For most of the twentieth century mass-entertainment spectator sports have been big business. American sporting contests have been commercialized to varying degrees since their inception, contrary to claims of some critics who yearn for a time when...

Sports in the 1970s was very big business. Television had reshaped the sports industry in the decade before, and now the businessmen went to work to exploit their market. Football, baseball, basketball, boxing, auto racing, golf, and tennis were where...

World War II shaped sports in the 1940s, as it did all of American culture. The sports world did its best to maintain business as usual, but all organized games and contests were disrupted after 7 December 1941, when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor,...

Vince Lombardi's motto "Winning is not everything; it is the only thing" defines fans' and players' attitudes toward sports during the 1960s. It was the decade when American cynicism infected athletic competition. The ideal of amateurism, in...

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More than any athlete of the 1900s, Theodore Roosevelt epitomized the sporting character of the decade. In 1900, the year before he became the twenty-sixth president of the United States, he encouraged Americans to act aggressively and confidently but...

The second decade of the twentieth century is one of the most overlooked periods in the history of American sport. Overshadowed by the 1920s, the "Golden Age" of American sport, the 1910s saw many of the developments that laid the foundation...

The 1920s were called the golden age of sports. Every sport seemed to be dominated by a single personality. Though several of these athletes were still active in the 1930s, the golden age essentially ended with the retirement of golfer Bobby Jones in...

"He who would know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball," observed culturist Jacques Barzun. To look at baseball and other sports to see how they wove themselves into the fabric of American life in that crazy time when the...

More than anything else, money changed professional sports during the 1970s. In football and baseball, moneymaking television contracts led to changes in the rules and a lengthening of the season. Playoffs in both sports extended the seasons and...

The 1960s saw professional sports finally attain dominance in the hearts of American sports fans. The overlapping seasons of professional baseball, football, hockey, and basketball offered sports fans year-round entertainment, and television...

The 1990s boasted some of the greatest athletes and athletic achievements of the century, and saw a real flowering in women's sports. Leading the way was the man who many considered to be the best athlete of the century: Michael Jordan...

This page indexes the individual year in sports pages. Each year is annotated with a significant event as a reference...