BOOK REVIEWS
Sport History Review, 2010, 41, 164-174
© 2010 Human Kinetics, Inc.
Integrating the Gridiron: Black Civil Rights and American
College Football
By Lane Demas. Published in 2010 by Rutgers University Press
(141 pp., $39.95 U.S.).
Reviewed by Maureen M. Smith, California State University Sacramento
Lane Demas provides detailed accounts of four episodes of racial integration in
American college football in the twentieth century. Demas examines four time
periods and geographic regions, and aptly reveals how the integration of college
football was not a predictable process, but instead was one that was influenced
by the cultural practices of each region and time period. Each episode receives a
focused chapter, which is steeped in relevant cultural and social history related to
the events. The University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) between 1938
and 1941 is examined first, and remaining chapters follow chronologically, with
the Johnny Bright scandal of 1951, the 1956 Sugar Bowl, and concluding with
the University of Wyoming’s Black 14 between 1968 and 1970. Demas concludes
with a brief epilogue.
The selection of the four geographic regions and the chronological order of the
events focus the reader on the nuances of the processes of integration. Even at locations such as the UCLA—where integration of football teams occurred well before
it did among U.S. professional sports and ahead of legislation that helped speed the
process in the American South three decades later—Demas makes clear that there
was no consensus among white or black communities as to the role sport might
play in advancing social causes. Moreover, he contributes to the growing body of
literature that documents the variety of sport experiences African American males
endured in American sport in the years before and immediately after World War II
and moving into the more active period of civil rights in the 1960s. Between UCLA’s
failed attempt to gain entry into the 1939 Rose Bowl when they tied USC and the
removal of the Black 14 from Wyoming’s football team in 1969, American society
had experienced significant changes in racial practices, with legislation mandating integrated schooling, visible social protests by African American athletes on a
national and international stage, as well as other demonstrations of civil resistance,
including marches, sit-ins, and boycotts. Sports, it was often argued, should remain
outside the realm and influence of politics, but it seemed, and Demas’s accounts
confirm, that the two spheres were inextricably linked.
Demas’s work is excellent and well researched, and his writing is easy, interesting, and enjoyable to read. One minor issue of contention is his claim that his
book establishes a new direction in sport history. This is a major point of his introductory chapter, entitled “Beyond Jackie Robinson: Beyond Racial Integration in
American College Football and New Directions in Sport History.” To suggest that
his examination of college football is a new frontier in understanding the integration of American sport simply ignores too many other quality works that he then
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Book Reviews 165
cites in his book. Demas contends that too much emphasis has been placed on the
barrier-breaking accomplishments of such athletes as Joe Louis, Jackie Robinson,
and Muhammad Ali in the writing of African Americans in sport history. Both Ali
and Louis were boxers, athletes in an individual sport where racial codes were
powerful in determining their opportunities and subsequent behaviors and actions.
Robinson broke the color barrier in major league baseball, and his story merits the
volumes of work devoted to his integrative efforts and subsequent career in baseball.
American college football, unlike professional sports, was not governed in such
a way that all teams followed a “gentlemen’s agreement” that restricted African
Americans on teams. Certainly, Demas does a remarkable job of establishing this
point—the integration of college football was not a one-person movement, and
there is no comparable Jackie Robinson of college football. Of interest, though, is
the role Jackie Robinson played on the UCLA team that Demas documents in his
chapter on the Bruins in the late 1930s. Robinson’s teammate, Kenny Washington,
later became one of the first African Americans to reintegrate the National Football
League, reinforcing the relationship that existed between college and professional
sport during the time periods covered in Demas’s book. Demas’s assertion to be
forging a “new direction” in sport history is further diminished by two chapters,
both well written and researched: “‘A Fist That Was Very Much Intentional’: Postwar Football in the Midwest and the 1951 Johnny Bright Scandal” and “‘We Play
Anyone’: Deciphering the Racial Politics of Georgia Football and the 1956 Sugar
Bowl Controversy.” Both have received previous scholarly attention by respectable
sport historians, as cited by Demas.*
Ultimately, Demas’s book makes clear that the integration of college football
is more than worthy of scholarly focus. Demas’s work exemplifies the notion
that American college football and its numerous stories of integration represent
a movement of African American college athletes—many of whom would never
play football beyond their university affiliation—who broke ground as hallowed
as that of the playing fields ventured onto by Jackie Robinson.
