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Start giftingCommon Enemies
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Learn moreDuring 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.
Thomas F. Schaller is a professor of political science at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. He is a former national political columnist for the Baltimore Sun and is the author of The Stronghold: How Republicans Captured Congress but Surrendered the White House and Whistling Past Dixie: How Democrats Can Win without the South.
Kyle Tait is a professionally trained voice actor and narrator in Atlanta, Georgia. His first brush with a microphone came in sports radio, calling baseball in the Atlanta Braves' organization. To pass the time in the off-season, he started voicing audiobooks, and a few years later he left baseball and went into narration full-time. Now his voice can be heard on a variety of audiobook and corporate voice-over outlets worldwide. When not in the studio, Tait can still be found moonlighting in the sports world, calling football, basketball, baseball, and softball on a variety of TV and radio outlets. He's also a studio host with IMG College, anchoring football and basketball broadcasts for schools like TCU, UConn, and Arizona.