Britni de la Cretaz and Lyndsey D'Arcangelo, "Hail Mary: The Rise and Fall of the National Women's Football League" (Bold Type Books, 2021)

Today we are joined by Frankie de la Cretaz, a sports journalist whose work focuses on the intersection of sport and gender, and one of the authors alongside Lyndsey D’Arcangelo of Hail Mary: The Rise and Fall of the National Women’s Football League (Bold Type Books, 2021). In our conversation, we discussed the beginnings of women’s gridiron football in the United States’ the reason why so many women wanted to play a “man’s game” in the 1970s and 80s; and the successes, failures and legacies of the NWFL. In Hail Mary, de la Cretaz and D’Arcangelo recover the lost history of the National Women’s Football League, a professional gridiron competition that ran from 1974 to 1988. To revive this hidden history of women’s football, the authors interviewed dozens of women from and consulted archives around the country. They discovered a competitive, vibrant, and popular sporting entertainment that rose in the Rust Belt, spread to the football meccas of Texas and California, before collapsing due to financial issues in the 1980s. The book is organized chronologically – except for a first chapter that showcases one of the most dramatic confrontations between two teams – the Toledo Troopers and Oklahoma City Dolls. De la Cretaz and D’Arcangelo’s archival history work, which relies mostly on newspapers, shows the spread and popularity of women’s football. They illustrate how male coaches, journalists, and owners framed the league in gendered ways. Many advocated for the league, particularly promoters like Sid Friedman who hoped to make lots of money, but lots of others genuinely enjoyed the athleticism of the competitors. More impressively, their oral history interviews also allow the authors to move beyond the social history of the league and to tell the story of individual football players. Through their conversations with former players, they explore why so many women wanted to play the “masculine” game of football, even when they were no longer being paid, what they got out of their competition, the difficulties they face