*See Jaime Schultz, “Photography, Instant Memory, and the Slugging of Johnny Bright,” Stadion
32(2006); and Charles Martin, “Integrating New Year’s Day: The Racial Politics of College Bowl
Games in the American South,” Journal of Sport History 24, no. 3 (Fall 1997): 358–377. Demas
cites a number of other works that also address the integration of American college football.
Bowled Over: Big Time College Football from the Sixties
to the BCS Era
By Michael Oriard. Published in 2009 by the University of North Carolina Press
(352 pp., $30.00 U.S.).
Reviewed by Richard C. Crepeau, University of Central Florida
Bowled Over is Michael Oriard’s fourth volume, completing his cultural history of
American football. Three of the four volumes deal with the historical development
of intercollegiate football and the other volume, the third in order of publication,
treats the National Football League.
166 Book Reviews
All four volumes of this work benefit from Oriard’s personal insights as an
ex-college and professional football player combined with his insights drawn
from his training as a literary scholar. This volume, as well as Brand NFL, has a
strong personal perspective, which some may feel detracts from the objectivity of
the scholarship. Indeed it may, but what it loses in objectivity it gains in particular
insights not available to the outsider. Bowled Over is a companion piece to Brand
NFL and the two were originally conceived as one volume.
Oriard’s primary concern here is the transformation of intercollegiate football with a focus on the past sixty years. Intercollegiate football grew in size and
strength, separating itself in many ways from the culture of higher education, while
immersing itself in the world of entertainment and marketing. This development
has in turn left university leadership with the task of resolving the contradictions
imbedded within these roles. Oriard explores this territory with a keen eye and
critical analysis enhanced by his own role as ex-player, faculty member, and university administrator.
During the 1960s, the Civil Rights movement had a strong impact on the conduct of intercollegiate sport, including football. The coming of the African American
athlete in large numbers, the desegregation of previously all-white institutions, and
the empowerment unleashed by the Civil Rights movement transformed intercollegiate athletes in a myriad of ways. These are duly enumerated and explicated by
Oriard. The challenge by athletes to both institutions and coaches shocked many,
and the subsequent empowerment of all athletes further transformed the society,
the university, and the playing field.
In the longer term, it would be the changing economics of intercollegiate
athletics that produced the second revolution, one that came more slowly and
more quietly than that of the 1960s. Oriard sees the changing nature of the role
of television as key, as well as the changing power and role of the football coach.
The power of the coach over his players increased significantly with the NCAA
replacement of the four-year scholarship by the one-year scholarship in 1973. The
power of the football coach over the entire intercollegiate enterprise resulted from
the seemingly overnight appearance of the coach as celebrity/millionaire. These
developments in turn exposed and magnified the contradictions between the education and entertainment world within the institutions of higher education.
These developments are fully examined within the pages of Bowled Over and
for the most part Oriard illuminates both the positives, and there are some, and
the negatives that accompanied the changes of the past half-century. In the final
chapters, he offers an analysis of the problems of the football-driven universities,
and speculates on possible solutions. In truth, Oriard seems to offer only a thin veil
of hope that the current problems can be solved.
In addition, it seems to me that Oriard’s personal concerns lead to a slighting
of the historical roots of these problems. Some historians of intercollegiate athletics
would argue that the basic issues presented in Bowled Over are less a product of
the present than suggested here, and that in a very real sense the basic problems,
contradictions, and issues were all on the table by the end of the nineteenth century.
Oriard does not neglect the historical roots, but as a historian I find his evaluation
of their significance insufficient.
