Journal of Sport and Social Issues 37(3) 227–244 © 2013 SAGE Publications Reprints and permissions: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0193723512472897 jss.sagepub.com 472897JSS 37 3 10.1177/0193723512472897Jour nal of Sport and Social IssuesVeri and Liberti 1 San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA, USA 2 California State University, East Bay, Hayward, CA, USA Corresponding Author: Maria J. Veri, Department of Kinesiology, San Francisco State University, 1600 Holloway Ave., San Francisco, CA 94132, USA. Email: mjveri@sfsu.edu Tailgate Warriors: Exploring Constructions of Masculinity, Food, and Football Maria J. Veri 1 and Rita Liberti 2 Abstract This study provides a textual analysis of the 2009/2010 Food Network series, Tailgate Warriors (TW). The show features teams representing National Football League (NFL) cities in competition to determine who has the best tailgate fare. TW is part of an evolution in Food Network programming from an instructional model with a largely female audience to a competition-based entertainment spectacle geared increasingly toward men. Hegemonic masculinity is reinforced across the four themes identified in our analysis of the mediated intersection of food and sport. Competitive spectacle, the preoccupation with meat, the complexity of menus and food preparation, and discourses around place identity all work to distance cookery from the femininely coded domestic space of the kitchen. Keywords food studies, football, masculinity Introduction Iron Chef battles. Cupcake Wars. Mission impossible dinners. Tailgate Warriors. Food television in the United States has changed markedly since Julia Child’s instruc- tional days on PBS in the 1960s. Unlike the era of instructional televised cookery ushered in by The French Chef in 1962, early 21st-century food programming is a celebrity-driven entertainment forum that increasingly relies on competition to entice viewers. Today, television has transformed interest in food into a cultural phenomenon (Collins, 2009), cooking shows proliferate (Watson & Caldwell, 2005),and entire Focus: Sporting Warriors by guest on December 11, 2016 jss.sagepub.com Downloaded from