Initial+Proposal

The driving question for my Senior Seminar project is "how much impact did the United States' involvement during World War II affect professional football and what are the ramifications concerning military involvement today?" I found this to be a topic of interest because several Christmases ago, my uncle gave me a DVD all about the history of the Philadelphia Eagles. At one point, the video mentioned that during World War II so many professional football players were drafted or enlisted in the military that it was necessary for teams to merge with one another. The Eagles were one of those teams and merged with the Pittsburgh Steelers to form the "Steagles." Both head coaches and players clashed with one another and were forced to come together as enemies. From there, I learned that teams began to experience financial crises because the league was losing interest from fans who regularly poured in to stadiums to watch their favorite teams battle on Sundays. My goal is to gain a greater understanding of just how much of an impact World War II had on individual football teams and the league itself.

Ideally, I would like to do this project as a sequence of events and transition to a time line. For example, once the United States declared war, how did professional football players react? Did all of the players up and leave to enlist or was it a slow and gradual process? Once the league's size was diminished, how did teams compensate for player losses? With fewer teams and fewer players, did money become an issue with a smaller fan base? You get the point.

Some possible areas of research that I will need to look in to are a rough estimate of how many players enlisted, teams that merged with one another, fan reactions, financial impact, and a general impact on the league itself.

Surely this project won't be an easy one, but I ready and willing to accomplish it to the best of my abilities. This is one of very few projects that have been assigned throughout my time in high school that is based on a student's area of interest rather than a pre-determined topic. With that being said, finding the subtopics concerning my driving question and eventual thesis statement won't be easy because it hasn't been a huge area of focus, especially having to narrow it down to a specific era. In addition, my hands-on project, in which I plan on having a flag football tournament, will require several weeks of planning. I will have to get in contact with the high school about possibly using one of the fields (the football field or soccer field, for instance). If not, an alternate plan is to hold it at Cisco Park/Hillcrest Pond. I will also need to mass advertise the event, most likely by Facebook and putting up flyers around the school. If it cannot be provided, I will also need to purchase the necessary equipment, such as flags, extra footballs, pinnies, field markers, and the like.

Problems and challenges, while I'd prefer to avoid them altogether, are an inevitable part of the project process. In terms of research, should I run in to any roadblocks, my first instinct will be to get in contact with Dr. Valenza, an expert in the area of research, whom I can confidently go to knowing that she will steer me in the right direction. Should that not work, my second instinct will be to approach my mentor (my mom) and Mr. Martin with the problem in order to receive advice about what my next course of action should be. If all else fails, I also do have a back-up driving question that I can use to formulate a new research area within my project. The same course of action goes for my hands-on project as well. If the flag football tournament becomes too much of an issue to organize, I have two back-up plans. The first is to find out if it is possible to air a live feed of an Eagles game in either the auditorium or the cafeteria. Plan C would be a trip to the Professional Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.