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Books > Sport & Leisure > Sports & outdoor recreation > Ball games > Basketball
During the 1980s Black athletes and other athletes of color
broadened the popularity and profitability of major-college
televised sports by infusing games with a “Black style†of
play. At a moment ripe for a revolution in men’s college
basketball and football, clashes between “good guy†white
protagonists and bombastic “bad boy†Black antagonists
attracted new fans and spectators. And no two teams in the 1980s
welcomed the enemy’s role more than Georgetown Hoya basketball
and Miami Hurricane football. Georgetown and Miami taunted
opponents. They celebrated scores and victories with in-your-face
swagger. Coaches at both programs changed the tenor of postgame
media appearances and the language journalists and broadcasters
used to describe athletes. Athletes of color at both schools made
sports apparel fashionable for younger fans, particularly young
African American men. The Hoyas and the ’Canes were a sensation
because they made the bad-boy image look good. Popular culture took
notice. In the United States sports and race have always been
tightly, if sometimes uncomfortably, entwined. Black athletes who
dare to challenge the sporting status quo are often initially
vilified but later accepted. The 1980s generation of
barrier-busting college athletes took this process a step further.
True to form, Georgetown’s and Miami’s aggressive style of play
angered many fans and commentators. But in time their style was not
only accepted but imitated by others, both Black and white. Love
them or hate them, there was simply no way you could deny the Hoyas
and the Hurricanes. Â
The NCAA men's basketball tournament is one of the iconic events in
American sports. In this fast-paced, in-depth account, J. Samuel
Walker and Randy Roberts identify the 1973-74 season as pivotal in
the making of this now legendary postseason tournament. In an era
when only one team per conference could compete, the dramatic
defeat of coach John Wooden's UCLA Bruins by the North Carolina
State Wolfpack ended a decade of the Bruins' dominance, fueled
unprecedented national attention, and prompted the NCAA to expand
the tournament field to a wider range of teams. Walker and Roberts
provide a richly detailed chronicle of the games that made the
season so memorable and uncover the behind-the-scenes maneuvering
that set the stage for the celebrated spectacle that now fixes the
nation's attention every March.
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