Abstract
ABSTRACTThis article looks at how the National Football League (NFL) uses television and new media technologies to engage in a pedagogical project of teaching the game and its culture to children so that they can produce themselves as fans valuable to the NFL. The NFL takes these steps because becoming a fan of any sport is not a passive process; it requires significant, focused labor to learn the requisite knowledge and perform an identity tied to the consumption of specific cultural commodities. We specifically look at the television show NFL Rush Zone, produced in partnership with Nickelodeon, and the website nflrush.com that together form an inter-textual pedagogical and performative narrative space where children can learn to be football fans and simultaneously perform a fan identity. Since fans are central to the NFL’s $9.5 billion annual revenues, we argue that this process of subjectification is also a process of commodification.
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