Schlosser, Eric.Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the
All-American Meal. Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
- A penetrating reflection of the negative im-
pact the fast-food industry has had on American
society and the international community.
Smith, Andrew F., ed.The Oxford Companion to Ameri-
can Food and Drink. New York: Oxford University
Press, 2007. With over two hundred contributors,
this documentation on all aspects of American
food is a particularly good reference for the inter-
section of food and pop culture.
Lawrence Schwegler
See also Agriculture in Canada; Agriculture in the
United States; Coffeehouses; Genetically modified
foods; Lagasse, Emeril; Organic food movement;
Zone diet.
Football
Definition Team sport
Football continued its wide popularity in the United States
in the 1990’s, dominating both collegiate and professional
sports.
Professional football in the 1990’s was dominated by
the National Football League (NFL). The NFL be-
gan in the 1920’s with a handful of teams and had
grown to twenty-eight by the mid-1970’s, represent-
ing most of the largest cities across the United States.
The league expanded to thirty in the mid-1990’s,
adding the Jacksonville Jaguars and Carolina Pan-
thers in 1995. Several teams also moved locations
during the 1990’s, as the Houston Oilers moved to
Tennessee to become the Titans, the Cleveland
Browns moved to Baltimore to become the Ravens,
and the Los Angeles Rams moved to St. Louis. In the
latter part of the decade, the league expanded to
thirty-two, as the Cleveland Browns returned and
Houston received a team, naming them the Texans.
The modernization of stadiums continued in the
1990’s in the NFL: Nine new stadiums were built,
and a number of legendary stadiums were torn
down. Critics of the new stadiums claimed that they
were focused too heavily on box and club seating for
the elite fans and that they were becoming too ge-
neric. Proponents believed that the new stadiums
were more comfortable for all fans and more effi-
cient. Player safety was also a focus in the 1990’s, par-
ticularly seen in the movement to pull up artificial
turf and replace it with grass.
For several decades, the NFL had been a staple of
the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) and the
National Broadcasting Company (NBC) on Sunday
afternoons. This changed in the 1990’s, however,
when Fox purchased the rights to the National Foot-
ball Conference (NFC) games in 1994 and CBS pur-
chased the rights to American Football Conference
(AFC) games in 1998. There were also some major
rule changes in the NFL during the decade. These
included moving the kickoffs from the 35-yard line
to the 30, adding a two-point conversion after touch-
downs, allowing radio transmitters in quarterbacks’
helmets, limitations of on-field celebrations, and al-
terations to the replay system.
A collective-bargaining agreement in 1993 be-
tween players and owners altered the NFL perhaps
more than any other event in the 1990’s. This agree-
ment allowed players more freedom in their ability
to move from team to team and is credited by some
as the springboard that shifted the focus from teams
to individual players in the NFL. Free agency also
changed the strategy of coaches, who now had to de-
vise game plans for compilations of players who were
often unfamiliar with one another. Free agency and
the advent of a salary cap system that limited the
spending of each team are both credited for a
greater parity among the teams.
The 1990’s were as notable for on-field accom-
plishments in the NFL as they were for off-field
changes. The team of the decade was the Dallas Cow-
boys, who won three championships. The Buffalo
Bills were the first team to appear in four consecu-
tive Super Bowls, but lost each of the games, two to
the Dallas Cowboys. Individual accomplishments of
note included Walter Payton becoming the NFL’s
all-time leading rusher, Dan Marino the all-time
leading passer, and Don Shula the all-time
winningest coach.
Though the NFL was the most popular football
league during the 1990’s, other popular profes-
sional leagues included the Canadian Football
League (CFL), the Arena Football League (AFL),
and the World League of American Football
(WLAF), which is owned by the NFL. Arena football
faired particularly well during the decade, entrench-
ing itself as a profitable and popular alternative to
baseball during the summer. Many analysts believedThe Nineties in America Football 341