Historian Alexander Kitroeff makes a strong case that modern Greece rivals the US in both the length and ferocity of national embraces of the modern Olympics. Kitroeff, Wrestling with the Ancients.

[6]One illustration of the continuing power of the Olympics in capturing American imaginations as compared to the World Cup was the recent release of two films devoted to fictional recollections of great American upsets in international sport. Miracle (Walt Disney Pictures, 2004), based on the 1980 Olympic triumph of the US over the Soviets in ice hockey played to packed theatres, sold numerous copies and made a substantial amount of money. The Game of Their Lives (IFC Films, 2005), a depiction of the 1950 World Cup victory of the US over England found only a limited release, went quickly to video and did not generate huge revenues.

[7] Fox, Big Leagues.

[8] Dyreson, ‘Mapping an Empire of Baseball’. The IOC in 2005, claiming a lack of global popularity, dropped baseball as an Olympic sport. Bob Hohler, ‘Olympic World Turns with Ever-Less American Influence’, Boston Globe, 20 Feb. 2006.

[9] Grundman, ‘AAU-NCAA Politics’.

[10] Guttmann, The Olympics, 137–8; Senn, Power, Politics, and the Olympic Games, 230–1, 240–4.

[11] Oriard, King Football.

[12] Guttmann, Games and Empires.

[13] Andrews, Michael Jordan, Inc., Bariner, Sport, Nationalism, and Globalization; Jozsa, Sports Capitalism; Klein, Growing the Game; LaFeber, Michael Jordan and the New Global Capitalism.

[14] Dyreson, ‘“To Construct a Better and More Peaceful World”’.

[15] For a detailed history of television and the Olympic games see Barney et al., The International Olympic Committee.

[16] Dyreson, ‘Visions and Versions of American Culture at Winter Games’.

[17] Dyreson, ‘“America's Athletic Missionaries”’; Dyreson, ‘Return to the Melting Pot’.

[18] Dyreson, ‘American Ideas About Race and Olympic Races’.