As a fan, you experience the excitement, agony, thrill and pain of college football through TV or in person at a stadium. But it’s what you don’t see or feel is what Tracie Canada wants you to experience through her new book, Tackling the Everyday.
The book is a 10-year journey of watching and writing, Canada’s favorite “complementary activities.”
But, Canada is not a journalist or sports management professor.
She’s an anthropologist and focuses on human behavior and the study of the human experience. So while some watch college football to cheer on their favorite team or player, or to see how their bets are progressing, Canada is interested in the culture of college football and the behaviors within the sport, particularly as it relates to Black players.
The casual fan might not understand her path of coverage, which is why the organization of her book was so crucial for her.
“I wanted to tell a cohesive story, and I thought that the way in for people, and to get them on board with the arguments that I’m trying to make, is to hook them with something that’s relatable and something that they know,” she told me during our interview. “And to me, that is this idea of the team. The team and the family.
“These are the two dynamics that are always brought up.”
And from the way Tracie explores college football, the team and family can be the same.
“It’s not just the players, it’s also the coaches,” said Canada. “It’s also the strength and conditioning coaches, it’s also the nutrition staff, it’s also the sports medicine people.”
So it’s easy to see how important the team/family dynamic is once you finally recognize it.
But for Black players, it’s even more significant, and that’s why Canada focused on the individual player for at the end of the day, the player is the one who gets hurt, gets discussed in the media, experiences love and hate from fans and shoulders the physical and emotional wear and tear of college football.
