Common Enemies
Georgetown Basketball, Miami Football, and the Racial Transformation of College Sports
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Narrated by:
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Kyle Tait
About this listen
During the 1980s, Black athletes and other athletes of color broadened the popularity and profitability of major college televised sports by infusing games with a "Black style" of play. At a moment ripe for a revolution in men's college basketball and football, clashes between "good guy" white protagonists and bombastic "bad boy" Black antagonists attracted new fans and spectators. And no two teams in the 1980s welcomed the enemy's role more than Georgetown Hoya basketball and Miami Hurricane football.
Georgetown and Miami taunted opponents. Athletes of color at both schools made sports apparel fashionable for younger fans, particularly young African American men. The Hoyas and the 'Canes were a sensation because they made the bad-boy image look good. Popular culture took notice.
In the US, sports and race have always been tightly, if sometimes uncomfortably, entwined. Black athletes who dare to challenge the sporting status quo are often initially vilified but later accepted. The 1980s generation of barrier-busting college athletes took this process a step further. Georgetown and Miami's aggressive style of play angered many fans and commentators. But in time, their style was not only accepted but imitated by others, both Black and white. Love them or hate them, there was simply no way you could deny the Hoyas and the Hurricanes.
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- Narrated by: Colin Cowherd
- Length: 7 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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In this age of billion dollar athletic marketing campaigns, “feel good” philosophy with no connection to reality, and a Sports Media echo chamber that’s all too eager swallow whatever idiotic notion happens to be in vogue at the moment, it’s tough to find people who aren’t afraid to say what they’re really thinking.
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Great book, Repeats majority of themes from radio
- By Troy on 01-20-14
By: Colin Cowherd
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NFL Century
- The One-Hundred-Year Rise of America's Greatest Sports League
- By: Joe Horrigan
- Narrated by: Mark Deakins
- Length: 11 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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The NFL has come a long way from its founding in Canton, Ohio, in 1920. In the 100 years since that fateful day, football has become America’s most popular and lucrative professional sport. The former scrappy upstart league that struggled to stay afloat has survived a host of challenges to produce American icons like Vince Lombardi, Joe Montana, and Tom Brady. It is an extraordinary and entertaining history that could be told only by Joe Horrigan, former executive director of the Pro Football Hall of Fame and perhaps the greatest living historian of the NFL.
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Good but very business heavy vs football milestones
- By Katie Durr on 07-29-24
By: Joe Horrigan
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The Yucks
- Two Years in Tampa with the Losingest Team in NFL History
- By: Jason Vuic
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 7 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Long before their first Super Bowl victory in 2003, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers did something no NFL team had ever done before and that none will ever likely do again: They lost 26 games in a row. It started in 1976, in their first season as an expansion team, and it lasted until the penultimate game of the 1977 season, when they defeated Archie Manning and the New Orleans Saints on the road. It was the beginning of a new streak for a team that had come to be called "The Yucks".
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Fun Listen
- By Dan Junevicus on 08-10-24
By: Jason Vuic
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The Missing Ring
- How Bear Bryant and the 1966 Alabama Crimson Tide Were Denied College Football's Most Elusive Prize
- By: Keith Dunnavant
- Narrated by: Jay Snyder
- Length: 13 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Very few institutions in American sports can match the enduring excellence of the University of Alabama football program. Across a wide swath of the last century, the tradition-rich Crimson Tide has claimed twelve national championships, captured 25 conference titles, finished 34 times among the country's top ten, and played in 53 bowl games.
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Fantastic
- By John Rogers on 03-29-18
By: Keith Dunnavant
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The "Down Goes Brown" History of the NHL
- The World's Most Beautiful Sport, the World's Most Ridiculous League
- By: Sean McIndoe
- Narrated by: Sean McIndoe
- Length: 7 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Sean McIndoe of Down Goes Brown, one of hockey's favorite and funniest writers, takes aim at the game's most memorable moments - especially if they're memorable for the wrong reasons - in this warts-and-all history of the NHL.
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Fun, fascinating education in hockey history
- By D. Trull on 03-27-19
By: Sean McIndoe
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Boys Among Men
- How the Prep-to-Pro Generation Redefined the NBA and Sparked a Basketball Revolution
- By: Jonathan Abrams
- Narrated by: Mirron Willis
- Length: 11 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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When Kevin Garnett shocked the world by announcing that he would not be attending college - as young basketball prodigies were expected to do - but instead would enter the 1995 NBA draft directly from high school, he blazed a trail for a generation of teenage basketball players to head straight for the pros. That trend would continue until the NBA instituted an age limit in 2005, requiring all players to attend college or another developmental program for at least one year.
