Turning the Spyglass of Anthropology to Tackle Football

Drawing on almost a decade of immersive research with Black college football players, I argue that an anthropological and ethnographic approach to tackle football can complement studies in kinesiology by acknowledging the humanity, personhood, and lived experiences of athletes. In this article, I turn Zora Neale Hurston’s spyglass of Black feminist anthropology to football and center my disciplinary training to explain anthropology’s utility when studying this sport at the college level and the experiences of its Black participants. In particular, I highlight how my own positionality as a scholar mattered during my research experiences and how Black feminist anthropology provided me with the lens to consider care in football beyond just medical care performed to support the physical body. I make the case for how, through the spyglass of anthropological and ethnographic examination, the structural and the experiential of tackle football can be observed in tandem.