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A decline in severe football injuries and fatalities after the 1970s helped make it possible for another concern to come into focus: that trauma to players’ brains, even if it did not result in death or catastrophic injury, might still constitute a serious medical problem. In the early 1990s, the National Football League (NFL) found itself under scrutiny after a spate of high-profile head injuries among its prominent athletes. In response, the league formed a committee on mild traumatic brain injury that not only minimized the severity of concussions among NFL players, but also influenced perceptions of risk at the youth football level. Yet in the late 2000s, several factors contributed to making football-related brain injuries at all levels of the sport a topic of national debate. These included autopsy findings in deceased NFL players, retired athletes speaking out about their medical problems, extensive media coverage, and an emerging framing of football-related brain damage as a public health concern that had been covered up by the NFL.

This chapter charts the National Football League's (NFL) meteoric rise, thanks to NFL Films' unwavering designation of pro football as a unique and unifying reflection of America. Fueled by a combination of sport and media's increasingly profitable symbiosis and Commissioner Pete Rozelle's image-consciousness, the NFL enhanced its marketing efforts during the 1960s and began to diversify aggressively, creating branded products that reached out to audiences beyond the white, middle-class men who composed its typical fan base. The Rozelle-era NFL solidified its prominence in American culture through its merger with the American Football League and subsequent development of the Super Bowl. This chapter examines how the NFL made connections to as many potential fans as possible by establishing national television exposure, branding various items, organizing athletic events for kids, donating to charitable causes, and creating a tourist attraction. It looks at one production that codified NFL Films' signature aesthetic practices, They Call It Pro Football, and how it situates professional football as “the sport of our time.”

The chapter looks at the emergence of the modern National Football League (NFL) in the 1960s. It explores the growing popularity of the players and discusses how football became the nation's favorite spectator sport. It looks into the achievements and stardom of Jim Brown. The chapter provides a detailed examination of the role of Pete Rozelle in the emergence of the image of the modern NFL. He is termed as the master architect of the modern NFL. The chapter also provides an overview of the promotional role of NFL films and the Super Bowl.

This chapter focuses on the Congressional hearings conducted in 1959 and 1960 to address the issue of expansion and prospective new leagues. All of the league constitutions contained clauses pertaining to relocating or selling existing franchises and creating new franchises. These clauses typically required a supermajority, in some cases unanimity, of owners to approve franchise relocation or sales and expansion. However, incumbent owners were lukewarm about franchise expansion and hostile towards new leagues. This chapter begins with a discussion of tactics employed by team owners to prevent the entry of a new league, including territorial rights. It then considers the demise of the Continental League due to a number of hurdles, such as getting television contracts, providing pension benefits equivalent to Major League Baseball's (MLB) scheme, and and getting stadiums. It also examines the expansion policies of the National Basketball Association (NBA) and the National Football League (NFL), along with the legal wrangling between the NFL and the American Football League (AFL) over expansion.

This book explores how NFL Films shaped the way Americans view football and paved the way for the emergence of cable television and Internet sports media. Baseball is traditionally recognized as America's favorite pastime, but the country's most popular and lucrative sports organization since the late 1960s has been the National Football League (NFL). NFL football's tremendous cultural and economic power is not simply a product of the games it provides for millions of live and mediated spectators, but also its cultural meanings. More than merely a game, the sport embodies and articulates characteristics, beliefs, attitudes, and values unique to American history, identity, and everyday life. This book examines the ways that NFL Films' productions changed how pro football, and sport in general, is represented and imagined while establishing a foundation from which the contemporary sports media landscape—an almost unavoidable facet of popular culture—developed. It discusses the institutional and cultural history of NFL Films as well as its circulating and archived productions, the discourses it generates, and the discourses surrounding the company.

This chapter briefly examines semi-professional and professional football prior to 1920 including nature of the players, teams, and fans. Describes the founding of the American Professional Football Association (APFA) in 1920 and the change of name to The National Football League (NFL) the following year. George Halas and Commissioner Joe Carr played key roles in the formation and early history of the league. Red Grange and C.C. Pyle provided new visibility for the NFL and the Grange Tour exposed the league to fans across the nation. Franchises came and went with frequency throughout the 1920s, and one of the notable franchises was the Duluth Eskimos whose fame increased with the signing of Ernie Nevers.

This chapter examines the productions of NFL Films that not only document but also exalt the National Football League (NFL). NFL Films productions document and provide historical records of NFL games. It creates the league's history by arranging exceptional moments into celebratory narratives, such as Greatest Moments in Dallas Cowboys History (1992), Era of Excellence: The 1980s,(1989), and the syndicated television program NFL Game of the Week. NFL Films' documentaries suggest the NFL's past is constituted by extraordinary moments—diving touchdown catches, punishing blocks, and graceful runs—that evidence the league's unique excitement and epic importance. This chapter discusses NFL Films' production practices that aim to glorify pro football and how its material is influenced by the media outlets for which the company produces content. It shows that NFL Films' highlights offer a model through which to explain the emergence of the contemporary sports highlight—perhaps the most powerful and prevalent genre in sports media.

This chapter examines how the development of cable television and NFL Media enhanced the production and circulation of NFL Films content. As NFL Films' programming set the stage for the development of twenty-four-hour sports channels like ESPN, it established a starting point from which the National Football League (NFL) formed its own network, the NFL Network. In 2004 NFL Films was designated part of NFL Media, a multiplatform subsidiary run by former ESPN president Steve Bornstein that now includes the NFL Network, NFL.com, and offshoots like the RedZone specialty seasonal cable channel and the NFL Mobile smartphone application. This chapter explores how NFL Films, which established a foundation for the development of cable sports television and the transformation of the NFL into a multiplatform media institution, has been constrained to adjust its practices to maintain a place within the contemporary sports media landscape and league it helped create. It also considers how the Internet created new opportunities for the NFL to build and circulate its image.