In the end, as was the case in his three previous volumes on football and
American culture, Michael Oriard has done an excellent job of analysis and offers
Book Reviews 167
a very clear explanation of the difficulties of reforming the current intercollegiate
athletic system. Bowled Over is required reading for anyone seeking to understand
the strange world of intercollegiate athletics in the United States and the power of
football in American life. Oriard’s total body of work on American football should
be regarded as a standard work in American Sport history, and an entry point for
anyone seeking to understand professional and college football, intercollegiate
sport, and their significant place in American society.
A Social History of English Rugby Union
By Tony Collins. Published in 2009 by Routledge (277 pp., $49.95).
Reviewed by Robert Kossuth, University of Lethbridge
In his examination of the social history of rugby union football in England, Tony
Collins investigates the place of the sport in England both on its own and in relation
to the rest of Britain (Wales, Scotland) and Ireland, and parts of the Commonwealth
(South Africa, New Zealand, Australia). The emergence and growth of rugby union
is linked to broader social, economic, and cultural changes and events beginning in
the mid-nineteenth century and concluding at the turn of the twenty-first century.
At the 2010 North American Society for Sport History convention in Orlando,
Florida, Collins’s book received an honorable mention for the book of the year
award. Clearly, this monograph is the work of a seasoned and established social
historian and historian of sport.
Collins’s examination of rugby union in England, with particular attention paid
to the role of the Rugby Football Union (RFU), is centered on the thematic and
conceptual topics of amateurism, class, gender, imperialism, and economics. The
chapters are organized to examine each topic in a longitudinal manner. The first
two chapters, “The Schoolboy’s Game” and “The Amateur Game,” lay the foundation for Collins’s thesis that rugby was and remains a sport embedded within the
English middle classes by convincingly interpreting the origins of rugby union as
it emerged from the elite Rugby School through to the underlying class divisions
that precipitated the expulsion of the northern rugby league clubs from the RFU in
1895. The important influence of Thomas Hughes’s novel Tom Brown’s Schooldays
is examined front and center, clearly illuminating ties between the social value of
the game for preparing England’s young men for Imperial duty and the need to
ensure that this was limited to those boys and men who comprised the middle and
upper-middle classes. This latter point is well developed in the third chapter, “The
War Game,” where the social values tied to national service and sacrifice during the
First World War are employed to demonstrate the importance of rugby union to the
national cause. The fourth and fifth chapters focus squarely on gender (masculinity)
and class, respectively. The centrality of class and masculinity to the success of
rugby union through the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries provides a
window into a broader consideration of English and British culture over this period.
The second half of the book, beginning with chapters six and seven, “The
Player’s Game” and “The Imperial Game,” shed light on the conservative nature
of rugby with respect not only to amateurism, but also to the style of the sport and
how the game ought to be played. How the RFU dealt with challenges from rugby
168 Book Reviews
league clubs and national rugby unions from Britain and the Commonwealth countries provides ample evidence of the rigid control the English sought to maintain
over rugby union. Chapter 8, “The Money Game,” ably documents the inevitable
unraveling of amateurism despite the protestations of the RFU and like-minded
conservative members within the International Rugby Board. In his final chapter,
“The Whole New Ball Game?,” Collins addresses a number of issues that have
emerged in the brief period of open professionalism since 1995. The continuing
acrimony between the top professional clubs and the RFU over top players and
their club and national team commitments continues despite growing interest in
the sport at all levels. Yet, as Collins points out, the continued growth in interest
in rugby union in England remains steadfastly tied to the middle class and the
corresponding values and principles that ultimately support the view that rugby
union and sport represent deep politics where social traditions and attitudes are
articulated through recreational practices.
