Tackling the Everyday: Race and Nation in Big-Time College Football

Tackling the Everyday is about “Black college football players, how they tackle the exploitative and violent systems that structure their everyday lives, and who helps them do it” (3). It is based on research conducted between 2012 and 2018, including a year of participant-observation from 2017 to 2018 at two universities with Division I football teams. From the outset, Canada, an anthropologist, acknowledges that all players deal with the issues discussed in the book, but argues that “Black players relate to them differently because . . . the risks and challenges they face as college football players are magnified by the social experience of Blackness” (6).The first two chapters develop the concept of “corporeal concern,” which is “defined as the ways that football teams, coaches, administrators, and institutions of higher education invest in players, especially their bodies” (25) and, Canada argues, contributes to “athletes’ experiences of dehumanization and commodification” (64–65). More specifically, corporeal concern is conceptualized as “an anti-Black strategic ploy that mimics the care that is received from different family relations, . . . motivated by a capitalist impulse that exploits predominantly Black athletic labor” (64). The three subsequent chapters juxtapose corporeal concern with three aspects of “kindred care: care for one's Black teammates, care from one's mother, and care for oneself” (27).The first chapter locates “Black players within the daily operations of a Division I college football program” (35) and argues that the “anti-Black logics that structure the system for all players are . . . reminiscent of techniques used to manage plantations and keep enslaved populations in line” (35). The comparison between college football and plantations is evoked throughout the book. The notion and rhetoric of the “football family” is also presented as an administrative attempt to create cohesion and an effort “to obscure the various racial and hierarchical power dynamics that exist and are reinforced between coaches and players” (36). Canada develops the idea that these power dynamics “privilege whiteness” (36) and are “touted by primarily white, male football administrators and popularized in the media” (61). The second chapter continues this line of argumentation, challenging “the effectiveness of the team for Black players” (64).In the third chapter, Canada examines the “brotherhood that Black college players create and maintain for and among themselves” (89). This is presented as a separate relationship to the football family which, though not mutually exclusive, is illustrative of how “Black players embody a Black athletic double-consciousness” (113). The emphasis on “the racialized positionalities of the players” (89) is, in essence, a critique of popular narratives of post-racial football teams, which Canada argues is a “normative notion of kinship in sports that privileges whiteness and Euro-American ways of being” (113). The fourth chapter focuses on players’ relationships with their mothers and how, with the legacy of slavery, “Black mothers are always engaged in various forms of wake work, or care work, to protect themselves and their children from the dangers presented by pervasive white supremacist and anti-Black logics” (118–19). Their role is presented as integral to the functioning of college football while simultaneously “resisting the datafication, dehumanization, and commodification that flows from corporeal concern by evoking kindred care for their sons” (119).The fifth chapter explores humor as a form of resistance to racism, discrimination, and violence, and as “a way that Black players maintain their brotherhood and exhibit kindred care as they tackle the anti-Black, exploitative, and patriarchal college football system” (147). In lieu of a conclusion, a coda rounds out the chapters, remarking upon more recent events, including the 150th season of college football in 2019, and the resumption of college football during the COVID-19 pandemic. The back matter consists of endnotes and an extensive bibliography, both conceptually and theoretically rich. There is also a comprehensive index; detailed and extensively cross-referenced, it facilitates navigation of the book to particular topics.The book is primarily focused on the present. The content relating to historical events is minimal, largely confined to two short sections within the introduction. The first is a critique of amateurism which distinguishes college athletes from their professional counterparts. In connection to this, the establishment of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in 1910 is mentioned; an endnote gives 1905 not 1906 as the establishment of the Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States, the NCAA's precursor (183n7). The second, a brief history of how college football developed, argues that it was “built on principles of masculinity, honor, and nationalism that were also infused with the white supremacist ideal of racial exclusion” (17). The third chapter also remarks upon the history of brotherhood in fraternal organizations. The protracted history of integration in college football, the Civil Rights Movement, and HBCU football programs (see, for example, Derrick E. White's Blood, Sweat, and Tears) are effectively absent, as are more recent collective-action advocates, such as the Black Coaches Association (later the Black Coaches & Administrators, and later still the Advocates for Athletic Equity).With respect to the present, some recent developments, like the “introduction of name, image, and likeness (NIL) rules in July 2021” are mentioned, and “successful efforts to unionize and collectively bargain, and conversations about athletes’ rights at the federal level” are alluded to, although not discussed at length (180). Headline news of recent years—like the kneeling protests associated with pro quarterback Colin Kaepernick and Black Lives Matter following the death of George Floyd in May 2020—and events as late as 2023 are included. At the same time, the drawn-out discussions of the NCAA's Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Initiatives, for example, and the 2021 Achieving Racial Equity in College Sports report of the influential Knight Commission are passed over in silence. While these developments came after the research period Canada outlines in the introduction, media sources published in early 2024 are incorporated into the book and, according to the bibliography, online sources were consulted until August 2024.Overall, Canada's Tackling the Everyday is an insightful and rewarding read that is certain to generate discussion if included in course reading lists. While light in terms of history, it offers a particular perspective on capitalism, exploitation, forms of care, and racial dynamics, both in contemporary college football and broader sociopolitical contexts.

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