The Sports Revolution: How Texas Changed the Culture of American Athletics
Texas, and its role in American history and culture, is often fodder for scholars and commentators who debate whether the social and political conditions in the second-largest state in the union are sui generis or a window onto broader American life. In The Sports Revolution, Columbia University history professor Frank Andre Guridy intervenes in this conversation by demonstrating that “Texas was central to the nation’s expanding political, economic, and emotional investment in sport.” (5)
Guridy examines the “sports revolution” of the 1960s and 1970s that brought new franchises, leagues, and stadiums to American sports, opened some doors for Black and Latine people and women to play on the major stages that had previously been the exclusive domain of White male athletes, and propelled professional football and basketball to new heights of national popularity. It was also the site of the convergence of the powerful forces of capitalism that gave birth to newly-created teams and arenas and the civil rights and second-wave feminist movements of the same era. This convergence, Guridy argues, meant that “sport became an arena where battles over the meanings of Americanness, blackness, whiteness, manhood, and womanhood were fought over and reimagined.” (4)
Previously unprecedented opportunities in sport for Black, Latine, and female athletes in Texas and throughout the nation, however, were tempered by the same forces that pushed sport to such a prominent role in American society. As Guridy notes, the increasing popularity of sports “set in motion the precise forces that have undermined the promises of sport: skyrocketing revenues for the new sport management class and a tiny sector of the most talented players, hyper-profiteering from college athletes, and the misallocation of public dollars for costly stadium construction projects that did little more than enrich private sports interests.” (5) In other words, the more attention that sports and athletes from groups previously sidelined or excluded from sports received, the less widespread the benefits of sports were in American society.
Guridy regularly uses the drama on the court or field to propel his narrative, weaving analysis of the impact and meaning of the sports revolution into these game stories.
Moreover, there were definite limits on just how far Black, Latine, and female athletes could rise in sport. Guridy writes, “more often than not in the sport world, equality meant ‘integration,’ meaning that formerly marginalized populations achieved a degree of unprecedented inclusion, but they did so under the supervision of more powerful White male team owners, general managers, and coaches.” (7) The sports revolution, like the concomitant civil rights and feminist movements, was only a partially realized revolution that saw its radicalism neutered by the power of capitalism, White privilege, and patriarchy.
Guridy regularly uses the drama on the court or field to propel his narrative, weaving analysis of the impact and meaning of the sports revolution into these game stories. The book proceeds in largely chronological fashion, discussing the integration of collegiate and professional sports in Texas, the construction of pioneering sports stadia, the famous “Battle of the Sexes” tennis match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs, the rebirth of the Washington Senators as baseball’s Texas Rangers, the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, the San Antonio Spurs and their fans, and the University of Houston men’s basketball team.
Guridy sets the tone for his argument about the limits of the sports revolution in the first chapter on the history of segregated sports in Texas and their relationship to the settlement and colonization of the American West. He astutely notes that in the eyes of sports boosters and entrepreneurs the problem with Jim Crow athletics was not that segregation was immoral but that segregated sports “could not synchronize with the profitability of sport.” (24) If sports in Texas desegregated—a better word than “integrated” to describe something that had bars to entry removed but was in no way made equally accessible—because doing so meant greater profits for the White businessmen (and they were almost exclusively White men) who controlled sporting venues, events, and teams, then there was no way for the sports revolution to achieve its truly radical possibilities. That was the case both in Texas and in the rest of the nation, which, as Guridy argues throughout, was deeply shaped by what happened in the Lone Star State.
One of the many ways in which Texas reshaped the American sporting scene was in the structure and amenities of sports stadiums. Although the roots of the development that Guridy traces in Houston’s Astrodome and Texas Stadium in the Dallas-Ft. Worth metropolitan area go back further than he examines and beyond the state’s boundaries, Texas’s stadiums propelled these developments to new levels. They were, as Guridy writes, largely responsible for “refashioning the ubiquitous institution of the stadium from a small, functional venue to a massive, comfortable leisure space that resembled a large living room.” (48-49) Amenities like air conditioning, cushioned seats, and well- (or ostentatiously- depending on your perspective) appointed skyboxes and luxury suites spread from Texas across the nation, becoming increasingly elite and exclusive in successive iterations. These stadiums changed how fans viewed sports and the role that sports played in American society. Now, as Astrodome and Texas Stadium publicity stressed, women could enjoy sports without having to worry about their looks being sullied by the wind, rain, or temperature and men could conduct business at the game with the same ease they might do so in a boardroom or at a country club.