There are few areas where Collins’s well-constructed assertions can be questioned. The quality and thoroughness of the materials employed in the study are
clearly evident. One concern that does arise for this reviewer is the dearth of local
experiences that could have been tied to the larger project of understanding the
history of English rugby union. Some effort is taken at points in the discussion
to provide a regional breakdown of the various clubs and the relative importance
and influence of each region. Yet, apart from the intermittent mention of a specific
event at a local rugby union club, it is difficult to ascertain the universality of local
experiences that drove club development, player engagement, and broader community support for the sport. What Collins does is provide an excellent top-down
examination of English rugby union, but this does leave the vast bottom rung of
rugby history, the lesser clubs and schools, largely overlooked. Beyond this concern,
the organization of the discussion and in particular the transition between chapters
five and six is somewhat awkward. The move from the discussion of the class values
inherent within English rugby to the changing nature of the rules and the impact
of influences from outside England on the game is a minor but important fracture
in what is otherwise a relatively seamless essay. From a broader perspective, the
decisions Collins has made in telling this history reflects a well-considered constructionist approach to history that privileges national and international experiences to
explain how most of the people involved, primarily middle-class men, understood
and experienced the sport.
Any structural criticism of Collins’s approach is probably unfair. It is an enormous task to attempt to write the history of a sport as established as rugby union in
England. Although Collins’s account does leave one to question how representative
and effective the edicts and power of the RFU were for the average club player, it
is undeniable that his thesis holds. The strength of this work is largely the result
of the intensive examination of the historical record that clearly supports Collins’s
contention of rugby union representing and continuing to represent the values and
principles of the middle class in England. Ultimately, this well-constructed argument
goes some way to establishing the relative importance of rugby union in England
from the dawn of the industrial age to the present.
Book Reviews 169
The Baltimore Elite Giants: Sport and Society in the Age
of Negro League Baseball
By Bob Luke. Published in 2009 by John Hopkins (208 pp., $29.95).
Reviewed by Andrew Lindsay, University of Toledo
While it should be taken as given that the disappearance of baseball’s Negro Leagues
represented a long-overdue victory over segregation, Bob Luke’s analysis of the
Baltimore Elite Giants may leave readers feeling something valuable was lost to
Black America in their rapid decline after Jackie Robinson’s historic breakthrough.
The author illustrates the financial challenges faced by Negro League baseball.
Small budgets meant a lack of professional umpires and structured farm systems
to deliver talent, little time for exhibition practice games for the players to learn
and get into shape each season, and unprofessional scorekeeping. Cash-starved
teams had to schedule as many non-league games as possible, making for erratic
scheduling and long bus rides. Circumstances deciding which games counted and
who played in year-end championship series were continually cloudy.
The author, therefore, easily demonstrates how the racial realities of midcentury Baltimore shaped the Giants’s fortunes. Yet other pitfalls to the Giants’s
success may have been simple economics. A racial minority representing 12–15%
of America’s population might have been hard pressed to prosper in any event, for
even the largest Black urban populations lacked the fan bases of Major League
teams. The Giants owner’s dubious objectivity as league commissioner speaks to a
self-inflicted problem. A league that could not even run a standard season schedule,
furthermore, had problems closer to home than White racism. One would think
vibrant Negro leagues cities, with as many successful entrepreneurs and upstanding individuals like Baltimore’s, could have run a league with more structure and
integrity.
Luke leaves little doubt that Giants history would have been much smoother
if not for a racial climate presenting obstacles for the team’s financial health. The
author defines Baltimore as a thoroughly segregated and “Southern” city before
the Brown ruling, citing examples of local discrimination. Martin Luther King,
describing Chicago after his marchers were chased from the Windy City under
threat of violence in 1966, remarked that he had never seen such naked hatred.
Jackie Robinson had a similar reaction to his first exposure to Baltimore, claiming
he was more disturbed by Baltimore than other locales. Yet the author offers no
historical context for the roots of racism in Baltimore. This reader was interested
in learning the historical background of Baltimore’s racial history relative to other
urban centers, as well as why nearby New Jersey fans welcomed Jackie Robinson
in sharp contrast.
Against this intransigence was arrayed a progressive White mayor and activist
Black community. Giants games offered comfort against the segregationist status
quo around them. The unity needed to challenge White-only stores, libraries, and
transportation clearly came from a variety of institutions that solidified Black unity.
