Football and Sociology

American football as we know it originated from rugby played in Britain in the mid-19th century. The person who Americans consider the “Father of American Football” is Walter Camp. Professional football can be traced back to 1982, when there was a $500 contract for the Allegheny Athletic Association and the Pittsburgh Athletic Club to play a game against each other. Originally football was primarily a sport of the Midwestern industrial towns in the United State.

In 1902, the American Professional Football Association was formed and two years later the National Football League. The competition was fierce between the two leagues, which led the two leagues to merge. Football eventually became national. When the two leagues merged is when the Super Bowl was formed. This is the most viewed event in the United States on a yearly basis. Football has grown for many years now and now has 32 teams. According to the Scarborough Research data, the NFL fans mirror the general United States population in many areas including age, race and income.

There are a few discrepancies which include that men account for 49% of the general population, however the account for 58% of the NFL fans versus women who account for 51% of the general population but only account for $35-50K, in which they account for 19% of the fan base for the NFL. The report also states that there are more NFL fans that are married than non-married. The age group with the highest attendance whether on television or at the actual games is 35-44 years old. The Scarborough Report has a tremendous amount of statistics regarding NFL fans.

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The list goes from what they like to eat or drink to how many kids live in the household. I was very amazed by the information that was researched. In the society today, football affects almost every household. The impact of football has grown over the last few decades. The number of channels on the television in which sports can be watched has had a massive effect on the society. There are now channels just for specific sports and these channels only show that particular sport on that channel, all day. Football is a very physical sport. Youth like to see the physical part of the sport and they use the sports players as their role models.

They all want to have muscles like the football players and be tough like the football players and of course they want to play football as well. The impact of football has both negative and positive factors. I found an article on the wives of the coaches of football. It was very interesting. In the article it states that in 1989, a group of women who were married to football coaches met at the American Football Coaches Association convention in Nashville, Tennessee (Tucker, 2001) and decided to form a support group. Evidently, they were feeling a little let out of the loop.

For many men, football allows for violence and male bonding (Nelson, 1994), however, for women, football often means competing for men’s attention, or worrying about boyfriends, husbands or sons on the field. Within this article it also talks about how the spheres changed because men were known to leave the home and go outside to work and women stayed inside and were domesticated. Football is for men and it classifies them as performers and heroes, however women are classified as watchers and admirers. This article overall is showing the differences in men and women in regards to football.

There were a lot of different opinions by different people who had heard about the organization of the American Football Coaches’ Wives Association. How this group puts together recipe books and visits the sick children in the hospital was a great asset to the group but they still don’t get the recognition that the football players get. This was a very tougher paper for me to write due to the fact that even though I like football, I have never looked at it in any other way than occasional entertainment. I am not a die-hard fan who watches the sport every chance that I get.

Scarborough Research Examines NFL Fan Demos, QSR (2009, September) Preferences, http://www. sportsbusinessdaily. com/Daily/Issues/2009/09/Issue-12/The-Back-Of-The-Book/Scarborough-Research-Examines-NFL-Fan-Demos-QSR-Preferences. aspx Tucker, Diana, A Gender Drama in American Football Culture: The Case of the Coach’s Wife. , (2001) Football Studies, vol. 4 no. 2 http://www. la84foundation. org/SportsLibrary/FootballStudies/2001/FS0402g. pdf Nelson, M. B. (1994). The stronger women get, the more men love football: Sexism and the American culture of sports. New York: Avon.

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