
Touchdown!
Latinos Breaking Through the Nfl's White Lines
Ohio State University Press
Will be published approx. on 13. October 2026
Book
Paperback/Softback
158 pages
978-0-8142-5994-8 (ISBN)
Description
An accessible, lively, and concise study of Latino participation in the NFL that is part sports history, part cultural analysis, and part love letter to those who break through color lines.
The NFL doesn't want you to know: Latinos have been playing in the league since 1927. In Touchdown!, Frederick Luis Aldama and Christopher González tap interviews, archival research, and statistics to tell the story that generations of sports journalists have missed. They celebrate Cuban-born Lou Molinet's leather-helmet debut, Steve Van Buren's Hall of Fame rise, Tom Flores's Lombardi trophies, and Jim Plunkett threading impossible passes. And they address those convergences of race, class, and athletic opportunity--such as pay-to-play youth leagues, housing segregation, legal exclusions to early citizenship, and racist stereotypes pushing Latino players away from "thinking" positions--that keep brown players on the sidelines. Part sports history, part cultural analysis, and part love letter to the those who break through color lines, Touchdown! fills a critical gap in sports literature and Latino studies and makes clear what the scoreboard has tried to erase: La cultura has been on the field the whole time.More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Columbus, OH
United States
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Weight
454 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-8142-5994-8 (9780814259948)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Frederick Luis Aldama is the Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities at the University of Texas at Austin, where he founded and directs the Latinx Pop Lab. He is the author or editor of many books, including Talking #browntv: Latinas and Latinos on the Screen and the Eisner-winning Latinx Superheroes in Mainstream Comics.Christopher González is Professor and Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Endowed Chair in the Department of English at Southern Methodist University. He is the author or editor of numerous books, including Reel Latinxs: Representation in U.S. Film and TV and Permissible Narratives: The Promise of Latino/a Literature