Patriot Games, War Games, and Political Football: A Constructivist Analysis of Militarization in an American Sport

Abstract

AbstractI argue that constructivism can help us understand the political dimension of sports generally and specifically the norms, meaning, and social identity of American football. More specifically, I contend that football’s development in the United States built it into a cultural force associated with militarist and patriotic norms that politicians could leverage for political support when deep domestic divisions existed concerning national security. This phenomenon resulted from the game’s social transformation from a primarily civilian, leisure-time form of recreation and entertainment into a socially constructed symbol for military recruitment by a reinforcing “gridiron triangle” comprised of actors from the military bureaucracy, football teams and leagues, and the sports media. Because of this social phenomenon, American presidents such as Richard Nixon and Donald Trump have attempted to use football as a cultural asset for bolstering support when their national security credentials were seriously questioned. In the case of Nixon, it happened when the United States was divided over the Vietnam War. As for the Trump administration, a similar situation emerged amid investigations of collusion between the Russian government and the Trump campaign and the subsequent manipulation of military aid designed to contain Russian expansion in Ukraine for partisan, electoral gains.