(De)Constructing the American sport hero: a textual analysis of media representations of Vince Lombardi.

Abstract

Using the concept of Hegemonic Masculinity, this study seeks to investigate how Vince Lombardi came to embody the values essential to American society during the Cold War. By performing a textual analysis on historic sports media documents taken from the Green Bay Press-Gazette, I argue that sportswriters constructed Lombardi in a fashion that celebrated characteristics of hegemonic masculinity that directly spoke to core American values during the Cold War. In doing so, Lombardi became a national icon, an American sports hero, and a purveyor of social myth, who transformed football into a metaphor for the American way of life within the Cold War period, where “winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.”. Although the role of the American sport hero has been investigated before, this is the first time a coach has been critically examined.