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

Good morning, and thanks for spending part of your day with Extra Points.

I’ve tried to do something I don’t do very much around here…which is take a few days off of work. Haven’t done anything too exotic, but did some hiking, read a book, and plan to catch up on a slew of yard and woodworking projects I’ve promised my wife but have neglected for a while. I’ll return to writing on Monday.

In the meantime, I’m happy to pass the mic over to a friend and longtime Extra Points contributor, Dr. Katie Lever. Katie just finished reading ‘Tackling The Everyday: Race and Nation in Big-Time College Football’ by Dr. Tracie Canada of Duke, and asked to share her thoughts on scholarship that looks at college football from an angle not commonly discussed…one that centers on lived experiences of college athletes, and their network of care.

Her words are below:

Dr. Tracie Canada’s job as a researcher, cultural anthropologist and ethnographer isn’t just to convey her findings to the masses. She says her job is also to learn. And she learned plenty about the college football industry while writing her book, Tackling the Everyday, which discusses exploitation in college football and the various ways Black athletes navigate systems that actively harm them.

“Tackling the Everyday,” Canada writes, “is a book about Black college football players, how they tackle the exploitative and violent systems that structure their everyday lives, and who helps them do it.” Specifically, Canada writes about how Black players form brotherhoods with their Black teammates and lean into their relationships with their mothers to cope with the rigor of college football. Unlike the “football family” dynamic prevalent in many college football programs (a label that Canada describes as “misleading”), these players’ chosen communities help them survive the dynamic upon which college football is predicated.

Tackling the “college football family” 

“Ideally, the team becomes a football family through the labor of its members,” Canada writes. “But this is a particular kind of family, one that mirrors a white hetero-patriarchal nuclear family that is privileged in the US imaginary. The head coach acts as the patriarchal head of the household, with the players on the team as his theoretical children.”

 While the majority of Canada’s fieldwork took place during the 2017-18 college football seasons, her observations during Covid were especially telling of this dynamic…one where “family” or not, the athletes still needed to work in the proverbial family business.

“Collectively, college football programs had at least $4.1 billion to lose during Covid, had the virus shut the football season down completely. And that sense of economic loss was amplified because March Madness was canceled earlier that year,” she explained. “So we had campuses completely shut down, but we were still playing football games with cardboard cutouts in the stands and artificial crowd noise funneled through. College football players were receiving Covid tests at higher rates than medical staff who were directly exposed to the virus on a daily basis. We were asking disproportionately Black players to literally put their bodies on the lines because their teams needed them for money. And you’re telling me this isn’t a business?”

Historic timing

In other words, the same athletes who are actively exploited and infantilized by their universities also serve as the financial cornerstones of these institutions. Not only that, but the 2020-21 college football season also coincided with the largest series of organized protests in United States history. Following the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, an estimated 15-26 million Black Lives Matter protestors took to the streets to march in opposition to police brutality and other racial injustices. And, as Canada notes, some of these marchers were college athletes–most notably, football players from the University of Texas who marched to the Texas Capitol building protesting the racist history of the Texas alma mater, “The Eyes of Texas.” 

While on the surface, it seemed that the college sports industry, along with American society in general was primed for change, Canada notes that much of the messaging from institutions was more talk than action.

“Universities and NFL teams in particular were peddling out anti-racism messaging,” Canada recalled, adding that these institutions were also insisting that America needed football to maintain a sense of normalcy (not to mention money) without addressing any structural inequity at both the college and professional levels. To many, including Canada, the messaging was hollow at best–a prime example of what Canada calls “corporal concern,” which is abundant in the college football industry.

Concern vs care

In Tackling the Everyday, Canada differentiates between two types of provisions that college football players receive from their families (both blood-related and chosen) and institutions. Antiracist messaging with little to no intent or action behind it falls under the umbrella of “corporal concern,” which according to Canada, “sees athletes as commodities and invests in their bodies only to keep them healthy enough to play, much in the same way   that plantation slavery also relied on a group of laborers whose primary function was to work on behalf of others.” 

Examples of corporeal concern include seemingly innocuous provisions like nutrition counseling, strength training, medical care, and other resources that ensure an athlete’s body is adequately prepared for on-the-field play. While such provisions are absolutely necessary to ensure athletic performance (and certainly helpful to a certain extent), Canada nonetheless describes them as fundamentally “extractive and manipulative, worried only with protecting its own self-interests.” It is for this reason that Canada uses the term “concern” instead of “care” when describing these perks. 

“Kindred care,” however, is on another level entirely. Referencing science   fiction writer Octavia Butler’s 1979 novel Kindred, Canada describes kindred care as “predicated on compassion  and understanding for a young man who takes the field and lives a life beyond it.” Kindred care typically falls in the hands of Black players and the relationships they surround themselves with. She notes that Black players in particular place emphasis on their chosen bonds, and form a football brotherhood that oftentimes lingers long after these athletes hang up their cleats for good.

Kindred care and Black mothers

Another important, and often overlooked form of kindred care that provides meaningful provision to Black college football players is their relationships with their mothers. And although Black fathers also play significant important roles in the lives of their sons, Canada notes that Black football players’ relationships with their mothers are is noteworthy for many reasons.

