The Sports Revolution: How Texas Changed the Culture of American Athletics by Frank Andre Guridy (review)

Texas is usually at the center of United States history. Whether it was as one of the causes for the Mexican–American War or the setting for the landmark ruling of Roe vs. Wade, which legalized abortion, the state has played and continues to play a significant role in the shaping of the nation. As Perry Como's 1942 hit tune begins, "The stars at night are big and bright (fast clap 4 times) deep in the heart of Texas!" In Frank Andre Guridy's book, The Sports Revolution: How Texas Changed the Culture of American Athletics, the sports stars were indeed big and bright. Add the emergence of the commercialization of sport, the economic investments, and the pioneering visionaries in Texas in the 1960s and 1970s, and the result is the creation of today's modern sports industrial complex.

Guridy's purpose is to explain the "consequences of [the] legal and political transformations vividly played out in sports" during the "Second Reconstruction" in Texas (4). The state was at the forefront of the convergence of social, political, and economic changes that manifested as the sports revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. The book begins with a snapshot of sports in Texas during the Jim Crow era, including the success of African American teams like the track team at Texas Southern University and the Mexican American basketball team at Lanier High School in San Antonio. He also notes, in 1969, the Texas Longhorns were the last all-white football team to win an NCAA championship in the sport. Guridy then transitions into the factors that led to the evolution of sports in Texas: wealthy businessmen looking to cash in, the booming energy sector, and the securing of state-of-the-art stadiums.

Houston and Dallas are at the center of this volume. In the 1960s, the Black community in Houston threw its support behind a proposal for a domed stadium. The promise was that the seating, teams, and jobs would be desegregated. The AstroDome was the first indoor stadium in the nation, bragging a host of architectural firsts that others would copy, including the injury-prone astroturf. The "Phi Slama Jama" era of basketball at the University of Houston demonstrated that dunks drew TV ratings. In addition, Black players like Hakeem Olajuwon and Clyde Drexler had a significant impact on the college game and later the NBA.

Inspiration (or envy) struck the Dallas Cowboys owner Clint Murchison Jr. after the opening of the AstroDome. Tired of the decaying Cotton Bowl, he built Texas Stadium in Irving. Guridy explains how the construction of these two pathbreaking sports venues changed the landscape not only in Texas but nationwide, as other cities carbon-copied the Texas blueprint for success and profitability.

The next chapters deal with the integration of the Southwest Conference and the subsequent race to acquire the best African American football players, inevitably resulting in NCAA violations. Guridy also explains how the Texas Rangers moved from Washington, DC. The common thread was how "commercialized sport catalyzed social change by unhinging the historical hierarchies of the Jim Crow era" (79). The San Antonio Spurs and the impact of the Mexican American working-class fan base also has a dedicated chapter.

Guridy's best chapters address how Texas served as the background for two significant events during the sexual revolution: the "Battle of the Sexes" tennis match and the formation of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders. The tennis match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs, held in the Houston Astrodome, was a turning point for feminism. Millions of television viewers witnessed King's victory, resulting in the development of the women's pro tennis tour.

The author's chapter on the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders (DCC) "exposed some of the contradictions of the sexual revolution," including their woeful pay to the hypersexualized way they were used...