Rhetorical playbook: Football, race, rhetoric, and play possibility spaces of the American university

Abstract

This dissertation examines and defines the relationship of college football within the culture of the American university, especially at larger Division I athletic schools. In my first two chapters, I argue that universities are complex rhetorical objects formed from an amalgam of physical buildings, fans, merchandise, traditions, icons, narrative, and fans, among many other components. As such, college football works as an effective shorthand for the university and thus has significant import and control over university culture and identity. In my third chapter, I argue that the rules of college football restrict the identities of student-athletes through rules around eligibility and amateurism. Because student-athletes are constantly responsible for maintaining their eligibility, they are constantly playing their sport on the football field and in the classroom. In my fourth chapter, I track the racist motivations of rule changes during football's early years and how this has continued throughout the history of the sport, particularly in recent rules around player conduct. Conduct rules primarily revolve around white norms and deviations from those white norms, however minor, are punished with penalties on the field and off the field. In my fifth and final chapter, I demonstrate how employing antiracist pedagogy and empathy in our classrooms can help us give student-athletes more agency over their identity in our classrooms and beyond. Antiracist pedagogy can be a humanizing force for them despite the dehumanizing nature of collegiate athletics.