(A)Politicizing College Game Day: Examining Veiled Political Messaging in Sport Media

• In Event: Moscone Center North Roundtable Session 10
  In Roundtable Session: Racist Narratives, Misrepresentations, and Inequities: Media and Critical Stances

Abstract

Through analysis of regular-season College GameDay pre-game and game-of-the-week broadcasts during the 2016 football season, we examine the discursive work College GameDay broadcasts performed in framing college football as pure, apolitical, and unifying. Contrary to the program’s espoused political neutrality, findings demonstrate that the broadcasts promoted conservative ideals and normalized Trump’s rhetoric, while strategically erasing activist athletes. College sport is fundamentally a product of the higher education institutions that both sponsor it and benefit from it (King & Slaughter, 2004). As such, higher education is implicated in the very real harms perpetuated by College GameDay broadcasts and the ideologies they promote.

Authors

• Siduri J. Haslerig, The University of Oklahoma

• Sara E Grummert, University of California - Riverside