SHN Presents: Unpopular Essays on Sports History

Unpopular Essays on Sports History is part of the Sports
History Network - The Headquarters For Sports Yesteryear.


HIGHLIGHTED SHOW


Unpopular Essays on Sports History


Supposition. We live in a golden age of sports.


I mean this not in the sense of athletes becoming stronger,
speedier, savvier and smarter than ever before, nor in terms of
the amazing access we have to live streams and stat feeds,
instant insights and opinionating, the quirks and personalities
of our celebrity heroes.


This, rather, is a golden age of sports in humanistic, historical
terms. The truth is that the great majority of people today,
willingly or not, have a direct and regular connection to
organized and/or participatory sports in their everyday lives
than anyone born before the 20th century.


In the United States, not a person alive can recall a time when
sports was not a staple of the daily newspaper. For four
generations, the notion that nightly news programs should devote
up to one-quarter of their airtime to sports is taken for
granted. Why do we take this for granted?


At Unpopular Essays on Sports History, everything is
questionable.


Supposition: Those who play the games have ascended in the public
eye to heights unimaginable in times past. Playing top-level
sports can get today’s athlete into business, TV production,
national politics – and just how did this happen?


At Unpopular Essays on Sports History, everything is up for
examination.


Supposition: Sports – wherever they are played but particularly
in these places where they are invented – effect culture, even
pace it. One could argue that sports are more important than
ever.


Corollary: Sports history, too, should be more important, yet is
probably more disrespected and disavowed than ever.


At Unpopular Essays on Sports History, we love the past while
marveling at the present, and wondering about the
future.  


The “unpopular essays” of the title is a nod to Bertrand Russell,
the logical positivist and my favorite philosopher. (Plus it’s a
great excuse to get my BA degree to finally pay off.) And as
we’re taught in philosophy, It’s not about answering the
questions; it’s about making them clearer.


Three days a week, Unpopular Essays on Sports History will
examine a moment in sports history, probe some modern ethos of
our games, or speculate on what the past can teach the future –
and all in 500 words or less – though probably occasionally
throwing in the occasional longer interview. We’ll tour the
spaces and times of the whole wide world of sports history about
as quickly as Secretariat ran the Belmont Stakes.





Supposition: Sports history is fascinating, illuminating and fun.
Join me, Os Davis, in making the questions of sports history
clearer right here an Unpopular Essays on Sports History, an SHN
production. 


Os Davis, host of Unpopular Essays on Sports
History 


Os never played the games but has enjoyed a nearly 30-year career
in sports writing, reporting, blogging, and podcasting. He has
hosted/co-hosted and produced/co-produced podcasts on NFL
football, CFL football, European basketball and sports movie
review. For the Sports History Network, he currently writes and
co-produces the historical fiction audiodrama Orville
Mulligan: Sports Writer and will return soon with more
episodes of Truly the GOATs (promise).





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