Presidential Impact on Sports From Theodore Roosevelt to Barack Obama
American Presidents impact all areas of life including the world of sports. Theodore Roosevelt is credited with saving football. William Howard Taft had a bad morning at the office in 1910 as women demanded the right to vote and he fled to watch a baseball game which would become the first ever Presidential opener. FDR, JFK and LBJ all had sports impacts. Richard Nixon opened up China because of sports. Jimmy Carter used sports as leverage in dealing with the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. There are other times when Presidential decisions were made with a sports calculus in mind.
You can learn all about how the Oval Office and its occupants have impacted sports in our country, in this engaging presentation by Evan Weiner, an award winning journalist and recognized global expert of the “Politics of Sports Business”. He has a daily video podcast of the same name. In the United States, he has been a radio commentator, TV pundit on MSNBC, NewsMax and ABC. He is also an author of nine books and is a frequent college speaker. He has been a regular on BBC radio as well as TalkSport London and has been quoted in Bolivian and Australian newspapers.
Evan won the 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award from the United States Sports Academy. In 2015, Evan was featured on the documentary, “The Sons of Ben” about the economic fall of Chester, Pennsylvania and how the city thought a soccer team would be a key to economic revival.
You can view the presentation on the Livingston Public Library’s YouTube channel:
-Archana, Adult Services & Acquisitions Librarian