“There’s plenty of writing out there about football fathers,” Canada explained. “But there’s not much written about football mothers, especially Black mothers. And without them, college football couldn’t happen.”

In her book, Canada describes this dynamic in great detail. Football mothers are somewhat gatekeepers of their sons’ participation in football because mothers are generally more concerned about the care and safety of their sons. It is for this reason that “football institutions market to mothers as a way of feigning care for and interest in their sons’ safety,” Canada writes, “but since this all has capitalist motivations, it’s just another form of corporeal concern in action.”

Although Canada emphasizes that football fathers were not absent (in fact, many of them were actively engaged in the bleachers during the games, scrimmages, and camps she attended), her conversations with them were much different. “The fathers either didn’t engage with me at all, grilled me about my research–which was fine, I’m used to that–or talked football to me,” she said. “The moms were different. They talked about their sons and their safety, as well as typical mom stuff. ‘I wish he wouldn’t hit so hard.’ ‘I hope he’s eating enough.’ ‘Can you believe he got that tattoo?’”

Football mothers, Canada explained, also carry a disproportionate burden of care. Not only do they feel protective of their sons within the college football industry, but they also care for their sons as Black men who encounter racial violence off the field. In her book, Canada explains how one mother, in particular, called the local police department after her son and his teammate were racially profiled on separate occasions driving to and from campus. Canada explains that this mother didn’t only provide kindred care for her son, but for his teammate, who she also felt a sense of responsibility for. 

This sense of responsibility is one of the reasons so much youth football messaging is directed at mothers, regardless of race, as mothers often are the parents who determine if whether or not football is too dangerous for their sons to play. In one chapter of Tackling the Everyday, Canada describes a youth football “Moms Football Safety Clinic” organized by the Atlanta Falcons, which sought to educate mothers of young football players on safety elements of football, from proper equipment fitting to concussion awareness. And although these camps seem (and at some level, probably are) beneficial to these mothers, they are also another example of corporal concern: their end goal is to attract–and eventually extract–talent by appealing to the mothers of future football stars.

The omnipresence of family ties

The sense of care that Black football mothers provide their sons explains their emphasis throughout Canada’s conversations with Black football players. “The players also mentioned their mothers without me prompting them at all,” Canada explained. “So even when they weren’t physically ‘there’ with them, Black mothers always had a presence of sorts with their sons.”

Kindred care and the dynamics between Black players and their football brothers and mothers also provide these athletes another benefit: the ability to cope with the often dehumanizing experience of being a Black football player at historically white institutions. Whether it was through the intentional labelling of each other as family members (one football player, for instance, had a teammate’s contact information in his phone as “Brudda,” because he thought of this teammate as a “little brother”), and cultural touchpoints to bond over. Humor, for example, was a common element in conversations about the disproportionate amount of surveillance surveilling and discipline these Black athletes often endured. 

What’s next?

In a brutal college football landscape, it would be easy for a researcher like Canada to look at the history and facts surrounding the sport and give up hope. But Canada’s aim for her book is that it serves as an educational tool for athletes, coaches, and administrators.

“I would hope that they take away a better understanding of the full lives of the players on their teams, to then be better equipped to show genuine care for them,” Canada said. “In an ideal world, this book would lead to not only a recognition that they perform corporeal concern, but also practical improvements to this practice. Perhaps this book makes them reevaluate their treatment and orientation to the players so they can actually invest in the players on their teams as young men with bright futures–potentially away from the sport–not just football players who might secure them a win on the field.”

As Canada notes in her writing, this kind of change won’t happen simply by spray painting “End Racism” on end zones. It requires structural change, which, Canada said, includes “opportunities to unionize, collectively bargain, and revenue share. [These] are positive steps, especially following NIL.”

Canada adds that caring for Black athletes off the field also involves conceptualizing them as whole individuals with bright futures that are worth investing in. 

College athletes as a whole often sacrifice career opportunities like internships and networking, due to sport-related commitments, a dynamic Canada highlights in her book. Structural change involves bridging these gaps.

 “Real structural change that influences the academic side of this entire system,” Canada said, “[includes] more robust opportunities for internships and networking; ensuring fulfilling post-grad careers; encouraging a pursuit of whatever major the athlete chooses; rethinking playing schedule to limit excused absences for classes, ways for Black men to not be so overrepresented on teams–which then means they need to be better recruited as students—erasing the football family narrative since it’s just a capitalist ploy…[these] are also ways to improve their experiences and set them up better for life post-graduation.” 

In other words, Tackling the Everyday is a call for institutions to emphasize the humanity of college football, especially that of the Black athletes and mothers who make it possible. And to Canada’s point, institutions can learn a lot about how to care for Black athletes in particular, by examining the relationships between these athletes and both their chosen communities and blood family. Moving from a mindset of corporeal concern to kindred care in the hyper-capitalist college football industry is not one that can happen overnight.

But it is a shift worth striving for.

Dr.Lever’s work can be found here. More information about Dr. Canada and her research can be found here.