Is there anything more distinctively American than its sports culture?
In a previous episode of this podcast, we discussed the tragic decline and partial revival of American cricket. As the 2026 World Cup kicks off in the US Adam asks why a sport that took over the world has been so marginal for so long in America – and wonders if that’s finally changing.
In the nineteenth and early twentieth century, a form of football that had begun in English public schools became a global phenomenon, played almost everywhere except in the United States.
There, a strange alternative form of football was played instead, one in which men in helmets stand around for long periods, interrupted by occasional violent bursts of energy.
This is a story about culture, gender politics, race, class and migration – and, as with the story of cricket’s demise -- about nationhood.
Guests on this episode: Frank Guridy, Dr. Kenneth and Kareitha Forde Professor of African American and African Diaspora Studies and Professor of History at Columbia. His most recent book is The Stadium: An American History of Politics, Protest, and Play (Basic Books, 2024) which tells the story of the American stadium as an institution that has played a central role in American civic and political life and in the struggles for social justice over the last 150 years. And by Uta Balbier, Professor of US History at Oxford, a transnational historian of the modern United States with a particular interest in sport history.
The Last Best Hope? is a podcast of the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford and is kindly supported by Tom Amraoui. For details of our programming, go to rai.ox.ac.uk
If you would like to support us by making a donation go to https://www.rai.ox.ac.uk/giving
Producer: Emily Williams. Presenter: Adam Smith