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Integrating the gridiron: black civil rights and American college football

concurrent with this both have been quick to take on more traditional masculine roles (for example, Beckham’s ever-present heterosexuality and appearances with his wife; Ronaldo’s much-publicised fatherhood). This work does demonstrate just how complacent English football has become in recent years. With the glossy Premier League attracting investors to clubs and huge sponsorship deals, it is easy to forget that less than a generation ago this was a game dismissed by the broadsheet press as ‘a slum game for slum people’. Yet there are dangerous and frightening undercurrents of prejudice, violence and danger, all frequently glossed over, as Cashmore and Cleland highlight so well; the continuing misogyny of the men’s professional game may be invisibilised in this volume but perhaps that is fitting as women’s contributions have so often been erased from football’s history. The potential future problems that will be created by that complacency, however, could be drawn out much more; as Cashmore and Cleland accurately observe, the stadium disasters of the 1980s reflected a neglect from the authorities and an assumption that all would be well. Having said that, surely to attribute the problems in football solely to factors within the sport is slightly naïve. Football, unfortunately, is also a reflection of its society; and its problems are also social problems. It does, however, also have a unique position to begin to challenge these problems. It would be interesting to read what the authors – or indeed their respondents – think English football should actually be doing.