Border Pitch

This chapter examines the recent history of media, race, and migration in the U.S.-Mexico football rivalry. It chronicles the rivalry as an arena where national identity and citizenship were routinely contested, illustrating how media commentary simultaneously blurred and hardened divisions between the two nations. Tracing the evolution of the rivalry since the 1990s, it focuses on 2015-2018 to show how the media whirlwind around the two national teams exposed that boundaries of the U.S. polity were always shifting. The argument is two-fold: First, Donald Trump's ascendancy to political power entrenched the rivalry in acrimonious debate over race and migration. Second, media outlets marketed the rivalry by promoting viewpoints from across the political spectrum. Press and advertising of the rivalry is thus a story of how the football media reflected, shaped, and profited from the politics of race, migration, and sport.