170 Book Reviews
One was the invigorating atmosphere at Bugle Field. The crowds enjoyed a rare
opportunity to escape the shadow of racism. On the field, the team contributed to
racial pride with annual Opening Day festivities that included first pitches made
by local Black dignitaries.
The Giants sensed their importance as role models to the community, recruiting
players with good character and requiring them to be accessible to fans. While the
team was winning fan affection, its local leaders were fighting local discrimination.
Luke depicts a Black community self-sufficient owing to its many professionals and
services, cohesive enough to support a team and to protest segregation. The Giants
and Black Baltimore, to the author, had a mutually beneficial and loyal relationship.
Establishing why Baltimore’s black community was so unified (and baseball
friendly) is left for the reader to speculate about, as the author offers no theories.
Perhaps there was a correlation between the community consciousness and the
harshness of discrimination. Giants players struggling to find lodging could be
billeted by local Black families who were strangers, or invited for dinner by single
female spectators. In return, the community gained a badly needed diversion. Luke
describes a circus-like atmosphere at Bugle Field, where concessionaires reaped
handsome profits, money switched hands through gambling, and fans came directly
from church with picnic lunches in their Sunday best to see and be seen. The Giants
players showboated with clowning antics when games were decided—contests with
no rules against doctored pitches.
It is tempting to affix a liberal interpretation on Black players’ motives, assuming they saw their involvement as part of a historical drama, waiting for when they
would be summoned to make history. The author refutes this, citing Giants players
leaving for more lucrative opportunities in Latin America. Racial pride and loyalty
to integration only went so far in shaping their career paths, and justly so. Until
the end of WWII, Negro League players had little sense of when integration would
happen, and were no less entitled to pursue their own interests as White players
would have done if not for the reserve clause.
The author’s most insightful observations are of the Negro Leagues’ fate. Ironically, the Black community and the Giants fortunes were inversely related. The
Giants arrived in Baltimore as a much-travelled team and found a long-term home
with the city’s baseball-hungry population. But the years of civil rights momentum
and court victories coincided with a rapid decline in team profits, spelling ultimate
doom. Lost were opportunities for fame and income for several hundred athletes,
but an economic stimulus for Black Baltimore. The preference of Black fans to
see Jackie Robinson is understandable, as Black America had arrived with his
every swing and stolen base. But the short-term interests of both Black players
and the community were hurt by such progress. The disappearance of the Giants
took an economic bite from the Black economy. Concession profits were gone,
as were gatherings of well-dressed Black crowds maintaining friendships, finding
spouses, glad-handing voters, and making business connections. The Giants were
abandoned by Black media and spectators. The last league folded, leaving several
hundred players jobless. Perhaps with a more high-minded approach by MLB
owners (supporting the Negro Leagues as a farm league), more reputable business
practices by Negro League owners, and a long-term view by Black fans (supporting both MLB and Negro Leagues for a longer time), many ballplayers’ careers
would have been sustained in the transition to integrated baseball. A question is
Book Reviews 171
how normal it is for newly enfranchised groups to discard institutions they leaned
on during periods of victimization.
Gold, Silver and Green: The Irish Olympic Journey
1896–1924
By Kevin McCarthy. Published in 2010 by Cork University Press
(426 pp., $66 U.S.).
Reviewed by Liam O’Callaghan, Liverpool Hope University
Few sporting events in history have served as a weathervane for broader political
issues as faithfully as the Olympic Games. From the murder of Israeli athletes by
Palestinian terrorists in Munich in 1972 through to the boycotts instigated by the
United States (1980) and the Soviet Union (1984), the Games have always had the
capacity to become embroiled in distinctly nonsporting controversies. Central to
this intersection between sport and politics is the platform that the Olympics has
provided for the demonstration and enhancement of national identity. The national
flag is the ubiquitous symbol of identification at the Olympic Games, and the recognition of nationhood through Olympic representation is a powerful and highly
visible display of autonomy. It is this symbolic potency of international sporting
recognition that forms the contextual backbone of the book under review.
