Ten minutes with the Boys, the thoroughly academic task and the semi‐naked celebrity: football masculinities in the classroom or pursuing security in a ‘liquid’ world

Abstract

This paper presents a tale about the classroom exploits of a cohort of male collegiate football players reading for a module concerned with gender at a university in the UK. It takes as its starting point a view of the social world as individualised and fluid but simultaneously connected to history and ideology and attempts to explain the behaviours of this small group of men. In doing so, the tale aims to problematise rather than disprove or remove ‘modern’ structural sociology and especially the concept of hegemonic masculinity by (re)drawing on empirical data and presenting it in a way that gives a better sense of ‘reality’ in the form of 10 minutes of ‘real‐time’ action. The paper concludes that these men appear to be actively seeking belonging and security in a world that offers little of either and may construct their own masculine discourse away from the bowdlerising of an itinerant society and vehemently defend it from the challenges of both others and the ephemerality of their own lives.