ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the layered and complex motivations for football participation as shaped by prospective forms of capital, transnational sporting institutions, and historical contingency. It illustrates the recent history of Samoan geographic and socioeconomic mobility in American football and how important geopolitical and transnational shifts have provided the conditions of opportunity for contemporary Samoan movement and mobility through sport. Focused on history, economy, and transformed visions of the future, the chapter speaks to a critical genealogy of American football. The transnational nature of football migration is key to understanding the appeal of playing football, the rewards that accrue to successful players, and how these resources have continued to transform conditions of possibility (materially and ideologically) for young people in the islands. Transnational sport migration is a growing reality for people across the Pacific. Realizing the unbridled potential of gridiron football requires migration and submission to racializing and commoditizing processes that sustain national and global economic inequality.