This book is a chronological treatment of Irish involvement in the Olympic
Games from the first staging of the modern variant in Athens in 1896 through
to Paris in 1924. Each staging of the games has a devoted chapter, but with the
1904 games in St Louis and the 1908 games in London receiving two each. To the
author’s credit, he has unearthed a lot of fascinating material on the early history
of organized athletics in Ireland. In relative terms, Ireland produced what seems to
have been an unusually large number of top-class athletes, particularly in weightthrowing and jumping events. Several world records were set on Irish soil, and had
there been an extensive system of international athletic competition in decades
either side of 1900, Irish athletes would most likely have recorded achievements
well out of proportion to the island’s size and resources. In terms of those who did
gain notoriety, McCarthy illustrates well their importance as figures of local pride.
In addition, the achievements of Irish-American athletes and the implications of
their dual national identity are well illustrated.
This book is fascinating as a piece of narrative in terms of the data unearthed.
As a work of analysis, however, there are some contextual flaws. In the first instance,
singling out the recognition of nations as the overarching analytical theme arguably overplays the importance of national identity in these early manifestations of
the modern Olympics and does not fully account for the contemporary sporting
context. International sporting competition did not acquire the level of prestige it
enjoys today until well into the twentieth century. Newspapers were largely indifferent to early stagings of the Olympics and the soccer World Cup. The sporting
establishment in the British Isles, mainly comprising middle- and upper-class men,
favored home nations competitions and were largely disinterested, if not hostile,
to international sporting events. This Victorian and Edwardian sporting establishment, which Olympic founder de Coubertin saw himself as being very much part
172 Book Reviews
of, was far more concerned with preserving the amateur purity and intrinsic value
of sport than it was with issues of national representation. Given the lack of relative
prestige enjoyed by the Olympics in this period, one has to question how much it
truly mattered to late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century athletes whether or
not they stood beneath their national flag. Though it is clear that certain athletes
baulked at the idea representing of Great Britain, the evidence is anecdotal and
does not amount to a coherent trend. Nor is there sufficient evidence, as McCarthy
claims, of an orchestrated campaign on the part of the British Olympic authorities to deny separate Irish representation from 1906. To bolster his arguments,
McCarthy arguably overplays trivial incidents. The Times placing “England” in
brackets after Irish athletes’ names was in all likelihood far more innocent than
McCarthy’s implication that it was an attempt by England to claim Irish Olympic
successes (p. 152).
It seems clear that McCarthy allows his enthusiasm for the Olympic games,
and the idea of Ireland’s representation in it, to cloud his critical judgment at times.
On occasion, for instance, McCarthy’s phraseology betrays a lack of detachment
from his subject matter. Sentences such as “Ireland’s Olympic involvement was
further complicated by the fact that we were under British rule” (p. 4) and phrases
such as “our non-participation at the Berlin games” (p. 317) (emphasis added) do
not preserve the linguistic neutrality that one would expect from academic history.
McCarthy’s biggest concession to exuberance over sound historical judgment,
perhaps, is the book’s concluding sentence, which asserts that “the gradual, and
sporadic, raising of awareness of Ireland’s identity which was achieved by Irish
Olympians was a very important contribution to the cultural and indeed political
revolution which was underway in Ireland up to 1922” (p. 331). The occasional
and interesting anecdotes of Irish and Irish-American athletes resisting British
identity are not enough to raise this conclusion beyond the realms of overstatement.
Social background was a far more potent factor in deciding an athlete’s destiny
than nationality in the period covered by this book. In essence, any struggle for
national recognition is nowhere near as interesting as discovering how so many
individuals from such ostensibly humble backgrounds made such a remarkable
athletic impact. How were their sporting careers financed? How did they fit athletics around their working lives? What does their athletic prowess tell us about their
standard of living specifically with regard to diet, housing, disposable income,
and so on? These are all key questions that go unexamined in this book and are
fascinating potential avenues for future research.
Greek Sport and Social Status
By Mark Golden. Published in 2008 by University of Texas Press
(230 pp., $50.00 U.S.).