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Bad pronunciation
- By K. Spearman on 07-03-16
By: Jonathan Abrams
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The Real Madrid Way
- How Values Created the Most Successful Sports Team on the Planet
- By: Steven G. Mandis
- Narrated by: Charles Constant
- Length: 8 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Real Madrid is the most successful sports team on the planet. The soccer club has more trophies than any other sports team, including 11 UEFA Champions League trophies. However, the story behind the triumph goes beyond the players and coaches. Generally unnoticed, a management team consisting mostly of outsiders took the team from near bankruptcy to the most valuable sports organization in the world. How did Real Madrid achieve such extraordinary success? Columbia Business School adjunct professor Steven G. Mandis investigates.
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awful
- By Jonathan Frye on 11-13-24
By: Steven G. Mandis
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The Captain Class
- The Hidden Force That Creates the World's Greatest Teams
- By: Sam Walker
- Narrated by: Keith Szarabajka
- Length: 9 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Several years ago, Sam Walker set out to answer one of the most hotly debated questions in sports: What are the greatest teams of all time? He devised a formula, then applied it to thousands of teams from leagues all over the world, from the NBA to the English Premier League to Olympic field hockey. When he was done, he had a list of the 16 most dominant teams in history. At that point he became obsessed with another, more complicated question: What did these freak teams have in common?
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Dates and names
- By Hunter on 11-28-21
By: Sam Walker
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Raise a Fist, Take a Knee
- Race and the Illusion of Progress in Modern Sports
- By: John Feinstein, Doug Williams
- Narrated by: John Feinstein
- Length: 10 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Based on dozens of shocking interviews with some of the most influential names in sports, this is the urgent and revelatory examination of racial inequality in professional athletics America has been waiting for. With an encyclopedic knowledge of professional sports, and shrewd cultural criticism, John Feinstein uncovers not just why, but how, pro sports continue to perpetuate racial inequality.
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Another Feinstein triumph
- By Glenn Canning on 12-06-21
By: John Feinstein, and others
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Rising Tide
- Bear Bryant, Joe Namath, and Dixie's Last Quarter
- By: Randy Roberts, Ed Krzemienski
- Narrated by: Alan Sklar
- Length: 15 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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The extraordinary story of how Coach Paul "Bear" Bryant and Joe Namath, his star quarterback at the University of Alabama, led the Crimson Tide to victory and transformed football into a truly national pastime. During the bloodiest years of the civil rights movement, Bear Bryant and Joe Namath - two of the most iconic and controversial figures in American sports - changed the game of college football forever.
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Love Alabama football? Read this!!
- By Miss Faulk on 07-16-15
By: Randy Roberts, and others
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Players
- The Story of Sports and Money - and the Visionaries Who Fought to Create a Revolution
- By: Matthew Futterman
- Narrated by: George Newbern
- Length: 9 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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For fans of Michael Lewis, the astounding untold story of how professional sports transformed, in the span of a single generation, from a cottage industry into a massive global business. In the cash-soaked world of contemporary sports, where every season brings news of higher salaries, endorsement deals, and television contracts, it is mind-boggling to remember that as recently as the 1970s elite athletes earned so little money that many were forced to work second jobs in the off-season to make ends meet.
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Starts slow...
- By John on 08-09-16
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12
- The Inside Story of Tom Brady's Fight for Redemption
- By: Casey Sherman, Dave Wedge
- Narrated by: Greg Baglia
- Length: 8 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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12 is the propulsive story of this gritty comeback. It's a drama that unfolds in the locker room, the court room, and under the brightest lights in all of sports - the Super Bowl. Now for the first time, listeners will have an exclusive look into Tom Brady's experience and the NFL's shocking strangle-hold on their players. With unprecedented access to Brady himself, his teammates, and his lawyers, we will see just how a football legend went up against one of the largest corporations in the world to stage the greatest comeback in NFL history and emerge a god of the gridiron.
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He didn't do it
- By Rigid on 08-03-18
By: Casey Sherman, and others
What listeners say about Common Enemies
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Amazon Customer
- 08-15-22
maybe informative for a casual fan but.....
I was expecting behind the scenes inside type narrative. this is more of an essay. meh...
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