This chapter focuses on baseball's so-called “antitrust exemption” that makes it unique among all sports in America, including football, hockey, boxing, and basketball. It first examines the Supreme Court's decision in the 1953 case Toolson v. New York Yankees and its implications for team sports as well as the Department of Justice. It then turns to the antitrust suit filed by the government in 1952 against the International Boxing Club and its owners, James D. Norris and Arthur Wirtz, for alleged violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. It also considers the case filed by Bill Radovich, a lineman for the Detroit Lions who was blacklisted by the National Football League (NFL) for jumping to the All America Football Conference, against the NFL.

This chapter examines how broadcast television helped NFL Films transform pro football from a sport that appeared primarily on Sunday telecasts and evening news recaps into a spectacle that could be consumed throughout the entire week and year. It discusses NFL Films productions designed to augment and publicize exceptional National Football League (NFL) broadcast events, specifically the annual Super Bowl and ABC's Monday Night Football. It shows how NFL Films strengthened the NFL's relationship to television to attract television viewers (and sell advertising time) around the clock. The company's productions demonstrated that nonlive sports television programming could have appeal throughout the week and throughout the year. Furthermore, NFL Films anticipated and precipitated the continuous sports television that developed along with cable television.

This chapter focuses on the NFL Films archive, the largest sports film archive in the world. Building from the authenticity and emotional power the company assigns to film, president Steve Sabol calls the NFL Films archive “the soul of the NFL,” “the NFL's Smithsonian,” and “football's wine cellar.” NFL Films' archive consists of two main parts that serve overlapping functions: a fire-proof, temperature-controlled, limited-access vault that houses and safeguards nearly all the film the company has created and purchased since Blair Motion Pictures' beginning; a film library that organizes copies of footage for inclusion in the company's productions and for sale to clients. This chapter examines the NFL Films archive's role in the company's efforts to create, circulate, and control the National Football League's image.

This chapter examines how NFL Films' engagements with aesthetic traditions, the discourses surrounding the company, and its selective incorporation of positive critical reception into its publicity materials separate the organization from other sports media outlets and, by extension, distinguish the National Football League (NFL) from competing sports organizations. Throughout its history, NFL Films has taken great pains to emphasize its distinction within sports media and in the broader contexts of art and media culture. The company places its productions in dialogue with established aesthetic traditions, reinforces its producers' status as legitimate artists, advertises the various accolades it has received, and distances itself from NFL's commercial motives. This chapter explains NFL Films' use of aesthetic traditions and discourses to craft its image and position the company as part of an artworld—a status that is remarkably rare in sports television and in sports media more generally. It also considers how NFL Films situates Ed and Steve Sabol as artistic visionaries who play central roles in reinforcing its efforts to claim status as a site that produces art.

This concluding chapter examines the continued presence of NFL Films' traditional practices—and the values they deliver—at a time when the National Football League (NFL) evidences less support for programming that displays these conventions. Despite its decreased importance to the contemporary league, the cultural and aesthetic significance of NFL Films productions exceeds the realm of pro football and even sports media. Despite their increased scarcity on venues like ESPN and NFL Network, NFL Films' traditional aesthetic practices and the values they convey circulate independently of the company's depictions of pro football. It is now virtually impossible to watch TV for very long during the football season without witnessing at least one commercial that evokes NFL Films' conventions. This chapter discusses the legacy of NFL Films, including the establishment of a league-owned media infrastructure upon which the NFL continues to expand and that all other major sports organizations have since emulated, along with the creation of a framework from which contemporary sports television developed its formal practices and enhanced its presence on the medium.

This chapter traces the history of professional team sports in order to place the issues covered in the Congressional hearings in the proper context. It first considers the rise of baseball as America's national pastime and Major League Baseball (MLB)'s decision to maintain two separate leagues, the American League and the National League. It then discusses the dispute between MLB and the rival Federal League, along with the emergence of other sports that achieved Big League status, namely, football and basketball. It also examines the prosperity of the National Football League (NFL) and the National Basketball Association (NBA) as well as the appearance of new challengers to their dominance after World War II. Finally, it looks at the Flood v. Kuhn, a Supreme Court case that challenged baseball's reserve clause, along with the rise of free agency.

The Introduction provides an overview on changes in the image of professional football over the years. It provides a detailed discussion on the origin of the National Football League (NFL). It presents struggles with the development and progress of the organization. It looks into the successes and failures of the NFL. Pro football has previuosly lacked pageantry and spectacle. It discusses various factors which aided the growth and popularity of the NFL including the role of national media and magazines. It examines the shift in the image of pro football to how it is seen today. It provides an insight into the crucial role played by Bert Bell and Pete Rozelle in the early development of the NFL.

This chapter focuses on the Congressional hearings conducted in 1957 and 1958 to address whether basketball, football, and hockey should be given a broad antitrust exemption similar to that of baseball. It first considers the introduction of different bills pertaining to professional sports and antitrust following the Supreme Court's ruling in Radovich v. NFL, with particular emphasis on antitrust legislation focusing on the National Football League (NFL), before discussing the farm systems in baseball and hockey pioneered by Branch Rickey of the St. Louis Cardinals. It also looks at the issue of the reserve clause and its effect upon competitive balance and concludes with an assessment of Congress's decision not to grant even partial antitrust exemptions for the reserve clause, draft, territorial rights, and commissioner powers in the NFL, National Basketball Association (NBA), and National Hockey League (NHL).