Reviewed by Stephen Brunet, University of New Hampshire
In Greek Sport and Social Status, Mark Golden continues to explore the topic of
his 1998 Sport and Society in Ancient Greece: how disparities and tensions within
Greek society were reflected in ancient athletic and equestrian contests. The lively
tone of this work and the numerous comparisons with modern sports—the influence,
Book Reviews 173
no doubt, of having originated as a Fordyce W. Mitchel Memorial Lecture—make
this work especially suited to a general audience. Historians not specializing in
ancient sports will also find that his arguments, considerably updated since the
lecture’s presentation in 2000, provide an entry to some less well known aspects
of Greek and Roman sports.
Golden begins by restating his position that competition at the Olympic level
was open only to wealthy aristocrats who would use their success to affirm their
social status. Within this group, significant jockeying for position took place between
the super rich, the only ones who could afford chariot racing, and other aristocrats.
His first three chapters actually look at those individuals, such as slaves, who clearly
did not fall into this group but whose presence in the world of athletics illuminates
the nature of Greek society.
In his previous research concerning the Archaic and Classical periods, Golden
found that aristocrats rarely acknowledged the assistance of charioteers, riders, or
trainers to avoid diminishing the glory of their own victories. Here he argues that
in the Hellenistic and Roman periods trainers at least became much more visible
and attributes the change to a society that increasingly attached more importance
to having participated in contests than in winning them. Yet we also need to recognize that the nature of the evidence changed over time. The poems of Pindar
were commissioned by aristocrats who had won one of the four great festivals and
whose views presumably controlled what was said about them. Much of our later
evidence takes the form of inscriptions, often set up by the magistrates responsible
for a local festival and often honoring athletes in the early stages of their careers.
Unlike earlier aristocrats, these two groups may not have been so concerned about
being robbed of their glory.
Laws regulating gymnasia, as Golden notes in chapter 2, regularly prevented
slaves from using them. Golden further argues that we have even less evidence of
slaves being allowed to take part in actual competitions than scholars have thought.
Golden reminds us, though, that distinguishing slave from free in particular cases
may not have been any easier for the Greeks than for us. Among other interesting
examples, he provides a useful summary of the palaistrophylax (“guard/guardian
of the wrestling ground”), who in some cities might be a slave but in others a free
man of some status. Yet it is probably going too far to conclude that the use of the
term for slaves in Sparta might have paved the way for the term being employed
for free men in the insular and somewhat anomalous society of Egypt.
Chapter 3 takes its lead from Louis Robert’s discovery that the Greeks were as
accepting of gladiators as the Romans and that in the Greek world gladiators often
styled themselves as athletes. This leads Golden to ask—contrary to the opinion
of most sports historians—if gladiators really were athletes. After looking at the
question from both ancient and modern points of view, he concludes that they were,
although the argument is worth revisiting.*
In his last chapter, Golden turns to assessing the extent of the difference
between the ancient and modern Olympics. He lists twelve particularly striking
dissimilarities that proponents of the modern Olympics often fail to recognize, such
*For example, see Heather Reid, “Was the Roman Gladiator an Athlete?,” Journal of the Philosophy of Sport 33 (2006): 37–49.
174 Book Reviews
as the essentially religious nature of the ancient Olympics. To his list I might add
that fair play seems to have no easily identified equivalent in Greek thought. The
second half of the chapter is devoted to recounting common misunderstandings
about the development of the modern Olympics. For example, the ancient Olympic
truce should not be used to claim that the modern Olympics can lead to worldwide
peace. His point is ultimately to show that the gulf between modern and ancient
athletics is so great that one cannot be used to interpret the other. This last chapter
is representative of the work as a whole. It is not filled with major new discoveries, although an intriguing insight occasionally pops up. The evidence, though, is
covered thoroughly and the arguments are presented with a lot of verve and clarity.
Golden’s work is likely to be particularly useful with classes since the positions he
takes on the nature of athletics will spark considerable discussion.