If sports in Texas desegregated—a better word than “integrated” to describe something that had bars to entry removed but was in no way made equally accessible—because doing so meant greater profits for the White businessmen (and they were almost exclusively White men) who controlled sporting venues, events, and teams, then there was no way for the sports revolution to achieve its truly radical possibilities.
That said, there are places in his discussion of the purported “inclusive spirit” of venues like the Astrodome, that Guridy could have been more attuned to issues of access. To be clear, he is not alone in this analysis. Excellent scholars like Ben Lisle and Sean Dinces also argue that multi-purpose sports stadiums constructed in the 1960s and 1970s were inclusive. While these facilities were undoubtedly more accessible than their successors, they were far from open to all. Guridy writes that the Astrodome was “an accessible recreational and work environment for all Houstonians whether they lived in the suburbs or not,” a confusing claim in a facility that had exclusive clubs, restaurants, and skyboxes intentionally designed so that those patrons did not have to interact with anyone else in the ballpark, even as they were venturing to their elevated perches at the very top of the dome. (67) Moreover, in arguing that the dome was frequented by working-class folks, he not only flattens the multitude of events hosted there (from baseball to rodeo and from bullfighting to religious revivals), but Guridy neglects to analyze how working-class people might get to a stadium on the outskirts of the city in a location that was exceedingly difficult to access by mass transportation. (One former Astrodome concessions vendor told me it took him two hours on a public bus from a Latine neighborhood in Houston to get to the park each night and that if he did not leave the ballpark by 10 pm, he could not walk through the dome’s massive parking lots in time to catch the last bus of the evening and avoid being stranded miles from home.) In other words, the dome’s carefully selected location distant from downtown Houston reduced the possibilities for cross-class and interracial interaction there. Much like the rest of the sports revolution that Guridy discusses, at the Astrodome the possibilities for true inclusion fell victim to a drive for increased profit and control by sports entrepreneurs.
That made-for-TV spectacle pitted the 55-year-old former Wimbledon men’s singles champion Bobby Riggs against Billie Jean King, the 29-year-old reigning Wimbledon women’s singles champion who had just come off of forcing the United States Tennis Association to provide equal prize money to men and women at its signature event, the U.S. Open. The match was contested in front of 30,000 fans at the Astrodome and millions more on television. (70) Guridy shows that it was in the inclusion of Black athletes in major sports (even if, compared with the percentage of players in those sports, they remain underrepresented in the coaching, executive, and ownership ranks today) and in the increasing attention paid to women in sport that the sports revolution was most successful. King soundly defeated Riggs in straight sets, striking a blow for feminism and women athletes everywhere.
Guridy writes that the Astrodome was “an accessible recreational and work environment for all Houstonians whether they lived in the suburbs or not,” a confusing claim in a facility that had exclusive clubs, restaurants, and skyboxes intentionally designed so that those patrons did not have to interact with anyone else in the ballpark, even as they were venturing to their elevated perches at the very top of the dome.
The Battle of the Sexes was not Texas’s only contribution to changes in the place of women in sports as Guridy reveals in his discussion of the iconic Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders. Unlike the King-Riggs tennis match, however, the creation of the Cowboys cheerleading squad had a more ambiguous impact. The racially integrated, skimpily dressed cheerleaders quickly drew national attention as well as criticism, often from feminist activists who argued the women were being objectified. Guridy notes, however, that “even second-wave feminist critics of cheerleading overlooked the possibility that unapologetically inhabiting one’s sexuality was more than simply succumbing to male objectification.” (256) Much like Black and Latine athletes, women were able to take a larger role in sport, albeit a tightly controlled and limited role, and, in a way that set a troubling precedent, the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders were severely underpaid for their labor and treated more like objects who were required to look and act in particular ways than like sentient human beings.
Basketball was also part of the sports revolution and Guridy discusses the organic fan culture that developed around the San Antonio Spurs that was both particularly inclusive of that city’s Mexican American population and facilitated by the team playing their home games in the relatively no-frills HemisFair Arena. When the team left that arena for a series of newer facilities replete with luxury suites, the fan culture that had once been the hallmark of the in-game experience was never the same again. Similarly, the highly talented 1980s University of Houston Cougars men’s basketball teams, popularly known as Phi Slama Jama, represented the totality of the city’s community more so than previous teams, but their success also fostered the growth of March Madness, a tournament in which the tremendous revenue generated by the players goes primarily to television networks and institutions. Again, just as with racial integration, women’s sports, new arenas, and the expansion and relocation of teams and leagues, the promise of the sports revolution fell victim to the drive for increased profit.
