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Articles by Travis Vogan
More Than an Athlete: LeBron James, the Sports Star as Production Company, and the Entrepreneurial Politics of Empowerment
Abstract: This article critiques and contextualizes LeBron James’s branded media enterprises—through analysis of several key productions and the industrial discourses surrounding them—to consider the shifting nature and uses of the sports star in contemporary media culture. It specifically explains how James’s expansive and increasingly corporatized media concerns fuse empowerment and entrepreneurialism.
The Reeducation of Bill Walton: From Weak-Kneed Vegetarian Socialist to Born Again Capitalist
Abstract Scholarship and popular commentary on the basketball player Bill Walton tend to focus on his remarkable tenure at UCLA, his countercultural lifestyle, his role as a ‘Great White Hope’ while basketball was becoming increasingly Black, and the unrelenting string of injuries that cut short his professional career.
What Grantland’s demise says about ESPN’s past and future ambitions
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What Grantland’s demise says about ESPN’s past and future ambitions
(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.) (THE CONVERSATION) For those of us who regularly read Grantland, ESPN’s announcement that it shuttered the boutique sports and pop culture website didn’t come as a surprise. The site had steadily been moving away from its originally stated focus on long-form journalism. And when ESPN laid off 300 employees to cut costs last month, it was perhaps a sign of things to come.
LeRoy Neiman
The Life of America’s Most Beloved and Belittled Artist The untold story of an American hustler who upset the art world and became a pop culture icon, cutting a swath across twentieth-century history and culture. LeRoy Neiman—the cigar-smoking and mustachioed artist famous for his Playboy illustrations, sports paintings, and brash interviews—stood among the twentieth century’s most famous, wealthy, and polarizing artists.
The LARB Ball NFL Roundtable
Welcome to the inaugural LARB Ball sports and culture roundtable! Below, you’ll find a series of short essays by critics and scholars on the players, texts, and problems surrounding the 2018-19 NFL season that began just this past week: Brian Jacobson on why American football’s 1999 season was a harbinger of things to come; Sarah J.
Want to know more about March Madness? Here’s what to read and watch.
No U.S. sporting event disrupts everyday life quite like the first few days of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. Yes, the Super Bowl draws more viewers, but more people have a stake in the March Madness games, having filled out brackets and signed up for office pools. We suddenly care whether St. Mary’s University beats Siena College, even if we have no clue what time zones the schools are in.
What to read (and watch) to learn more about the Super Bowl
T he Super Bowl is more than an athletic contest: It is an annual ritual that reveals — and helps create — our values, beliefs and customs. But it was not always an excessive festival famous as much for the commercials as for the game. The books and film below show more about how the NFL emerged, the myths it creates and harbors, and the less-glamorous details it often deliberately obscures.
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