Overview

On Boston Common stands a monument dedicated to the Oneida Football Club. It honors the site where, in the 1860s, sixteen boys played what was then called the “Boston game”—an early version of football in the United States. The boys were largely the sons of upper-class Boston Brahmins, and they lived through the transformative periods of the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the Gilded Age. Later as they grew old, in the 1920s, a handful of them orchestrated a series of commemorative events about their boyhood game. Benefitting from elite networks developed through the city’s social and educational institutions, including Harvard University, they donated artifacts (such as an oddly shaped, battered black ball) to museums, deposited self-penned histories into libraries and archives, and erected bronze and stone memorials, all to elevate themselves as the inventors of American football (and later, by extension, soccer). But was this origin story of what, by then, had become one of America’s favorite games as straightforward as they made it seem or a myth-making hoax? In Inventing the Boston Game, Kevin Tallec Marston and Mike Cronin investigate the history of the Oneida Football Club and reveal what really happened. In a compelling, well told narrative that is informed by sports history, Boston history, and the study of memory, they posit that these men engaged in self-memorialization to reinforce their elite cultural status during a period of tremendous social and economic change, and particularly increased immigration. This exploration of the Club’s history provides fascinating insight into how and why origin stories are created in the first place.

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9781625348425

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Reviews

"""A thoroughly researched, and clearly written history set during a time when Americans were creating all sorts of memorials, including memorial football stadiums, hospitals, and various other structures of a public or quasi-public nature, to reinforce the established social order.""--Brian Ingrassia, author of The Rise of Gridiron University: Higher Education's Uneasy Alliance with Big-Time Football ""A fascinating study of historical memory and a terrific history of sport and youth culture in Boston.""--Joel Wolfe, author of the forthcoming The American Game: Gridiron Football and the Making of a Modern Nation"

"""A thoroughly researched history set during a time when Americans created all kinds of memorials--especially for famous sporting events--to create a usable past that mythologized the nation while also reinforcing the established social order.""--Brian Ingrassia, author of The Rise of Gridiron University: Higher Education's Uneasy Alliance with Big-Time Football ""A fascinating study of historical memory and a terrific history of sport and youth culture in Boston.""--Joel Wolfe, author of the forthcoming The American Game: Gridiron Football and the Making of a Modern Nation"

Author Information

Kevin Tallec Marston is Research Fellow at CIES (Centre International d'Etude du Sport / International Center for Sports Studies) and Visiting Researcher and Lecturer at the International Centre for Sports History and Culture at De Montfort University. His writings on sports have appeared in edited collections and journals such as Contemporary European History and the International Sports Law Journal. Mike Cronin is Academic Director, Centre for Irish Programmes at Boston College, Dublin. His publications include Sport: A Very Short Introduction.

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