Inventing the Boston Game

"On Boston Common stands a monument dedicated to the Oneida Football Club. It honors the site where, in the 1860s, sixteen boys played what was then called the "Boston game"--an early version of football in the United States. In the 1920s, a handful of the players orchestrated a series of commemorative events, donating artifacts to museums, depositing self-penned histories into libraries and archives, and erecting bronze and stone memorials, all to elevate themselves as the inventors of American football. But was this self-laudatory origin story of what, by then, had become one of America's favorite games as straightforward as they made it seem or a myth-making hoax? In Inventing the Boston Game, Kevin Tallec Marston and Mike Cronin investigate and reveal the true story of the Oneida Football Club. In a compelling narrative informed by sports history, Boston history, and the study of memory, they posit that these men engaged in self-memorialization to reinforce their elite status during a period of tremendous social and economic change. This exploration provides fascinating insight into how and why origin stories are created in the first place"--