ABSTRACT
This chapter adopts a rhetorical approach to consider the relationship between sport and militarism. Rhetoric scholars such as Michael L. Butterworth and Roger Stahl have made important contributions to conversations concerning sport and militarism. The chapter presents a rhetorical analysis of football's crisis in Georgia in 1897, and, in so doing, clarifies the constitutive role that sacrifice in sport plays in the naturalization of militarized norms of citizenship. It begins with Gammon's death, focusing on newspaper accounts of his athleticism, his death, and the brutality of football, all of which present the athlete's body as a site of masculine virtue and exemplary citizenship. Next, the chapter historicizes "Spartan motherhood" as an ideological defense of violence that imbricates sport with militarism. Finally, it concludes with a close reading of Rosalind Gammon's letter championing football, pointing to her reliance on sacrificial themes that galvanized reform rather than abolition in 1897 and presaged future debates about violence, manliness, and sport.
