Latinos in the End Zone: Conversations on the Brown Color Line in the NFL [Hardcover]

Here, Frederick Luis Aldama and Christopher Gonz?lez offer a thought-provoking conversation on the history of Latinos in the pro football leagues. As they weave their way through significant points where culture, politics, and history congeal (an early twentieth century era of Brown Color Lines, the Great Depression, WWII, birth of television, Civil Rights struggles, the twenty-first century Latino demographic explosion, among others), Aldama and Gonz?lez thread together an alpha-to-omega, all-encompassing story of Latinos in the NFL. They push hard at issues such as racial prejudice, including why Latinos have historically had to cross into the Canadian Leagues to prove themselves to white American officiators and the glaring omission of prominent Latino names honored within the hallowed interiors of the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Encyclopedic in scope and powerfully pointed in its analysis, they put the spotlight on the significant contribution made by Latinos in the history of pro football.

Preface: A Life Unexamined is Not Worth Living Prologue: Kick Offs 1. From Scrimmage Lines to End Zones: Latinos in the National Football League 2. From Punishing Penalties to Brown Bodies Raiding the NFL 3. Sidelined . . . No M?s! 4. The Blitz . . . Heroes, Saviors, Saints, and Sinners Epilogue: End Zones and New Scrimmage Lines

Football might be the most suitable metaphor to understand the role of Latinos in the United States today. - Ilan Stavans, General Editor, The Norton Anthology of Latino Literature

Who knew that the NFL was Chicano? That the National Football League owed much of what it calls its legend to Americans of Mexican descent? Well Aldama and Gonz?lez did and do and with Latinos in the End Zone they share with football fans and pointy-headed professors alike (not a group that often tailgates together) compelling, evocative, and moving stories that trace the Mexican DNA at the heart of the NFL. - William Nericciol“7