One of the parts of this book that I enjoyed learning about is the extent to which college football in the early 20th century was all about honor, masculinity, gentlemanliness. And at the time, that kind of stands in contrast to how Jews were viewed \u2014 that Jews were not masculine, Jews couldn\u2019t fit into that mold of the \u201cHarvard man.<\/em>\u201d <\/p>\nBeing on the sports team, that was probably far beyond Jewish expectations. Not to say that Jews could not be athletic, but very often the varsity players weren\u2019t picked for their talent but rather their surnames. What the sea change at Harvard is, [within] gentlemanly culture \u2014 in which \u201cgentlemanly\u201d is a Protestant, Christian masculinity \u2014 Horween is not Protestant. What allows him a pathway into that elite group is that drive to win. And as a player, he\u2019s good luck. He never loses. He becomes a signature player for victory who even wins the Rose Bowl.<\/p>\n
But as a coach, he subverts that. What he and Bill Bingham do is their campaign isn\u2019t necessarily for winning, it\u2019s for having fun, it\u2019s for enjoying the game.<\/p>\n
In the 1910s and 20s, college football was the peak of American sports, but that\u2019s certainly not the case anymore. What do you think would be the modern comparison for someone like Horween?<\/em><\/p>\nIs Becky Hammon with the Spurs, the first woman [to act as] head coach in basketball, something like that? Or the very important discussions about people of color as coaches in the NFL? Sports and education are, for some reason or another, where change is made in American life. Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 ends, at least officially, segregation. Title IV, what is basically American law for anti-discrimination based on sex, is based on women\u2019s college sports. You have the breaking down of color barriers and Jackie Robinson, Muhammad Ali and Vietnam. You have the first [openly] gay athletes, you have questions of breaking the glass ceiling for women and Serena Williams.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s absolutely 100% true that sports doesn\u2019t matter. Who wins the World Series is of no great consequence to most people\u2019s lives. Although it\u2019s interesting, if you drive up I-95 on a Sunday, you will see that the bumper stickers and the flags change. There is some sort of passion, obviously, about sport. But it\u2019s absolutely true that for some reason or another in the 20th century and 21st century in American sport, really important social and cultural decisions, and political decisions, are made in American sport.<\/p>\n
Another main topic in the book is that the goal for immigrants, especially Jews, was Americanization, assimilation \u2014 that to become part of the mainstream was the marker of success. But that seems to be the case for Jews in a very different sense than it is for Catholics and for Blacks. <\/em><\/p>\nThe major contribution of this book to American Jewish history beyond telling this story is to complicate notions of Americanization. Jews and Catholics in particular view Americanization very, very differently. The Catholic experience is to create parallel systems. If you\u2019re a good Catholic boy with immense football talent, play for Notre Dame, play for Boston College. Don\u2019t play for the Protestant mainstream. Cream them on the football field. Create parallel systems.<\/p>\n
The Jewish experience is not so. Outside of Orthodox day schools in the early 20th century, it was anathema, it was considered almost heretical, for American Jews to [go] to private schools. To the contrary, the so-called golden citadels of the public schools \u2014 that is the agent of Americanization. Jews don\u2019t establish their own educational systems. They somehow Americanize and acculturate into the mainstream. We don\u2019t compete with Harvard, we get into Harvard.<\/p>\n
Thinking about the antisemitism of that time \u2014 the quotas, Father Coughlin, all of that \u2014 how do you think that compares to what we\u2019re seeing today? <\/em><\/p>\nHistorians disagree about the 1920s. Was it a time of great prominence of American Jews? There was affluence in the roaring \u201920s. There were institutions that were created, there was creativity, from the Orthodox and Mordecai Kaplan certainly, across the board, the Jewish Theological Seminary. American Judaism was at a certain high point in the 1920s. At the same time, there were quotas, and there was rising antisemitism. I think today we also have to deal with the tension of, on the one hand, there are great opportunities for Jews in the United States; at the same time, there is antisemitism. And so from the 1920s to the 2020s, 100 years later, you see a model for how to grapple with those tensions.<\/p>\n
What do you hope, more than anything else, someone takes away or learns from your book?<\/em><\/p>\nIt\u2019s a book that begins like a punch line: a working class Protestant, a Catholic and a Jew walk into a football field. But it ends with something I think a lot more pronounced, which is, it\u2019s a story about change. As a historian, I study change, particularly in American Judaism, broadly in American religion and Jewish Studies. Change is the best asset that a historian has to study. I wasn\u2019t interested in just finding another Sandy Koufax story, replicating that story. This is a story that isn\u2019t just about a Jew who happened for his moment to become quite successful and quite famous, or a Catholic or a former mill hand turned first athletic director in college history. It\u2019s really about how people on the periphery influence the mainstream.<\/p>\n
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