PFRA in the 'News'
Posted: Tue Sep 27, 2016 2:23 pm
Our own Andy Piascik was a guest on 'Real Deal in Sports' last week. Here is the show's description:
Link: http://www.kgnu.org/apublicaffair/9/21/2016Why football is America's number one sport?
So many statistics bear out this fact -- particularly popularity polls from Gallup, Harris and like -- but football's reach has become so very deep. Of course, it wasn't always that way. When Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in 1947 it was considered a momentous occasion, but most forget that a year before pro football ended that line with Kenny Washington, Woody Strode, Marion Motley and Bill Willis all playing as pros. Why aren't they known in the same way as Robinson? Because baseball was America's primary sport at the time and what happened there, even if second, was most important on the cultural landscape.
Fast forward to today and when Colin Kaepernick kneels at the national anthem it is a major national story. Whereas we've seen similar protests in places like the WNBA already occur earlier this year with scant attention.
Today's guests are David Lengel who writes on American sports for The Guardian (UK); and Andy Piascik, an award-winning writer and a former assistant executive director for the Professional Football Researchers Association.